Thu, 29 May 2025

Thu, 29 May 2025 Elon Musk leaves White House but says Doge will continue

Musk's exit comes after he criticised the legislative centrepiece of the president's agenda.

* Elon Musk has announced he's leaving his role in the Trump administration after helping lead efforts to reduce the size of the US government.
* Musk was appointed as a special government employee, but his time limit would have been reached by the end of May anyway.
* He thanked President Trump for the opportunity to work on reducing wasteful spending and said that his departure is not unexpected.
* However, Musk has criticized the legislative centrepiece of Trump's agenda, calling it "undermines the work" of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
* During his time in government, an estimated 260,000 federal jobs were cut or affected by redundancy deals.
* Musk had initially pledged to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, but later reduced this target to $150 billion.
* His departure comes a day after he expressed disappointment with Trump's budget bill, which proposes multi-trillion dollar tax breaks and a boost to defence spending.
* Musk will now focus on running his companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, and has committed to leading Tesla for the next five years.
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