Tag: DOGE

Judge orders urgent release of DOGE records, citing ‘unprecedented’ power and ‘unusual secrecy’

Posted on by Lone Candle

“A federal judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is wielding so much power that its records will likely have to be opened to the public under federal law.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the vast and “unprecedented” authority of DOGE, formally known as the U.S. Digital Service, combined with its “unusual secrecy” warrant the urgent release of its internal documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

“The authority exercised by USDS across the federal government and the dramatic cuts it has apparently made with no congressional input appear to be unprecedented,” Cooper wrote in a 37-page opinion.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/10/judge-orders-doge-record-release-00223151

DOGE Goes Deep State

Posted on by Lone Candle

MAGA Republicans ranted and raved about a deep state they mostly imagined, and then created a real one…

“at the same time that he’s focused on dismantling the deep state, Trump seems to have built his own undemocratic, unaccountable executive apparatus.
How else should we view the incident that The Washington Post reported on last week involving Elon Musk, the unofficial head of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and Secretary of State Marco Rubio?

As DOGE was slashing its way through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Rubio issued a waiver ensuring that “existing life-saving humanitarian assistance programs” should continue, despite the announced shutdown of USAID. “Several times, USAID managers prepared packages of these payments and got the agency’s interim leaders to sign off on them with support from the White House,” the Post reported. “But each time, using their new gatekeeping powers and clearly acting on orders from Musk or one of his lieutenants, [Luke] Farritor and [Gavin] Kliger would veto the payments—a process that required them to manually check boxes in the payment system one at a time, the same tedious way you probably pay your bills online.”

As a result, USAID clinics that were supposed to be protected by Rubio’s order were shuttered.

That is an almost perfect illustration of how conservatives used to believe the deep state operated—with unelected, unofficial back-channel operatives overruling the plainly stated instructions of those who are nominally in power.”

…

“this should be worrying to anyone who takes seriously the threat of the deep state or values the rule of law.

Whatever your views of Musk and Rubio as individuals, it simply cannot be that the Senate-confirmed secretary of state is having his decisions overruled by a man (or his lieutenants) who still lacks any official place in the White House’s organizational chart and who runs a rebranded version of the U.S. Digital Service, an agency meant to streamline the executive branch’s digital outreach efforts that has no statutory authority to make spending decisions.”

…

“while the situation with USAID and Rubio is the most high-profile, it is not the only example of DOGE and Musk operating like the very deep state Republicans used to criticize.”

…

“Overruling the decisions made by legally appointed officials. Dodging transparency. Refusing to identify who is running the show. Are Musk and the DOGE just the deep state by a different name?”

https://reason.com/2025/03/04/doge-goes-deep-state/

DOGE Has a Math Problem

Posted on by Lone Candle

DOGE’s wall of receipts has been full of basic mistakes that makes it look like DOGE isn’t familiar with the organizations they are cutting.

DOGE is less a efficient tech support generally improving the efficiency of government, and more a political project broadly cutting things they don’t like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt36SP81zxA

Trump Admin Argues DOGE Is Exempt From Records Requests in FOIA Lawsuit

Posted on by Lone Candle

“In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the Trump administration is arguing that its much-hyped Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is exempt from public records requests.”

…

“”All aspects of the government must be fully transparent and accountable to the people,” Musk posted on X earlier this month. “No exceptions, including, if not especially, the Federal Reserve.”
At a White House press conference earlier this month, Musk said, “We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible, so all of our actions are maximally transparent. I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.”

And again, Musk declared last November: “There should be no need for FOIA requests. All government data should be default public for maximum transparency.”

But DOGE has struggled to make its data public while also claiming exemption from FOIA, which is a recipe for maximum opacity, not transparency.

Between the shifting claims of how much taxpayer money DOGE was going to save, the release and quiet deletion of error-filled data, and now attempts to hide DOGE from public record laws—well, it doesn’t inspire confidence.”

https://reason.com/2025/02/28/trump-admin-argues-doge-is-exempt-from-records-requests-in-foia-lawsuit/

Why it matters that Trump is deleting government data

Posted on by Lone Candle

“What happens when one of the world’s largest repositories of free information becomes unreliable?
That dire situation came to pass in late January, when many federal websites took down entire datasets to avoid possibly violating a series of executive orders from President Donald Trump. At the same time, the Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk-directed task force that is slashing government operations, has canceled contracts for the collection of data and cut workers who analyze and evaluate information about various facets of American life, such as education, housing and consumer protection. These developments led to widespread concern that some data that researchers have long relied on the government to collect would no longer be readily available, potentially hindering various initiatives meant to help Americans — both inside and outside of government.

Although some information has come back online, the availability and transparency of government-collected data is suddenly no longer a given. This isn’t a worry just for data journalists like us, either. Experts I spoke with laid out how the public and private sector, companies large and small, and even the average person use government data to make decisions about program effectiveness, business prospects and life choices. With this in mind, I delved into this recent interruption in data access, why this data has significant value and what challenges may lie ahead if government data becomes less accessible and reliable moving forward.”

https://abcnews.go.com/538/matters-trump-deleting-government-data/story?id=119003153

Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE

Posted on by Lone Candle

“More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”

“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”

The employees also warned that many of those enlisted by Musk to help him slash the size of the federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration were political ideologues who did not have the necessary skills or experience for the task ahead of them.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/21-federal-technology-staffers-resign-160229566.html

DOGE Begins Publishing Data After Transparency Complaints

Posted on by Lone Candle

“DOGE deserves some credit for simply trying to map the federal government—a gargantuan endeavor that involves over 100 agencies, each a matryoshka doll of sub-agencies and offices. As former federal technology officer Marina Nitze wrote in Reason today, the amount of nonsensical rules, regulations, and turf battles means it’s a Sisyphean struggle to make even the most basic improvements to federal websites and tech systems.”

https://reason.com/2025/02/13/doge-begins-publishing-data-after-transparency-complaints/

200,000 Layoffs

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Mass layoffs have begun, with most of the some 200,000 probationary employees expected to be terminated in the coming days, mostly from the departments of Energy and Veteran Affairs, but also some from the Small Business Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture (specifically the Forest Service), and—ironically—the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which has been overseeing the layoffs.

Probationary employees tend to be workers who have only been in their jobs for a year or under (or two years in some cases). They have the fewest job protections so they tend to be the easiest to fire.

“These firings are not about poor performance—there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants,” said government employee union president Everett Kelley in a statement. “They are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.””

…

“The OPM has apparently dispensed shifting guidance, reportedly telling agencies earlier this week that they should focus on terminating underperforming employees before later in the week shifting to a policy that all or most probationary employees should be dismissed.”

https://reason.com/2025/02/14/200000-layoffs/