WSJ What’s News - How Musk and Ramaswamy Plan to Cut Trillions With DOGE

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

P.M. Edition for Dec. 5. WSJ White House reporter Ken Thomas talks about the ways Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have suggested trimming the federal government with the Department of Government Efficiency. And as the NYPD continues its search for the suspect in the shooting death of UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson, WSJ reporter Chip Cutter says corporate America is rethinking how it approaches security. Plus, a Texas federal judge has rejected Boeing’s guilty plea relating to two deadly crashes of its 737 MAX airplanes because of DEI requirements for an outside monitor. Tracie Hunte hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon Q Business is the generative AI assistant from AWS because business can be slow, like wading through mud. But Amazon Q helps streamline work, so tasks like summarizing monthly results can be done in no time. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for you at aws.com slash learn more. Police are searching for a person of interest in the shooting death of United Health Executive Brian Thompson. The murder has sent shockwaves across corporate boardrooms. A lot of executives, they've told us that they really have tried to travel without a

big security detail. And so that's one of the questions here is, are they willing to give up some of their privacy to have more people around them if it might keep them safer? And how Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy plan to cut two trillion dollars from the federal government. Plus, a judge rejects Boeing's guilty plea related to two deadly 737 Max crashes over the prosecutors diversity requirements for an outside monitor. It's Thursday, December 5th. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

The search for a man who shot and killed United Health Executive Brian Thompson is in its second day. The New York City Police Department today released new photos of a person of interest wanted for questioning in connection with the shooting. The photos show a man in a grey hood smiling and leaning against a counter. Police searched an Upper West Side hostel they believe is where the suspect was staying. Police also revealed today that the suspect used a sharpie to write words like, Defend on the bullets shot at Thompson. The NYPD hasn't publicly identified the man who ambushed the executive early Wednesday morning.

He shot Thompson, 50, in the back and leg, and fled the scene. The murder outside of an investor meeting at a midtown Manhattan Hilton has prompted an immediate reevaluation of longstanding security practices across corporate America. WSJ reporter Chip Cutter covers workplace management and leadership issues.

Chip, what has been the reaction from the corporate security industry? Well, there's been a real scramble to figure out how do we best protect executives now and do we need to rethink how we operate. So there was a meeting among dozens of security chiefs on Wednesday to talk about protocols, to talk about what happened here. We've seen a number of security consultants have told us that they've been getting calls from companies asking if they can send armed guards

to accompany executives to conferences in New York or other places this week. I talked to some CEOs who said that they were hearing from their heads of security saying, do you want some additional help? Do you want some additional security support this week? So right now there's a lot of questions about what needs to change. Does security need to go deeper inside organizations,

a couple layers farther down, that sort of thing. A lot of people were just shocked by what happened. Are security companies seeing this as a period of increased threats for executives? Yeah, many say they do see this as a more violent extreme time. And I think that's driven by a couple of factors. One is just sort of the political divide that exists in this country. There's a lot of frustration with big business and with executives. And so all of that can lead to more threats.

And so companies have actually been spending a little bit more on security. They've been concerned about what might happen, for example, if their executives speak out on topics ranging from diversity and inclusion topics to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. All of that, companies say they've seen, they've seen threats pick up when their executives speak out. That's one reason why a lot of these security advisors say they're seeing an uptick in calls and work. That was our reporter Chip Cutter. reporter Chip Cutter. There's fresh uncertainty in Boeing's years-long legal battle against the Justice Department over two deadly crashes of the company's 737 MAX planes. A federal judge in Texas rejected Boeing's guilty plea because of the diversity requirements on an outside monitor who would

oversee Boeing's future legal compliance. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. Boeing didn't immediately comment. Families of the crash victims had asked the judge to reject the deal, saying it was too lenient on Boeing. In US markets, all three major indexes were down. The Dow lost about half a percent, and the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were down about 0.2%. As we reported this morning, Bitcoin crossed the $100,000 mark for the first time. The world's largest digital currency has staged an extraordinary rally since election day, surging more than 40% in just four weeks and setting one record after another. It surged as high as

