CNN
—

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency during his second administration.

“Together, these two great Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle the government bureaucracy, eliminate redundant regulations, reduce wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies,” Trump said in a statement.

The announcement from Ramaswamy and especially Musk, who heads companies with existing, lucrative government contracts, raises immediate questions about potential conflicts of interest. And it is not immediately clear how the department, which Trump said would “provide advice and guidance from outside the government,” will operate.

Trump had proposed the creation of a government efficiency commission as part of a series of new economic plans he unveiled in early September. At the time, he said Musk had agreed to lead it if he wanted to secure a return to the White House.

Trump’s statement Tuesday night quoted Musk as saying that “this will send shockwaves through the system, and through everyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people!”

Ramaswamy separately responded to

Ramaswamy, who previously challenged Trump in the Republican presidential primary before endorsing him in January, made reducing wasteful government spending a key policy platform for his campaign.

Last year, Ramaswamy — who during the campaign had promised to take out the FBI, the Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would lay off thousands of federal workers in the process — released a white paper outlining a legal framework that he said would allow president to eliminate federal agencies of his choosing.

This is a developing story and will be updated.