Musk’s Top DOGE Staffer at VA Worked Quietly Before Its Layoffs

Justin Fulcher, co-founder of telemedicine startup RingMD, is leading Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

Seen working from the agency’s 10th floor ahead of Thursday evening’s announcement that it was laying off more than 1,000 employees, Fulcher, 32, has taken a relatively quiet approach compared with other DOGE staffers, many of whom are young men who barged into various federal agencies demanding access to sensitive data. Fulcher has been mainly interviewing staff about how the agency could be improved and reviewing programs that might be cut, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal conversations. 

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration last month, the department, which provides health care to veterans across the country, has undergone similar changes to other federal agencies: the termination of diversity, equity and inclusion programming, a hiring freeze and a mandate for workers to return to physical offices. Of the VA’s more than 479,000 employees, about 20% had remote work options, according to the agency. 

The VA confirmed last week it was working with DOGE and emphasized that data on veterans’ medical history and benefits wasn’t being shared with the newly created arm of Trump’s administration. 

The protocol liaison officer at the VA posted on LinkedIn last week, naming Fulcher as one of “six new leaders” at the department. According to the people familiar, department staffers are being told that Fulcher is there as a DOGE representative. Some team members of Musk’s squad are being hired directly to the agencies at which they’re working to cut spending, according to a filing Thursday in regards to the Education Department.

The protocol liaison officer did not answer requests for more information on the new appointees. An agency spokesperson, Fulcher and RingMD also didn’t reply to requests for comment.

Before joining Musk’s efficiency squad, Fulcher was a serial founder, starting three companies from 2005 to 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2017, Forbes Asia named him to their 30 under 30 list for RingMD, which was based in Singapore with offices across Southeast Asia at the time. RingMD’s US arm is based in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Like many of Musk’s DOGE staffers, Fulcher is a coder, according to the Forbes list. His personal website says he started the Palmetto Initiative in 2023 with the goal of improving South Carolina’s digital infrastructure. 

“We aim to introduce programming in all public schools, help implement technical workforce development programs, and improve South Carolina’s digital infrastructure,” he wrote in a blog post. 

Additional information about the Palmetto Initiative, which its website says it a nonprofit, couldn’t be found when searching Internal Revenue Service records for its name and employer identification number.

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