$103,853 after Trump picked Paul Atkins, a crypto-friendly former regulator to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. It's a striking reversal for Bitcoin, which was originally envisioned as a cypher-punk rebellion against the establishment. I'm joined now by Alexander Osipovich, who covers cryptocurrencies for the Wall Street Journal. Alex, Bitcoin and the crypto industry are now mainstream. How did that happen? Over the years, there's been kind of a groundswell of investor interest in Bitcoin coming from sort of the margins of the financial establishment. Younger people, people who kind of associate themselves with hackers and libertarianism and gradually it's won over some chunks of the financial industry, and the problem for it

has always been resistance from governments and regulators. The big catalyst for this rally that we've seen that just sent Bitcoin north of $100,000 is the US presidential election. Donald Trump, who had previously been a Bitcoin skeptic, suddenly came out as a fan of crypto during the election campaign. After he won, Bitcoin shot higher. There was hope among a lot of people in the crypto industry that he would implement crypto-friendly policies

and drop some of the hostility toward crypto that we'd seen from the Biden administration and earlier administrations. Bitcoin does have a history of volatility, right? Bitcoin is tremendously volatile. For instance, in 2021, it reached as high as about $69,000. And then the next year, it took a major tumble and fell to around $16,000 after the collapse of FTX,

Sam Bankman Fried's crypto exchange. and fell to around $16,000 after the collapse of FTX, Sam Bankman Fried's crypto exchange. So if you're looking at Bitcoin right now, there's a lot of bulls arguing that it will keep on rising because of limited supply and Trump, but the history suggests that it might not last. That was our reporter, Alexander Osipovich. Coming up, how the Department of Government Efficiency plans to slash the federal government.

That's after the break. Your teen requested a ride, but this time, not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, began its work in earnest today. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy met with House

and Senate Republicans to discuss the incoming Trump administration's effort to cut federal spending and regulations. WSJ White House reporter Ken Thomas says Musk has said he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, but hasn't been specific yet on how he would do it or in what timeframe. It would be a very audacious goal. Would represent potentially 30% of the amount of money the federal government spent during the fiscal year that ended in September.

And any types of reductions in spending would need to be done through Congress. It would require them to make a number of politically challenging moves, touching potentially defense spending, reductions to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those are things that Trump has said he would not cut. The other area that you're going to see a lot of focus on is cutting regulations. Musk and Rameswamy wrote in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal last month that they

felt like these regulations are put forth by unelected bureaucrats. And they have cited two recent Supreme Court rulings that they believe could help quickly reduce some of these regulations and cut them in large parts. Our reporter says federal employees are also on their target list, including a proposal to end remote work. DOJ has said that they really want to try to shrink the federal workforce, more than two million federal employees. Many of them are civilians working in the

Defense Department. There is a thinking that they may be able to reduce the necessary staffs on some of these federal agencies, and that really just this approach might encourage many of these civil service workers to leave the federal government as well. So there are a number of issues on their to-do list. They are just starting to consult with members of Congress, and they want to get all of this accomplished by July of 2026. So it's a very ambitious set of goals that Rameswamy and Musk have laid out on this Doge effort.

Can says Musk and Rameswamy are also focused on the Biden administration's spending priorities like a $400 billion clean energy lending program and manufacturing grants aimed at reviving US trip production. You'll see a lot of scrutiny of the spending that we're seeing from the Biden administration for some of these clean energy projects and some of the semiconductor funding that was approved during Biden's administration. Musk and Rameswamy have been critical of a number of these clean energy programs, just saying that this is an attempt by the Biden administration to rush out money in the final months of the administration. There was one clean energy

loan that they approved to help EV startup Rivian Automotive to fund a plant in Georgia. And Rameswamy recently said on X that the loan appeared to be a, quote, political shot across the bow at Musk and Tesla. You're going to see a lot of scrutiny of some of the expenditures that we saw from the Biden administration in these final months. That was our reporter, Ken Thomas. The Syrian government says it is pulling its military forces from the city of Hama, a major strategic and symbolic prize. The move follows fierce fighting with rebels who launched a dramatic assault last week

where they seized large swaths of Syrian territory. The rebels said earlier today that they had entered the city. Capturing Hama would leave only one major city, Homs, in government hands on the road from the rebel-held northern Syria to its capital, Damascus. And the U.S. is the billionaire capital of the world. According to estimates from an annual UBS report, the combined wealth of U.S. billionaires has grown by about 28% since last year to $5.8 trillion. That was the greatest rate of increase in the world.

The fortunes of those 835 people account for about 40% of worldwide billionaire wealth. And that's what's news for this Thursday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienanme, Anthony Bansi and Alex Osola, with supervising producer Michael Cosmides. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.