President Donald Trump has tapped Musk, the world’s richest man, to tackle internal workings of the world’s oldest democracy, and to this point the outcomes are beautiful, if not alarming and illegal, being challenged in dozens of courtroom instances nationwide.
Congress is proving little match for DOGE as cautious lawmakers watch it march by way of the forms. As an alternative, a rush of lawsuits is demanding interventions to cease the Republican president’s group from unilaterally gutting authorities. And protests are erupting outdoors authorities companies and clogging the congressional telephone strains.
“Whatever DOGE is doing, it is certainly not — not — what democracy looks like or has ever looked like in the grand history of this country,” Senate Democratic chief Chuck Schumer mentioned.
“An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government,” Schumer posted on Musk’s social media website X.
Musk responded on his platform: “Hysterical reactions like this is how you know that DOGE is doing work that really matters.”
Congress has been right here earlier than, examined throughout Trump’s first time period by his willingness to interrupt the norms and skirt the outer banks of legality, most notably when he steamrolled Congress and poached federal navy housing and building funds to construct components of his promised wall alongside the U.S.-Mexico border.
However Trump’s second-term partnership with Musk, who spent some $200 million on Trump’s White Home bid and employs the tech world ethos of transferring quick and breaking issues, is escalating the confrontation. On a acknowledged quest to save cash by rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, they’re making strikes to upend American establishments, decimate the civil service and depart a reformed — or hollowed-out — federal authorities instead.
Sharon Parrott, president of the Middle on Funds and Coverage Priorities, mentioned it will be “catastrophic to our system of government” if the trouble succeeds.
“Many of the things they are doing are brazenly unlawful, and we’ve seen that the courts have been willing to intervene — and intervene quickly,” Parrott mentioned. “There’s a real readiness and understanding of the stakes.”
In some ways, Trump is pursuing by power what Republicans have lengthy promised however have been unable to ship by congressional motion: shrinking the scale and scope of the federal authorities. Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist quipped greater than a decade in the past in regards to the aim of creating authorities sufficiently small to drown in a tub.
However dealing with pushback from inside their ranks about reducing applications People rely on, Republicans have repeatedly failed to perform their budget-slashing targets even once they absolutely management Congress and the White Home, as they do now.
Whereas Congress has the facility to cross laws to fund authorities operations, the president can veto payments or signal them into regulation. As an alternative, Trump is testing an concept championed by his nominee for funds director, Russ Vought, that the chief has the flexibility to “impound” federal funds, clawing the cash again.
Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota mentioned DOGE gives “cover” for some Republicans who wish to lower federal funds, when Congress has failed to take action.
And different Republicans say they’re comfy with Trump’s pause of sure federal operations, significantly the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth, which sends help all over the world. Closing the Division of Training is subsequent on deck.
“We’ve got oversight,” mentioned Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. “If he goes too far, I’ll be the first person to step up.”
Taken collectively the actions of the administration and DOGE have been swift, relentless and extensive open to debate.
Trump’s Workplace of Administration and Funds’s transfer to abruptly freeze federal grants and loans drew outrage nationwide as states and nonprofit organizations feared being locked out of funds they should present housing, well being care and different companies. A day later, the White Home reversed course.
The shutdown of funds to USAID is essentially seen as a take a look at case for the Impoundment Management Act, which Vought has mentioned utilizing as a method to roll again congressionally accepted funding. Vought’s nomination is on observe for Senate affirmation this week, regardless of all Senate Democrats saying they may oppose him.
And DOGE dipped into the inner-workings of the Treasury Division to entry its cost system — and the non-public data of thousands and thousands of People — in what’s extensively seen as a manner for the White Home to finally cease federal funds to numerous entities.
On Monday, U.S. District Choose Loren L. AliKhan mentioned the administration’s actions with the federal funding “potentially run roughshod over a ‘bulwark of the Constitution’ by interfering with Congress’s appropriation of federal funds.”
“Defendants’ actions appear to suffer from infirmities of a constitutional magnitude,” she wrote, extending an order issued final week that had paused OMB’s sweeping funding freeze. “The appropriation of the government’s resources is reserved for Congress, not the Executive Branch. And a wealth of legal authority supports this fundamental separation of powers.”
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the highest Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, mentioned what provides her pause now’s how Congress strikes ahead with laws to fund the federal government by the upcoming March 14 deadline.
“What if we do all that and come to an agreement … vote it in — and this administration says, ‘That’s bunk. We don’t have to go by that,’” she mentioned. “So the level of trust is at the lowest I have ever seen it here.”
Requested if the administration might do what it’s doing, Johnson, the speaker, insisted, “There will be an appropriate action for Congress to take, but we haven’t yet sorted out what’s happening with it.”
Pressed if Trump had the authority to close companies, he mentioned: “I don’t have all the answers.”