Elon Musk's Fake Retreat from Doge

The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.

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.

Read more from the Revolving Door Project

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.”

Conger and Mac also recount a meeting between Twitter executives and Antonio Gracias, a personal friend of Musk’s and longtime investor in his companies. Shortly before Musk actually executed his purchase of Twitter, he ran into a problem: He had come up about $400 million short. Gracias went to Twitter’s executives on Musk’s behalf and simply asked them to wire him the money. When they declined to do so, Gracias said, “You’re not going to wire me the fucking money? Are you saying no to Elon Musk?”

Gracias is now a top DOGE official at the Social Security Administration, an agency that Musk has targeted in part because he believes, falsely, that “Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants” through “entitlements fraud.” Less than two weeks before Musk’s fateful Tesla earnings call, Politico reported that Gracias was leading DOGE’s “immigration task force,” which seems poised to justify even more cuts through the lens of Musk’s false assertions.

Or look at Jehn Balajadia, Musk’s personal assistant, who the Times reports “has email addresses at multiple federal agencies—a sign of her reach across the bureaucracy.” Conger and Mac quote some advice that Balajadia gave to a Twitter employee who had been currying favor with Musk: “I can tell you’re going to be around for a while, so let me tell you something. Elon is special in this world. It is our job to protect him and make sure what he wants to have happen, happens. We need to protect the mission.”

And even if most rank-and-file DOGE staffers don’t quite have the same level of devotion to Musk as Davis, Gracias, or Balajadia, many would still find it exceedingly difficult to break free of Musk’s interests or directives, because of his notorious vindictiveness. Take Branden Spikes, a longtime employee at multiple Musk companies who became head of IT at Musk’s X in February. Spikes was a DOGE staffer but left after just two months. Imagine that Spikes had done something against Musk’s wishes while at DOGE—say he publicly challenged Musk and DOGE’s many lies about millions of dead people receiving Social Security. There is little doubt he would be summarily thrown out of the Musk empire, if not worse.

We don’t need to rely on hypotheticals either. We know that Musk has consistently demanded abject deference from his employees. At Twitter, he fired people who criticized him online, even seemingly firing an executive for not laughing at one of his jokes. Just a few weeks ago, Tesla fired an employee who protested Musk’s leadership of the company. At a Musk company, if he says up is down, then you agree or you’re sacked. There is no reason to believe that this calculus has changed for DOGE staffers following Musk’s pullback.

Of course, Musk’s influence over the Trump administration also extends beyond DOGE. As the Trump campaign’s largest individual donor—both in dollars and the in-kind donation of Twitter—Musk has a direct line to the president, and the administration seems to be taking a whole-of-government approach to bolstering his interests (tariffs notwithstanding). Some non-DOGE figures in the Trump administration have significant ties to Musk, like Jared Isaacman, while other Musk-tied officials blur the line between DOGE and regular administration jobs, like Michael Grimes. After Musk’s April announcement, his lawyer Chris Gober—who had his own stint at DOGE—told The Daily Signal that his “expectation is that [Musk] will play a critical role [in the administration] moving forward.”

Absent a much larger purge of Musk’s close associates from DOGE and the rest of the federal government, it’s hard to see how reducing his “time allocation to DOGE” functionally means anything at all. Musk remains as intertwined with the Trump administration as ever, and so there’s no reason for anyone who has disliked the billionaire’s impact on the federal government to take much comfort in his nominal retreat. Any decrees made by Musk will still be gospel to those in government who are loyal to or financially dependent on him. To paraphrase one DOGE official, are they really going to say no to Elon Musk?