DOGE could be a mechanism for a Musk shadow presidency, a nonsense job designed to keep Musk busy without giving him real power, or a curious mix of the two. In any case, Musk and Ramaswamy have proposed cutting “thousands” of federal regulations and determining the “minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.

Elon Musk is already identifying specific government employees with “fake jobs” as he recommends mass firings as co-chair of Donald Trump’s newly-created Department of Government Efficiency. The billionaire re-shared a post last week that highlighted Ashley Thomas,