R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Government Efficiency Office (DOGE) Caucus, said she speaks to billionaire Elon Musk, who lined up with Trump every few days.
“We go back and forth every few days,” she told Fox News Digital in an interview. “We'll send you some extra ideas that we came up with.”
According to Ernst, at a meeting at President Donald Trump's Mar Arago Real Estate in Florida in November, she gave Musk a “an eight-page memorandum blueprint with many cost-saving ideas.”
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Elon Musk and Joni Ernst remain connected in a doge. (Reuters/Getty Images)
“He's literally taking it and running it,” the Iowa Republican said.
She said that she simply sends new ideas directly to the mask and “I'll see the tweets in X right away.”
When asked if she thought she would work to audit Tesla and SpaceX billionaire CEOs and X owners and government, Ernst laughed, “It's never a million years.”
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Congress's Doge Caucus now has more than 100 members, Fox News Digital reported. (House/Getty)
Since Trump took office last month, Doge has taken swift action to audit agencies and departments within the administrative department, eradicating contracts, programs and spending that Trump and Musk consider unnecessary or useless.
The effort has been filled by Democrats with protests as lawmakers appeared outside demonstrations by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Treasury and the Department of Education. Some Democrats even tried to enter the building, but were prevented.
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Protesters descended into the building that once housed USAID. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Republicans are rooting for the initiative. Ernst, for example, told Fox News Digital that Doge's actions have been “extraordinary” up until now.
As for criticism of how Doge staff are auditing and how they can access it, Iowa Republicans argued that it is completely legal in her opinion. “It's an administrative agency, and they're scrutinizing the administrative agency, so of course it's legal,” she said.
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Joni Ernst is the chairman of the Doge Caucus. (Reuters)
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“There's nothing in the constitution that says the president can't scrutinize spending, especially when these dollars go to programs that members of Congress didn't expect,” among other initiatives, including diversity, equity, and more. and heading towards inclusion (DEI).
Fox News Digital reached out to Musk's Doge for comment.
