President Donald Trump’s “government efficiency” cheerleader Elon Musk proposed simply ignoring all federal regulations during a public call shortly after midnight Monday morning.
Musk, whose newly formed “Department of Government Efficiency” team has in recent days executed a dramatic power grab at several government agencies, called for “wholesale removal of regulations.”
The public call was hosted on his website X, formerly Twitter, and included two senators and the Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy.
“Regulations, basically, should be default gone,” Musk said. “Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.”
“These regulations are added willy-nilly all the time. So we’ve just got to do a wholesale, spring cleaning of regulation and get the government off the backs of everyday Americans so people can get things done,” Musk said, adding later: “If the government has millions of regulations holding everyone back, well, it’s not freedom. We’ve got to restore freedom.”
Later, Ramaswamy — who briefly co-led Musk’s White House DOGE project — said, “I think it’s possible now, it’s actually possible” thanks to Trump’s second term and a conservative-dominated Supreme Court.
Musk replied, “If it’s not possible now, it’ll never be possible. This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. And if we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen, so we’re going to do it.”
“Now or never,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Ramaswamy agreed. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also spoke on the call.
Federal regulations, which are enforced by the executive branch agencies, govern everything from pollutants to construction safety to banking requirements. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and a key player in several industries, would benefit immensely from the ability to pick and choose which regulations to follow.
Musk on the call also appeared to claim credit for the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S.-funded aid agency that oversees humanitarian projects around the world, calling it a corrupt “ball of worms.” Shortly after the call, he wrote on X that “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
He said on the call that “we’re shutting it down” and that Trump “agreed that we should shut it down” — though the executive branch’s legal authority to do so without congressional action is highly in doubt, as the agency’s existence is established in law. Trump on Monday said he didn’t need an act of Congress to shut down USAID.
USAID’s homepage has been shut down for days, as is its X account. Dozens of career staff at the agency have been put on leave, and hundreds have been shut out of agency computer systems. Musk aides have gained access to classified USAID information over the objection of agency security personnel, who were subsequently placed on leave, The Associated Press reported.
One of Musk’s aides — a small group of 20-somethings reportedly are his primary foot soldiers in the war for “government efficiency” — emailed USAID staff over the weekend to tell them not to come into the office Monday, as it would be closed. A protest featuring several members of Congress formed outside the building on Monday.
Capping off the apparent takeover of the independent agency, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday asserted that he was himself the acting administrator of USAID.
The X call came after a week straight of Musk and his aides, acting with Trump’s blessing, asserted aggressive and potentially unlawful control over a series of choke points in the executive branch.
At the Office of Personnel Management, Musk aides reportedly have not only gained access to federal human resource databases that contain sensitive personal information — and locked career officials out of the systems — but reportedly also have installed their own commercial server, presumably without a required privacy impact assessment.
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Musk aides also have been granted access to the Treasury Department’s federal payment system. The career civil servant who had overseen the system was put on leave and then suddenly retired after resisting Musk’s team being granted access, The New York Times and others reported.
On Friday, the X account for “DOGE” claimed to have canceled $1 billion of federal contracts.
And on X in recent days, Musk has publicly bragged of shutting down payments that, presumably, were specifically approved by Congress and the president — indicating numerous potential violations of the Impoundment Control Act.
