Trump nominates Musk and Ramaswamy to lead new efficiency department – as it happened

Here is a summary of the latest developments:

• Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump said on Tuesday. Despite the name, the department will not be a government agency. Trump said the pair will work from outside the government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.”

• Trump has tapped Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense. Hegseth, 44, is a co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend” and has been a contributor with the network since 2014, where he developed a friendship with Trump, who made regular appearances on the show.

• Trump has confirmed that he has chosen South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, to serve as the next secretary of the homeland security department. The choice was widely reported yesterday, but not yet announced by Trump.

• The Biden administration said Tuesday it won’t limit weapons transfers to Israel because the US says its key ally has made good but limited progress in increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. That is despite eight international aid groups saying Israel has failed to meet US demands for greater humanitarian access to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, where hunger experts say the north may already be experiencing famine.

• Donald Trump named the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has a track record of hardline, occasionally provocative, pro-Israel rhetoric and previously said Israel has a rightful claim to the West Bank, which he refers to by its Hebrew and biblical name of Judea and Samaria.

• Trump chose a real-estate mogul as Middle East envoy. Donald Trump has picked Steven Witkoff, a New York City-based real estate executive and longtime friend, to serve as Middle East envoy in his upcoming administration.

• Trump will reportedly oppose a US law that could lead to popular social media app TikTok being banned, despite bipartisan support for the measure.

• Wisconsin Republican Eric Hovde refused to concede defeat on Tuesday to Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin in their US Senate race, saying he was “deeply concerned” about the election results but that seeking a recount was a “serious” decision and he was still reviewing his options, the Associated Press reports.

• The judge who presided over Donald Trump’s hush money case has paused legal proceedings at the request of prosecutors and the president-elect’s attorneys, both of whom pointed to his victory in last week’s presidential election.

• Samuel Alito, a long-serving conservative justice on the supreme court, has no plans to step down, the Wall Street Journal reported. If he changes his mind, Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate could confirm a replacement and likely prolong the court’s conservative supermajority.

As we reported earlier, Donald Trump has selected South Dakota Gover Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security, one of the biggest government agencies that will be integral to his vow to secure the border and carry out a massive deportation operation.

The 52-year-old was born in Watertown, South Dakota, and raised on a ranch and farm outside the city. Her father died in a grain-bin collapse at the age of 49.

She was involved in a number of family businesses before successfully running for the South Dakota House of Representatives in 2006. In 2010, she won the state’s at-large House seat, and in 2018, she was elected the state’s first female governor. She was reelected in 2022.

After becoming governor, Noem started working closely with Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager. Then, during the pandemic, she rose to prominence in conservative circles for resisting most government regulations to slow the spread of infections. She has since become a regular presence in Trump’s political world and at one point was considered to be his running mate.

She was criticised this year for a story she told in her book about killing her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer named Cricket.

Noem has been a key Trump supporter, including backing his tough immigration talk.

“President Trump will deport the most dangerous illegal aliens first – the murderers, rapists, and other criminals that Harris and Biden let into the country. They do not belong here, and we will not let them back in,” Noem said in a post on X after Trump was elected.

Donald Trump, president-elect of the US, announced on Tuesday that he has selected Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, with plans to reduce bureaucracy in the federal government by roughly a third.

Musk had pushed for a government efficiency department and has since relentlessly promoted it, emphasizing the acronym for the agency: Doge, a reference to a meme of an expressive Shiba Inu. Trump said the agency will be conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.

In a video posted on X two days after the election, Trump said he would “immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order, restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats”. He wants to “clean out the deep state”. His promises echo his slogan on The Apprentice: “You’re fired!” And Project 2025, an influential and controversial blueprint for Trump’s second term, lays out ways to make bureaucrats fireable.

Musk has extensive experience slashing corporate spending, and he has promised to cull federal payrolls in much the same way. He cut staff at X, formerly Twitter, by 80% after buying it in 2022, a move he said prevented a $3bn shortfall, but which has not otherwise paid off. Revenue is in steep decline and advertisers have absconded, making a comeback seem unlikely. As the CEO of SpaceX, however, he has garnered a reputation for launching rockets more cheaply than competitors by negotiating with suppliers and keeping operations lean.

The billionaire does not seem to be under any illusions of what will happen after his proposed cuts, admitting that reducing spending “necessarily involves some temporary hardship”. Americans do want to spend less – of their own money. Do they want austerity and less financial assistance from the federal government? Do they want the world’s richest person admonishing them to cut their expenses?

Karen Middleton

A senior adviser to US president-elect Donald Trump has fuelled speculation about the future of Australia’s ambassador to Washington, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, by reposting Rudd’s congratulatory statement to Trump on social media with a gif of an hourglass.

The provocative time-is-running-out post by former Trump deputy chief of staff for communications Dan Scavino reignited suggestions that the incoming president may prefer another Australian representative in Washington when he takes office in January.

Scavino spoke at Trump’s now-infamous Madison Square Garden rally in New York ahead of the election and was billed as a “senior adviser”.

A new video emerged earlier this week of Rudd in an interview in 2021 describing Trump as “a village idiot” and “not a leading intellectual force”. Rudd last week – following the US election – deleted old social media posts criticising Trump.

It’s not clear how the new efficiency department will operate. The Associated Press reports that it could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public.

Federal employees are generally required to disclose their assets and entanglements to ward off any potential conflicts of interest, and to divest significant holdings relating to their work. Because Musk and Ramaswamy would not be formal federal workers, they would not face those requirements or ethical limitations.

