LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:
This week will mark 100 days of billionaire Elon Musk working inside the federal government. While Musk's focus has been on cutting costs through the ad hoc Department of Government Efficiency team, his critics say he's also using his proximity to President Trump to help his own businesses. To help us break this down, we're joined by NPR tech correspondent Bobby Allyn. Good morning.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: Good morning.
FRAYER: So, Bobby, Elon Musk has been working in the White House for almost 100 days. What has he accomplished?
ALLYN: Yeah, well, he's become the leader of President Trump's mission to cut government waste. When DOGE launched, Musk was promising to slash somewhere in the ballpark of $1 trillion from the federal budget, and so far, by its own accounting, it has saved only 160 billion. Now, I say only, but that is still a lot of money. But as my colleagues have reported, that figure appears to be quite inflated and riddled with accounting errors, so the exact amount of money saved is something of a moving target.
But whatever the number is, Musk has been pushing hard to cancel contracts, lay off thousands of workers and help dismantle entire agencies. Recently, Musk did say he'll soon be stepping back from his DOGE duties to focus on Tesla, which has seen a global sales drop. Here's Musk on a recent Tesla earnings call.
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ELON MUSK: I think I'll continue to spend, you know, a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it is useful.
FRAYER: OK. So he's stepping back there. But since Musk has already aligned himself with President Trump, there have been questions about whether the administration would favor Musk's companies. And have we seen that so far?
ALLYN: Yeah. The White House has taken a number of big steps that will benefit Musk's business empire. For instance, the Commerce Department announced shaking up the requirements for this big federal broadband program that will basically open up billions of dollars in subsidies to Musk's Starlink satellite service. Musk's SpaceX may help build Trump's Golden Dome missile defense shield. The President turned the White House lawn into an infomercial for Tesla.
On top of all of this, investigations into Musk's companies appear to have slowed or have been completely sidelined by the layoff of federal workers or the closure of agencies. In sum, there's just been a fair amount of high-level policy moves that are benefiting Musk's corporations.
But the Trump administration says, look, we're chopping red tape for all businesses. That's the aim, not just providing handouts to Musk companies. But Musk does have one big priority, and it's clearing the way for his autonomous taxi service he's calling Cybercab. Right now, those hurdles are mostly on the state level, but Musk says he's going to push hard for there to be a centralized federal authority to approve autonomous vehicles. Transportation experts say this is a pipe dream, but Musk is insisting on it.
FRAYER: So Musk is saying he's taking a step back from this government role next month. So then where does that leave the future of DOGE?
ALLYN: Yeah, well, DOGE appears to be entering another phase. The first phase we all know by now, right? Packs of young DOGE staffers showed up to agencies in Washington and set up shop and gained access to all sorts of supersensitive data systems. The second phase, which we're entering now, is focused on harnessing that data. Now, to what end? That is the question.
Some of the data is being used to find immigrants in the U.S. without legal status and supercharging Trump's goal of speeding up mass deportations. Really sensitive IRS data is also being analyzed and entered into a master database. And again, it's just unclear right now what it's going to be used for, but it definitely has privacy experts quite concerned.
FRAYER: That's NPR's Bobby Allyn. Thanks, Bobby.
ALLYN: Thanks, Lauren.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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