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Elon Musk’s new DOGE plans are actually old ideas about mass deregulation

Musk didn’t invent the idea of defunding federal agencies.

In any case, Musk and Ramaswamy have proposed cutting “thousands” of federal regulations and determining the “minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.” And as Musk and Ramaswamy noted in their explanation of how DOGE will function, the incoming Trump administration has something new at its disposal: the recent Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the landmark case that overturned Chevron deference. On X, Musk and his allies have stressed the need for RAGE by highlighting seemingly bizarre projects that have received government funding, many of which are scientific studies whose total cost is a fraction of a percent of the overall federal budget.

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