The DOGE commission, they wrote, “will first work with legal experts embedded in government agencies” to identify regulations that Trump can repeal. The effort will rely on “advanced technology,” they said, a potential reference to artificial intelligence.

Musk and Ramaswamy argued that recent cases decided by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will allow for significant reductions in federal regulations. Once Trump “rolls back thousands of such regulations,” DOGE will then work with “embedded appointees” in federal agencies to “identify the minimum number of employees” required for an agency to carry out its functions essential. This line seemed to echo Musk’s broader business philosophy and past practices; Musk oversaw the roughly 80 percent reduction in staff at Twitter, the social media platform he later rebranded as X, after buying it.

DOGE leaders have suggested that Trump may unilaterally reduce the number of federal employees, as many of them will no longer be needed once the regulations are removed.

“A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides a sound industrial rationale for massive downsizing in the federal bureaucracy,” they write. They added that “the number of federal employees to be eliminated should be at least proportional to the number of federal regulations canceled.”

Musk and Ramaswamy have not said how many federal employees they plan to cut as part of their efforts. They wrote that “existing laws” can give federal employees “early retirement incentives” and voluntary severance packages to “facilitate a smooth exit.”

These proposals could affect not only many federal operations, but also the Washington region, which is home to hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

To reduce federal spending, Musk and Ramaswamy also proposed eliminating programs funded by Congress but for which specific spending authorization has lapsed, an idea that would eliminate critical measures including health care for veterans, the initiatives of the Ministries of State and Justice and NASA and several major anti-poverty programs.

This idea, according to some budget experts, demonstrates the two men’s incomprehension of how government works. Financing authorizations are often pro forma exercises; approving funding without formal reauthorizations is a way Congress has found to operate more efficiently.

Questions also abound about how they would reduce federal regulation. Musk and Ramaswamy have indicated they will conduct a broad federal review to remove regulations deemed excessive.

To justify their efforts, they cited a series of recent Supreme Court decisions that have significantly reduced federal power — including the justices’ decision to revoke a decades-old legal precedent known as Chevron doctrine, which had given agencies broad latitude in policymaking. But the duo has not said how, exactly, they will achieve their goal, which is fraught with legal questions and political challenges.

In their opinion piece, Musk and Ramaswamy said “large-scale audits” during a “temporary suspension of payments” could generate savings, although they did not explain what that would entail.

The opinion piece discusses a radical shift in the balance of power when it comes to spending. Trump aides plan to challenge a 1974 budget law that limits the president’s ability to stop spending on federal programs without congressional approval. If the Supreme Court agrees, the White House would significantly expand its ability to unilaterally cut programs.

“Mr. Trump has previously suggested that this law is unconstitutional, and we believe that the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this issue,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.

They also suggested resuming an effort that petered out at the end of Trump’s first term.

In the final weeks of the first Trump administration, the White House pushed a controversial policy that would have allowed the president to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with loyalists. Russell Vought, then head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and other members of the administration believed that career government employees were resisting their policies and seeking to suppress the employment projections that accompany long been the modern federal bureaucracy.

Trump officials focused their efforts on mid- and senior-level professionals in decision-making positions they deemed impossible to fire, protected by longstanding civil service rules. Each agency would identify career employees to transfer to a new job category known as Schedule F.

Implementation of the new policy, mandated by an executive order issued by the White House less than two weeks before Election Day 2020, accelerated in the White House budget office. OMB officials sent a list of roles identified by Vought staff to the federal personnel agency for final approval. The list represented 88% of the workforce, or 425 analysts and other experts who would move to Schedule F. President Joe Biden killed the executive order on his first day in office.

Trump promised during his campaign to reinstate Annex F if he took over the White House, and Vought appears well-positioned to overturn the rule and lead the charge once again. Musk and Ramaswamy’s op-ed did not mention Annex F by name, although the intent appears largely similar.

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Tony Romm and Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report.