Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has two new targets in its crosshairs: the Pentagon and the Department of Education. This was stated not by Musk, but by President Donald Trump himself, during a press conference at the White House, which was also attended by Shigeru Ishiba, prime minister of Japan.
However, despite the presence of the Japanese guest, most of the questions the MAGA leader addressed were about the operations of DOGE, which was established to curb federal government spending.
The president said he was very pleased with the department’s work to date. Trump also said he gave carte blanche to his billionaire supporter, who with his agency managed to gain access to the Treasury’s payment system, which processes trillion-dollar disbursements and contains sensitive information on millions of Americans.
The MAGA leader also said he was very proud of the team built by Musk, composed of bright and intelligent young engineers, according to him. “We have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption and we’ve found tremendous corruption”, Trump said, “They know what they’re doing. They’ll ask questions, and they’ll see immediately as somebody gets tongue-tied that they’re either crooked or don’t know what they’re doing. We have very smart people going.”
In reality, so far DOGE has produced no evidence that there were any such issues within the “visited” agencies. Subsequently, Trump revealed that he had asked Musk to review the spending of the powerful Defense Department, whose proposed budget for 2025 hovers around $870 billion: “I’ve instructed him to go check out Education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military. And you know, sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad”.
The Department of Education has long been a target of conservatives, who would like to close it down. Earlier in the week, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt had revealed to Fox that the federal administration was considering reducing the size of the agency, or abolishing it altogether.
A staff member at the Department of Education confirmed that the DOGE team also had access to its vast databases, including the National Student Loan Database System and the Common Origination and Disbursement System, which contain millions of personal and financial information on students.
Cutting military spending, on the other hand, may face more resistance from the GOP. However, the fact that 13 percent of the federal budget goes to Defense makes that department a prime target for Musk’s agency.
