It’s safe to say that DOGE and Elon Musk are dominating much of the discussion in official Washington right now.
The sheer scale of the effort, combined with the fact that neither the White House nor DOGE is signaling to anyone what its goals or its next targets are, is keeping Democrats off balance and everyone else in D.C. on edge.
And there’s the harsh ideological component to the DOGE effort with the Trump administration. Musk and DOGE are ending DEI programs across the federal government but also employee civil rights initiatives while claiming big budget savings for having done so.
Over the weekend, the U.S. DOGE Service was seeking access to personal taxpayer data at the IRS, a hugely controversial move. This comes after legal challenges were filed to challenge efforts by Musk and DOGE officials to gain access to sensitive Treasury Department payment systems. DOGE is also at the Pentagon now, which will be closely watched by the Hill and the defense industry as a whole.
The scale of DOGE-related layoffs and firings at federal agencies is stunning, running into the tens of thousands of government employees. There are more than 200,000 probationary workers across federal agencies, many if not all of whom will be laid off. This includes 15,000 probationary employees at the IRS, 1,000 more at the VA, 3,400 at the Forest Service and 5,000-plus at the NIH and CDC, among others. Hundreds of FAA employees are being terminated, despite multiple deadly airplane crashes recently.
But the Trump administration had to stop the firing of up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which helps oversee the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
The haphazard, sometimes chaotic process has stunned lawmakers. A number of GOP senators in particular have complained about the scale or depth of some of the DOGE-related cuts, including Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John Curtis (Utah), Katie Britt (Ala.) and Bill Cassidy (La.).
These Republicans have been careful to make clear that they’re not defending wasteful government spending or criticizing President Donald Trump or Musk. They are warning, though, that some of this may have gone too far, too fast, possibly even hurting their home states in the process.
The DOGE initiative is claiming huge cost savings or funds “recovered” or clawed back.
For instance, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, a former House member and GOP gubernatorial candidate in New York, has vowed to claw back $20 billion in “gold bars” — grants awarded to clean energy and environmental projects by EPA in the closing months of the Biden administration. The program was part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats pushed through on a party-line vote.
DOGE also reported that “$1.9 billion of HUD money was just recovered after being misplaced during the Biden administration due to a broken process.” New HUD Secretary Scott Turner has set up a DOGE task force at his agency that has identified more than $260 million in cost savings.
But there’s widespread confusion on Capitol Hill and among government contractors over Musk and DOGE’s ultimate goals or how reshaped agencies or departments will function after downsizing. These changes have left many lawmakers baffled about how to oversee and fund the newly revamped departments, as well as who or what programs are left.
USAID — long criticized by Trump and other Republicans — has essentially been folded into the State Department, with thousands of employees laid off and hundreds of programs canceled.
Pete Marocco, a Trump ally appointed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to oversee this process, held a call last week with congressional aides and NGOs to brief them on the future of the State Dept.-run aid programs. Sources familiar with the briefing said Marocco didn’t provide them with much information or give a timetable for when it would be available.
For his part, Rubio already has numerous crises on his hands to deal with, including trying to help negotiate a Russia-Ukraine peace deal, Israel and Gaza, and the future of U.S. immigration policy.