The president-elect has often said he would give Musk a formal role overseeing a group akin to a blue-ribbon commission that would recommend ways to slash spending and make the federal government more efficient. Musk at one point suggested he could find more than $2tn in savings – nearly a third of total annual government spending.

Trump had made clear that Musk would likely not hold any kind of full-time position, given his other commitments.

“I don’t think I can get him full-time because he’s a little bit busy sending rockets up and all the things he does,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan in September.

“He said the waste in this country is crazy. And we’re going to get Elon Musk to be our cost cutter.”

Ramaswamy suspended his campaign in January and threw his support behind Trump.

Here is what we know about the new Department of Government Efficiency, and the two men Trump has chosen to lead it:

Trump said on Tuesday Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency.

Musk and Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement.

• Trump said their work would conclude by 4 July 2026, adding that a smaller and more efficient government would be a “gift” to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

• The appointments reward two Trump supporters from the private sector. Musk leads electric car company Tesla, social media platform X and rocket company SpaceX, while Ramaswamy is the founder of a pharmaceutical company who ran for the Republican presidential nomination against Trump and then threw his support behind the former president after dropping out.

• Musk gave millions of dollars to support Trump’s presidential campaign and made public appearances with him. Trump had said he would offer Musk, the world’s richest person, a role in his administration promoting government efficiency.

• The acronym of the new department – DOGE – coincides with the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin that Musk promotes, and the internet meme after which the cryptocurrency is named.

• “This will send shock waves through the system, and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people!” Musk said, according to Trump’s statement, which called the new government initiative “potentially ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” referring to the US plan to build the atomic bomb that helped end the second world war.

John Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence (DNI) for the final months of Trump’s first term, leading the US government’s spy agencies during the coronavirus pandemic.

His position as DNI also made him responsible for detecting and countering foreign efforts to interfere in American politics. That experience makes him a more traditional pick for the job, which requires Senate confirmation, than some rumored loyalists pushed by some of Trump’s supporters.

As DNI, Ratcliffe participated in an unusual night-time news conference just weeks before the 2020 presidential election in which he and other officials accused Iran of being responsible for a barrage of emails meant to intimidate voters in the US.

Also while in that role, Ratcliffe faced criticism for declassifying Russian intelligence that purported to reveal information about Democrats during the 2016 election even as he acknowledged it might not be true. Democrats decried the move as a partisan stunt that politicized intelligence.

Ratcliffe was elected to Congress in 2014, but his visibility rose in 2019 as an ardent defender of Trump during the House’s first impeachment proceedings against him.

He was a member of Trump’s impeachment advisory team and strenuously questioned witnesses during the impeachment hearings.

When former special counsel Robert Mueller appeared before the House judiciary ommittee to testify about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Ratcliffe was one of the more ardent Republican interrogators, forcefully questioning the prosecutor and blasting the report he produced.

Ratcliffe has repeatedly sounded the alarm about China, calling the country the top threat to US interests and the rest of the free world.

More now on Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host Trump has just announced as his nominee for secretary of defense, via the Associated Press:

Trump’s selection of Hegseth, who lacks senior military or national security experience, was sure to draw questions about his qualifications to lead the department.

Hegseth, 44, is a co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend” and has been a contributor with the network since 2014, where he developed a friendship with Trump, who made regular appearances on the show.

If confirmed by the Senate, he would inherit the top job during a series of global crises — ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the ongoing attacks in the Middle East by Iranian proxies to the push for a cease-fire between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah and escalating worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea.

Hegseth is also the author of “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” published earlier this year.

The book, according to its promo, combines “his own war experiences, tales of outrage, and an incisive look at how the chain of command got so kinked,” and bills itself as “the key to saving our warriors — and winning future wars.”

While the Pentagon is considered a key coveted post in any administration, the defense secretary was a tumultuous post during Trump’s first term. Five men held the job during his four years only to resign, be fired or serve briefly as a stopgap. Just two of them were actually confirmed by the Senate.

Trump’s relationship with his civilian and military leaders during those years was fraught with tension, confusion and frustration, as they struggled to temper or even simply interpret presidential tweets and pronouncements that blindsided them with abrupt policy decisions they weren’t prepared to explain or defend. Many of the generals who worked in his first administration — both on active duty and retired — have slammed him as unfit to serve in the Oval Office and he has condemned them in return.

Hegseth was an infantry captain in the Army National Guard and served overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was formerly head of the Concerned Veterans for America, a group backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, and he unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in Minnesota in 2012.

“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said in a statement. “Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy.”

Hegseth has “an excellent background as a junior officer but does not have the senior national security experience that secretaries need,” said Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think Trump was tired of fighting with his secretaries of defense and picked one who would be loyal to him.” Cancian said the lack of experience might make it more difficult for Hegseth to get through Senate confirmation.

Trump has confirmed that he has chosen South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, to serve as the next secretary of the homeland security department. The choice was widely reported yesterday, but not yet announced by Trump.

In his statement, Trump says:

I am pleased to announce that the Governor and former congresswoman from South Dakota, Kristi Noem, will be appointed to serve as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Kristi has been very strong on Border Security. She was the first Governor to send National Guard Soldiers to help Texas fight the Biden Border Crisis, and they were sent a total of eight times.

She will work closely with “Border Czar” Tom Homan to secure the Border, and will guarantee that our American Homeland is secure from our adversaries. I have known Kristi for years, and have worked with her on a wide variety of projects – She will be a great part of our mission to Make America Safe Again.