Demolishing the Leviathan: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's DOGE Plan To Revolutionize Government

The United States was founded on a basic idea: The people we elect run the government. Operating in direct conflict with this simple idea, most legal edicts—from those regulating gas stove emissions to rules allocating affirmative action benefits to policies controlling solar panel production—are enacted by a vast array of unelected bureaucrats driven by elite beliefs coupled with their unrestrained disdain for working-class Americans.

Millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies view themselves as immune from firing because of civil service protections. At the same time, over 70 percent of these bureaucrats continue to work from home most weeks long after the COVID-19 panic was engineered by unelected bureaucrats at the CDC and long after private-sector workers returned to the office.

Adequately appreciated, America’s civil servants view themselves as immune from accountability and often immune from productive work, insisting that American taxpayers incur the direct and indirect costs associated with compliance with arbitrary and capricious rules that diminish American productivity.

For the first time in decades, American citizens can regain control of its voracious bureaucracy. This administrative state has burdened Americans from Maine to California for decades. Turning the page on Deep State bureaucrats will allow Americans to be unburdened by what has been the norm for decades. Two events make this thermonuclear earthquake possible.

First, the voters delivered a sweeping mandate to Donald Trump on November 5, 2024. This election revealed that the voters no longer wish to be viewed as children by federal authorities. Nor do they wish to be subject to capricious federal preferences enacted by bureaucrats.

Second, the Supreme Court recently issued two momentous decisions that put America’s elected representatives back in charge. In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the Supreme Court said that federal agencies cannot impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so. This decision limits the discretionary power of bureaucrats and vests lawmaking power in the people’s elected representatives. Justice Gorsuch emphasizes this point by stating that the Constitution “placed its trust not in the hands of the few.”

In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the Court overturned the Chevron doctrine, which previously required judicial deference to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law. When the American Center for Law and Justice filed its amicus brief in Raimondo, we argued in favor of the proposition that the Court must rein in the seemingly limitless power of the Deep State. We also argued that the federal bureaucracy should not have the power to create federal law when Congress has not specifically addressed this issue. These two decisions, taken together, began freeing the American people from unelected bureaucrats’ oppressive and often arbitrary power.

Against this backdrop, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been nominated to head the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). They have been authorized to shrink the federal government’s size substantially.  This means that the entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy, which has always represented an existential threat to our republic, the Constitution, and the lives of thousands of children who have been sex-trafficked into the United States pursuant to arbitrary administrative fiat that is contrary to the Constitution, can be eradicated.

As the new heads of DOGE outlined in the Wall Street Journal:

DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission.

Eliminating federal rules will spawn a shrill outcry from hyperbolic commentators who prefer to be ruled by unelected bureaucrats. However, the American people should reject this hue and cry in favor of returning power to the people. Such a move could eliminate more than $500 billion in annual expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress, eradicate nearly $300 million sent to far-Left groups like Planned Parenthood, and defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is often populated by Left-wing loons.

It is time to return power to the people. DOGE is an essential first step. Join the ACLJ and DOGE in their fight to advance government efficiency. Now, more than ever, it is time to eradicate the leviathan that haunts the lives and future of all Americans.