Whereas issues have been already swirling about Elon Musk’s involvement within the Trump administration, the primary potential battle of curiosity has popped up.
Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity (which he runs with Vivek Ramaswamy) put out the decision Thursday for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.” As interesting as that job would possibly sound (oh, it’s seemingly unpaid additionally), the potential battle got here within the directions about apply.
Potential candidates are being instructed to ship their resumes to the DOGE account on X by way of direct message. Underneath Musk’s adjustments to that platform, nonetheless, solely premium subscribers are in a position to ship DMs to the DOGE account. These run from $8 to $16 per thirty days.
Put one other means: To even be thought-about for a job within the division (and the positioning mentioned solely the highest 1% of resumes can be reviewed by Musk and Ramaswamy), candidates must make a monetary contribution to certainly one of Musk’s companies.
That’s simply the potential tip of the iceberg, in fact. For instance, Musk additionally runs SpaceX, which has contracts with the federal authorities.
Whereas Musk has mentioned “all actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency,” it’s unclear if the 2 leaders of it must file monetary disclosures. And the potential for one or each taking out authorities rules that impression their companies has ethicists involved.
“If Musk and Ramaswamy are in a position where they can influence governmental decisions and if some of those decisions could impact their businesses, then there could be a danger of illegal conflicts of interest,” Noah Bookbinder, the president of Residents for Accountable Ethics advised ABC Information. “Other laws and rules could also be at issue today depending on what they do and how this ‘Department’ works.”
Representatives for X and the Trump transition staff didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
