Elon Musk's next DOGE targets? Pentagon and Education Department, Trump says
After dismantling the U.S. foreign aid office, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency will be coming for the Pentagon and Department of Education, President Donald Trump said Friday.
“He will be looking at education pretty quickly and he will be looking at military, too," Trump said, discussing Musk at a news conference at the White House with the prime minister of Japan.
The Education Department has long been a target for conservatives who want to see it abolished, and it was clear before Trump's comments that Musk was going after the agency. A top official at the department told staffers in a meeting Tuesday that DOGE was examining its operations.
Trump has talked about closing the Education Department. His administration is considering "options and how to reduce the size of the Department of Education if not abolish it completely," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News this week. Trump also said this week that putting his nominee to run the Education Department out of a job is a priority.
Cutting military spending could face more GOP resistance, but about 13% of the federal budget – $872 billion – goes toward defense spending, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That makes it a prime target for potential cost savings.
Musk and DOGE have been blitzing through federal agencies with a slew of controversial moves, including offering buyouts to all federal workers and attempting to shut down the United States Agency for International Development, whose 10,000 employees were all placed on leave this week.
Musk – whose X bio describes him blithely as “White House Tech Support” – said on X that he fed USAID “into the wood chipper.”
Trump indicated Friday that some of Musk's next steps may not be as drastic.
"I’ve instructed him to go check out Education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military and, you know, sadly you’ll find some things that are pretty bad, but I don’t think proportionately you’re going to see anything like we just saw," Trump said.
Musk's actions have sparked a strong backlash, including lawsuits aimed at halting the efforts and protests around the country. A lawsuit filed by federal workers argues that only Congress, which created USAID, can shut it down.
DOGE also sparked an uproar after it was revealed that staffers were accessing the Treasury Department's payment system, which processes trillions in payments and has sensitive information on millions of Americans.
An Education Department staffer who was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly confirmed to USA TODAY that Musk’s team also gained access to its vast databases, including the National Student Loan Database System and the Common Origination and Disbursement System, which list millions of students’ personal and financial information.
Contributing: Zachary Schermele
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump reveals next DOGE targets: Pentagon and Education