As I write this, Republican Senator Mike Lee is calling for Ron Paul to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk thinks this is an “amazing” idea. Musk has even shared Paul’s content regularly with his over 217 million X followers.
Paul, the former Republican congressman, presidential candidate and most famous libertarian icon of the last half century, has long called for abolishing the Federal Reserve, blaming the institution for manipulating the currency, devaluing the dollar and causing inflation.
“End the Fed” has been a longstanding libertarian populist cry, which means it’s probably not going to happen. But within the context of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, it is definitely closer to potentially happening than at any point in modern American political history. If it did, it would be arguably the most drastic blow to central planning in the United States, ever.
Back in November, I made my “Libertarian Case for MAGA” here at Fusion, in which I noted that despite the new crop of national conservatives, who for the last few years have seen Trump’s Republican Party as a playground for their big government, pro-state and anti-liberal ideas, there also appeared to be just as many opportunities for libertarians in the MAGA coalition.
This was an aspect of the Trump movement that NatCons ignored, forever bashing classical liberals as the enemy or just old hat. For them, there would be no more talk of limited or constitutional government, but a rightwing New Deal would be dandy. If the Federal Reserve was at the heart of what so many libertarians believed corrupted our system, it was a subject national conservatives rarely brought up.
For libertarians, government is the problem. For NatCons, government is the solution – the only problem is who runs it.
This is the same position Democrats hold, that USAID, the Department of Education and the broad federal bureaucracy – all of which Musk and DOGE are currently investigating with the delicacy of a battering ram – are sacrosanct. The problem for Democrats, and NatCon-adjacent voices like Sohrab Ahmari, is that Trump, Musk, and the president’s administration now threaten the vast labyrinth of federal agencies. Like Dems, NatCons appear to love the state. Creating and protecting existing bureaucracy is their point. Some even love the Deep State.
Fortunately, for libertarians and the country, Team Trump doesn’t. Inside of a month, DOGE has taken a hatchet to US foreign aid through the USAID agency, calling it “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.” This was something libertarians of any era would have considered a pipe dream.
Ron Paul himself described what Musk was doing this way: “DOGE is ripping through the federal government like a tornado. This morning it has been reported that DOGE sent out firing notices to 9,400 USAID employees, leaving only 611.” “Democratic politicians are furious, of course,” Paul noted. “But we hope, that when it’s all said and done, ALL politicians, Democrat AND Republican, are furious with DOGE. “Then we will know that it was a job well done for the American people.”
Paul’s observation could be prescient. There are certainly still plenty of neoconservative Republicans that would not be happy about the president siccing DOGE on the Pentagon.
That said, with the Department of Education reportedly next on the chopping block, Trump told Fox News in an interview before the Super Bowl, that Musk, “will be looking at education pretty quickly and he will be looking at military, too.”
Auditing the Pentagon? Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said he “welcomes” DOGE at the Pentagon, where he would like to see a full and clean audit.” Trump got 77 million votes in a mandate from the American people, and part of that is bringing actual businesslike efficiency to government.” Hegseth said in mid-February.
“As I said on social media, we welcome DOGE to the Pentagon,” Hegseth said. “And I hope to welcome Elon to the Pentagon very soon. And his team, working in collaboration with us.” In December, the Pentagon failed its seventh general audit in a row.
Libertarian Republican Sen. Rand Paul has long said that if his party ever became serious about cutting spending, the Pentagon is where they should start. It looks like Musk might be about to start.
Trump’s major appointees, in addition to Hegseth at Defense, like Robert F. Kennedy (a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party) at Health and Human Services and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, all bring a reform minded approach to their respective positions, similar to Musk’s brand new post at DOGE.
That seems to be the reason Trump chose them. To reform and fix a broken system. Not to hide it from sunlight and perpetually ignore all its faults. Certainly not to grow it. In fact, Musk is promising to cut the national deficit in half, and Trump says he will reduce the military budget specifically by 50 percent, which caused defense stocks to drop recently.
What a pity.
On immigration and border security, NatCons and many libertarians will find agreement on Trump’s policies, while other libertarians won’t. Obviously, Trump is no open borders advocate, but even among more Ron Paul or Murray Rothbard-type libertarians, who have never been for open borders, there could be concerns about increased surveillance and abuses to due process that could come with mass deportations.
NatCons will like the president’s tariff threats more than libertarians, which to date, haven’t been much more than that, threats. Still, as Sen. Rand Paul has noted in various ways when Trump brings up the subject, “Tariffs are simply taxes. Conservatives once united against new taxes. Taxing trade will mean less trade and higher prices.”
On Ukraine-Russia, NatCons and libertarians already both like Trump’s early negotiating for a diplomatic peace, and on Israel-Palestine, the ceasefire was laudable but maybe the president’s stated plan to nation-build in Gaza isn’t the best idea, to say the least.
The libertarian-friendly executive orders Trump is issuing also aren’t the ideal way to do any of this, given that the next Democratic administration could rescind them all. Congress should be making these decisions.
But it is still better for a president to be giving these types of executive orders than not. And what conventional Republican president or any Democrat was ever going to do so? Few to none. By and large, particularly domestically, and even more particularly on spending and limiting government, so far, you couldn’t have asked for a more libertarian administration this side of President Ron Paul.
And we’re still rolling. Last week, the New York Post reported, “President Trump is set to sign an order Tuesday instructing the Department of Government Efficiency to potentially toss entire federal agencies — and hire only one federal worker to replace every four who leave.” He was mandating that all federal agencies work with DOGE. “DOGE will ask agency heads to coordinate with the team being lead by Elon Musk and ‘shrink the size of the federal workforce and limit hiring to essential positions,” the Post noted.
As the president signed this executive order in the Oval Office, Elon Musk was standing by his side. Who knows what else positive might happen by the time this is published?
Sohrab Ahmari recently complained that the Trump administration was cutting government too much and too fast.“An eccentric billionaire cutting Grandma’s Social Security: that’s the 2026 and 2028 electoral kill shot Democrats are rubbing their hands for,” he wrote on X. “El*n threatens Trump and his political legacy.”
No one is trying to cut anyone’s Social Security, despite what Ahmari and Democrats are claiming.
But Reason’s Senior Editor Robby Soave couldn’t help but get in a dig, sharing Ahmari’s post, writing, “Donald Trump and Elon Musk have swiftly and rightly relegated the big government progressives (who for some reason have been disguising themselves as America First populist conservatives) to the fringes.” “It’s wonderful,” the libertarian concluded. I share Robby’s glee and even in his gloating.
For the last few years, at their conferences, in their speeches and on their social media, the loosely-knit group that have called themselves national conservatives have mocked, derided and declared dead, those of us who still identified with the fusionist tradition that has long been the heart of modern American conservatism.
But it turns out, after having a first term where the president has said he was learning on the job, followed by four years out of office, seemingly giving him time to better think through how he would govern again if given the opportunity, Trump has clearly chosen a more libertarian domestic governance path than a bigger and bolder rightwing statism.
Free marketeer and self-described libertarian, President Ronald Reagan, vowed to abolish the Department of Education. Donald Trump might be the president to actually do it.
A lot can change over four years and unquestionably will, but if the radical reformation of the federal government is to happen, so far many of those changes have been more pleasing to Ron Paul than Steve Bannon.
How radical could Donald Trump get? Who knows. But his presidency has already shown that he has the liberty, for liberty, to do so.
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