ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Elon Musk says he's leaving the federal government behind. The richest man in the world took a chainsaw to government programs in the last few months as head of the White House initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency. Those cuts have been controversial, and they've also been at the center of lawsuits. Musk says the work of DOGE will continue even after he returns to his corporate jobs. NPR's Stephen Fowler and Bobby Allyn have covered the work of DOGE, and they're here to talk about Elon Musk's impact on Washington and what comes next. Good to have you both here.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Hey there.
SHAPIRO: Elon Musk was brought on as a time-limited, special government employee. He says his time is up, and that's why he's leaving. Stephen, is it that simple?
FOWLER: Well, normally, special government employees have this 130-day time limit. Tomorrow would be 130 days from when Musk started and Trump took office, if you assume Musk was working every day on DOGE. Also, Musk technically and, according to the White House, legally was never actually in charge of DOGE, so he probably could have gone a lot longer. But a lot of his comments and DOGE's actions have been unpopular. So there's also the reality that Musk's continued association with the Trump administration and Republican policies could serve as a political albatross coming up in the midterm election cycle. And Elon Musk is a businessman, not a politician, so the special government employee rules provides a convenient segue out of federal government work in a way that a politician can't.
SHAPIRO: As a businessman, he leads several companies, including SpaceX and Tesla. Bobby, how did Musk's work at the White House affect his business empire?
ALLYN: Yeah, Tesla, which is Musk's main source of wealth, was really hurt by Musk's work in the Trump administration. One analyst even called the impact on Tesla as an unprecedented brand destruction. And there was serious backlash, right? Tesla owners sold their cars. Some Tesla storefronts were vandalized. The car just became a symbol of the havoc Musk was overseeing in the White House. And in the first quarter of the year, Tesla's profits dropped 71% compared to a year ago.
There were reports that Tesla's board of directors was starting to look for a Musk replacement. It was getting pretty bad for him. The Tesla board has since eased off that, but many longtime observers of Musk say this was one of his biggest surprises in the DOGE work - that Tesla would become politicized, and it would drag the company down. Now he's trying to get Tesla investors excited by promoting the launch of what he's calling Robotaxi, a self-driving car service, that he claims will launch next month in Austin. And in a bunch of recent interviews, he's taking every opportunity he can, Ari, to say he can now focus on Tesla since DOGE is behind him.
SHAPIRO: All right, but before we leave DOGE behind, let's go back a bit. During the campaign and early in the administration, Elon Musk and Donald Trump were side by side all the time. It was like a buddy movie. That relationship seems to be souring, too. What have you seen, Stephen?
FOWLER: Well, there's been some distance growing between the two, the further into this year we've gotten and the further their priorities have split. Here's an interview clip from CBS that was released this week where Musk criticized Trump's proposed one, big, beautiful bill that passed the House.
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ELON MUSK: You know, I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.
FOWLER: Now, at a White House press briefing today, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump thanks Musk for getting DOGE off of the ground, and the efforts to cut waste, fraud and abuse will continue. But Ari, there really hasn't been much evidence of significant waste, fraud and abuse uncovered. I mean, DOGE has constantly oversold its savings claims. They've made errors and, a lot of time, just got things wrong about how government works. So in many ways, Musk's core goals about DOGE haven't really been met.
SHAPIRO: And then there are the lawsuits. Some court rulings have blocked Elon Musk's moves to reduce the size of government. Bobby, where do the legal challenges stand?
ALLYN: Yeah. There have been quite a few - at last count, at least 20 different lawsuits challenging both Musk's role and DOGE's legal ability to upend the federal government. The suits are at various stages. But just this week, a federal judge advanced one of the suits alleging Musk and DOGE were given powers over the U.S. government that exceeded Musk's legal authority.
Then there are data privacy concerns, right? A big mission of DOGE has been to knock down data silos and to pull data on federal employees and American taxpayers, you know, into one big system. And in the process, critics say norms and, in some cases, laws appear to have been trampled on in an effort to, you know, build this master database. Musk has also said he's been really taken aback by just how cumbersome and old-fashioned some government systems are. But experts say, in some cases, like with national security material, the difficulty in sharing is kind of the point.
SHAPIRO: Musk's social media announcement says, quote, "the DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government." Is that true?
FOWLER: Well, many of the people brought into these agencies to make changes are still going to be there because they're federal employees still carrying out the DOGE agenda, which is Trump's agenda if the lawsuits don't knock things down.
ALLYN: Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think DOGE's work without Musk will mean that DOGE will be less high-profile, maybe a bit less chaotic. But I think it's fair to say that DOGE isn't going away anytime soon.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Bobby Allyn and Stephen Fowler, thank you.
ALLYN: Thanks, Ari.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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