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.

Musk and Ramaswamy will be DOGE's main advisors and oversee three categories of reform: "regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings." Musk and Ramaswamy wrote that their goal for deep reform will be rooted in two Supreme Court rulings.