SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk answers a question from the press in front of the Crew Dragon that is being prepared for the Demo-2 mission, at SpaceX Headquarters, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019 in Hawthorne, CA. Photo credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)
Vivek Ramaswamy has exited the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to run for governor in Ohio. The move comes after some friction with the Trump administration over H1-B visas, and perhaps with Musk over the future of the department. Ken Thomas and John McCormick report in The Wall Street Journal:
WASHINGTON—The Department of Government Efficiency was originally envisioned as a joint Elon Musk–Vivek Ramaswamy mission outside the federal government. Now it is all Elon—and he is inside.
Musk’s vision for DOGE—along with his relentless, 24/7 online promotion of its goals—has quickly won out in President Trump’s first days in office, as Ramaswamy has decamped for his home state of Ohio to announce next week a planned bid for governor in 2026, and the DOGE operation has been installed inside the new president’s administration. Musk has been working this week from a West Wing office, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Tensions and philosophical differences between the two billionaires, who first met in 2023 when Ramaswamy was still challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, didn’t take long to emerge.
People familiar with the situation said Trump’s inner circle of aides had become annoyed with Ramaswamy’s outspokenness on virtually any topic, a tendency that had also aggravated the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive.
“There were always going to be tensions between two CEOs who have built successful companies,” said a person familiar with DOGE. “Everyone saw the writing on the wall.”
A frequent poster on Musk’s X platform, Ramaswamy also angered some Trump supporters and aides in late December when he let loose with a long message as part of a debate over H-1B visas, suggesting some U.S. technology companies hire foreign workers in part because U.S. culture has “venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”
The split was also predicated in part by DOGE’s increasing attention on achieving spending cuts, which Musk has championed, and less of a focus on cutting regulations and bureaucracy, which had been helmed by Ramaswamy, according to another person familiar with the discussions.
There are “no hard feelings” between Musk and Ramaswamy, the person said, but “as the mandate narrowed and shifted, Vivek’s ability to add on to that changed and it was his decision to step away.”
During Trump’s transition, there had been internal speculation on whether DOGE would be set up within the government, potentially as a federal advisory committee, or in the form of an outside think tank or an advocacy group set up as a nonprofit. Ramaswamy had long argued that the effort needed to exist outside the government.
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