President Donald Trump, joined by Elon Musk in the Oval Office, signed an executive order on Tuesday to give the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project more oversight of the federal government workforce.
Under Trump’s order, the heads of federal agencies are directed to “coordinate and consult” with DOGE in the hiring process and to “limit hiring to essential positions.” The order promises to “significantly reduce the size of government,” an effort the Trump administration has already begun by gutting the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and turning its sights on eliminating the Department of Education, a promise Trump made on the campaign trail.
Musk and his team at DOGE have already looked into nearly 20 agencies, identifying spending cuts and suggesting complete program overhauls, The New York Times reported. Answering questions from reporters in the Oval Office with Trump on Tuesday night, Musk emphasized the importance of dismantling the excessive federal bureaucracy.
“If there’s not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?” Musk asked. “If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in a democracy; we live in a bureaucracy.”
The executive order was endorsed by Russell Vought, who was confirmed by the Senate last week as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
“Again, this is more action and activities that we can do. The president can move forward unilaterally using the laws that are on the books to have reductions in force,” Vought said in an interview with Fox News.
Democrats have pushed back against Musk’s work in the Trump administration, arguing that DOGE — a project created by Trump — should not get access to sensitive government databases. Some on the Left have even called Musk’s efforts a “hostile takeover” of government financial systems.
Trump told reporters that he would prevent Musk from working on projects if there were “a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest.” He added that he hopes “the court system is going to allow us to do what we have to do.”
“We got elected to, among other things, find all of this fraud and abuse and all of this horrible stuff going on,” the president said. “We’ve already found billions of dollars, not like a little bit — billions, many billions of dollars, and when you get down to it, it’s probably going to be close to a trillion dollars.”
A federal judge in New York temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury Department data after 19 state attorneys general sued to prevent DOGE from accessing sensitive data. The Department of Justice is fighting back, seeking to end the judge’s order, which it called a “remarkable intrusion.”
“Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the president,” the DOJ wrote.
