Musk Watch:  The Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was established on Monday by Trump, with Musk receiving a White House email address and office space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The executive order states that DOGE will replace the US Digital Service, an official part of the Executive Office of the President. By abandoning the initial plan to have DOGE operate as an external advisory panel, the Washington Post reports, Musk and his deputies will have “far greater insight and control over federal operations from within the White House” and avoid disclosures that outside groups consulting the White House are required to make. Here’s more from the Post report:

[Musk] will be able to deploy a team of handpicked software engineers to every government agency, where under Trump’s executive order they will be granted “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” …Armed with sensitive data, Musk could draw on expertise gathered from his business empire — including deploying artificial intelligence — to achieve his aims, people familiar with the matter said.

Musk had vowed to use DOGE to shave a whopping $2 trillion off the federal government’s annual operating budget of more than $7 trillion. He toned that down a bit, saying recently he hoped to find $1 trillion in savings. But Trump’s executive order states that DOGE will not “impair or otherwise affect… the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.” The primary focus of the “18-month DOGE agenda” will be “Modernizing Federal Technology and Software to Maximize Efficiency and Productivity.” It is unclear what, if any, budget-cutting Musk can accomplish with the new DOGE. But is this what Musk wanted all along? The Post report suggests that Musk was always more focused on upgrading the executive branch’s superannuated bureaucratic technology — transforming it via the use of AI and data-mining — than aggressive budget cutting…”