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Elon Musk's Fake Retreat From DOGE
In the past month, much has been made of Elon Musk purporting to step back from his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to focus on running his flailing companies, particularly Tesla, which saw a stunning 71 percent year-on-year drop in profits in the first quarter of 2025. Musk announced on the April Tesla earnings call that his “time allocation to DOGE [would] drop significantly” in May. There were also some earlier indications that the administration was planning to shuttle Musk out this month. And if the Trump administration was planning to follow the law, Musk could have been required to step down soon anyway, given his around-the-clock work schedule and the 130-workday limit set on his tenure as a “special government employee.”
It’s not clear in what ways exactly Musk’s involvement with DOGE has changed since that Tesla earnings call, though he has reportedly been spending less time in Washington. But if you actually look at the composition of DOGE, it is very clear that diminishing Musk’s power over the group would take a lot more than him shifting to part-time remote work.
Out of 110 people who have reportedly been involved with DOGE, at least 46 of them have direct financial or professional ties to Elon Musk, according to research by the Revolving Door Project. In the majority of these cases, DOGE staffers have worked for Musk directly at one or more of his companies, with SpaceX being the most common one. (Similar analysis done by WIRED at the end of March found 49 Musk-tied DOGE employees, though that total includes second-degree connections, such as those connected to business associates of Musk, like Peter Thiel.)
Several DOGE officials are comically devoted to Musk. Steve Davis, for instance, has been identified by The New York Times as the “day-to-day leader of DOGE.” Davis has worked for Musk in various capacities for decades; he is the president of the Boring Company and was instrumental in Musk’s takeover of Twitter. In Kate Conger and Ryan Mac’s Character Limit, a fantastic book on the Musk-Twitter saga, the authors quote Neuralink CEO and Musk’s “fixer” Jared Birchall as telling people, “If Elon asked Steve to jump out of a window, he would do it.”
It’s not clear in what ways exactly Musk’s involvement with DOGE has changed since that Tesla earnings call, though he has reportedly been spending less time in Washington. But if you actually look at the composition of DOGE, it is very clear that diminishing Musk’s power over the group would take a lot more than him shifting to part-time remote work.
Out of 110 people who have reportedly been involved with DOGE, at least 46 of them have direct financial or professional ties to Elon Musk, according to research by the Revolving Door Project. In the majority of these cases, DOGE staffers have worked for Musk directly at one or more of his companies, with SpaceX being the most common one. (Similar analysis done by WIRED at the end of March found 49 Musk-tied DOGE employees, though that total includes second-degree connections, such as those connected to business associates of Musk, like Peter Thiel.)
Several DOGE officials are comically devoted to Musk. Steve Davis, for instance, has been identified by The New York Times as the “day-to-day leader of DOGE.” Davis has worked for Musk in various capacities for decades; he is the president of the Boring Company and was instrumental in Musk’s takeover of Twitter. In Kate Conger and Ryan Mac’s Character Limit, a fantastic book on the Musk-Twitter saga, the authors quote Neuralink CEO and Musk’s “fixer” Jared Birchall as telling people, “If Elon asked Steve to jump out of a window, he would do it.”
https://prospect.org/power/2025-05-23-elon-musks-fake-retreat-from-doge/