Did Elon Musk Hint That Several Government Departments May Get the Axe?

This week we learned that the Trump administration is drafting an executive order aimed at abolishing the Department of Education.

Since future administrations can easily overturn executive orders, Trump’s order would strategically weaken the department while reinforcing the need for congressional action to abolish it entirely.

Why do we even have a Department of Education in the first place? As Reason Magazine noted a few years ago, the Department of Education wasn’t so much created to make education better, but actually as a political favor to the National Education Association (NEA), which had backed Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign after he promised to establish the agency.

NEA executive director Terry Herndon openly admitted, “There’d be no department without the NEA.” By the time the bill narrowly passed, Carter’s approval rating had tanked below 30% due to economic and energy crises, which made the department more of a political maneuver to boost his reelection campaign than anything else. Thankfully, it didn’t work.

Decades later, U.S. education has only declined, with the nation falling behind others in quality and outcomes. But the Department of Education may not be the only government department that could get the axe under Trump.

On Wednesday afternoon, Elon Musk, the man in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) tweeted a 25-year-old video featuring the late Milton Friedman. In the video, the Nobel Prize-winning economist advocated for eliminating most federal government departments, keeping only those essential for national defense, law enforcement, and basic governance.

Which departments did Friedman support abolishing? He supported giving the axe to the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy (except its military functions), Health and Human Services (except for some public health roles), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Interior, Labor, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs.

He argued that HUD had done “an enormous amount of harm” by destroying more housing than it created and supported selling public housing units to residents for a nominal fee, shifting the ownership to the people who live there.

Regarding the vast land holdings of the Department of the Interior, he insisted, “There’s no reason for government to own” so much land, advocating for selling it off, save for the land upon which government buildings sit.

Friedman supported keeping the Departments of Defense, Justice, State, and Treasury (for tax collection). On Veterans Affairs, he suggested eliminating it by paying lump sums to veterans instead.

Summing up his philosophy, Friedman stated that the government’s “fundamental functions” are to “preserve the peace, defend the country, provide a mechanism whereby individuals can adjudicate their disputes, and protect individuals from being coerced by others.”

In the post sharing the video, Musk wrote “wise words.”