On Monday afternoon, former Republican presidential candidate, short-lived adviser to President Donald Trump’s plans to slash government spending, and one-time “libertarian-minded rap artist” Vivek Ramaswamy announced his bid for Ohio governor. In his effort, Ramaswamy is promising something specific: to bring Ohio the same cost-cutting measures that Trump is implementing in the federal government.  “President Trump is reviving our conviction in America,” Ramaswamy said. “We require a leader here at home who will revive our conviction in Ohio.”  “I spent most of last year working tirelessly to help send Donald Trump back to the White House because it was a fork in the road for the future of the country,” Ramaswamy said on Monday—conjuring up the “fork in the road” emails that the Office of Personnel Management sent to federal government employees that offered a resignation option to “retain all pay and benefits” or risk layoffs.  While he didn’t explicitly mention the group by name—possibly due to the over 55,000 civilian federal employees in Ohio as of March 2024—the Republican hinted at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the body tasked by a day-one executive order to eliminate wasteful spending, in his speech. Ramaswamy calls his vision more “expansive” than DOGE. But perhaps that is because of the potential unpopularity brewing. In just over a month, it has already slashed government departments and agencies—some even to the point of nonfunctioning.  As I previously wrote, DOGE plays with a rehash of conservative austerity. Is it really that innovative for Republicans to want to cut government programs? Although Ramaswamy has since left the initiative for tech billionaire Elon Musk to run on his own, he is still pushing discipline for poor folks under the guise of “government efficiency.”  “We’re going to end the war on work in America—starting right here in Ohio—by reattaching work requirements to Medicaid and welfare,” Ramaswamy said on Monday, assuring the crowd that doing so would address the state’s apparent worker shortage.  “It’s not compassion to make somebody more dependent on the government,” he continued. “The compassionate thing to do is to help them achieve their independence from it.”  Here, Ramaswamy echoes former House Speaker Paul Ryan talking about his Path to Prosperity budget proposals or Ronald Reagan blaming people who needed government assistance on becoming “virtual wards of the State…that robs them of dignity and opportunity.” But Amy Acton, the former health department director who led Ohio’s initial response to the Covid pandemic and the only Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the reliably-red state so far, took issue with Ramaswamy’s perspective. “Where he sees an opportunity to gut Medicare, Medicaid, and attack a woman’s right to choose—I know my job as governor will be to stand up for Ohioans against powerful billionaires,” she said in a statement on Monday.  Like the president, Ramaswamy vowed to return people back to their former glory. “This is our modern-day Northwest Ordinance,” Ramaswamy stated on Monday. According to him, at the turn of the century, Ohio was the third-most populous state in the country and was an economic powerhouse, pioneering industries like steel, rubber, and glass, as well as pork. But since then, there has been a “national identity crisis” where taxes, regulations, and a bureaucratic government have scaled back prosperity.  At the forefront of Ramaswamy’s proposals were economic and education reforms. He called for more capitalism so that Ohio’s manufacturing industries would flourish as the leader of a “Second Industrial Revolution” and financial insecurity would vanish, and he demanded policies like school choice and merit-based pay for teachers and administrators as the equalizer that builds a path for families to “realize their American Dream” through hard work. Both Trump and Musk endorsed his candidacy late Monday night.

On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency he had promised after winning the 2024 election. Watchdog groups were ready to challenge DOGE from the start under the assumption it would fall under the legal rules governing outside government advisory groups. Indeed, within minutes of Trump’s swearing in, four such lawsuits were filed against it. > “This is an entity that is operating in secrecy.” But in an apparent attempt to dodge the rules, Trump’s order, instead of creating an outside government advisory group, officially set up DOGE as part of the Executive Office of the President. On paper, its mission was pared down, from massive cuts to government to improving IT efficiency. Did the president and his co-conspirator Elon Musk have a change of heart—or is something else going on? Since November, DOGE had acted as an off-the-books committee lead by Musk and another MAGA-aligned billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy. It was already contacting federal agencies and, according to reports, communicating via Signal, an encrypted app with a built in auto-deletion feature that violates federal record-keeping laws. If DOGE is an outside committee, their work—originally described as drastically reducing the size of the federal workforce and finding up to $2 trillion in spending cuts—must comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the lawsuits alleged, a 1972 law intended to bring transparency and balance to such committees. One such suit filed by watchdog groups and veterans and teachers organizations called DOGE “a shadow operation,” and argued its “unchecked secrecy, access, and private influence—bought by political loyalty—is anathema to efficient, effective government.” According to a Washington Post investigation, Ramaswamy and Musk had different ideas about DOGE’s mission—and Musk’s winning perspective was shaped by a desire to skirt transparency requirements. While Ramaswamy perceived of DOGE as an outside government group seeking to slash regulations and shutdown entire agencies, Musk reportedly preferred an operation within the government “using the power of technology and data-mining to achieve DOGE’s aims.” Further, according to the Post, Musk saw his route as avoiding requirements for transparency: “Musk became increasingly convinced that DOGE should operate as a small team within the government, where it could get access to highly sensitive information and avoid lawsuits attempting to force disclosure of its meetings and minutes.” Musk’s vision won; Ramaswamy left the project. According to the Dispatch, the administration’s decisions not only shielded DOGE from transparency laws, but also regulations governing who they can hire and at what salary. No matter how DOGE is constructed and sets about its work, the Inauguration Day lawsuits are an opening salvo in a legal battle that is likely to stretch on. “We stand by the proposition that’s in our complaint, that this is an entity that is operating in secrecy,” said Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Whether they are a private advisory committee or a government agency, they have to comply with certain federal transparency requirements, and there is no indication that they are.” Take the Freedom of Information Act, which would not apply to an outside advisory committee, but does apply to executive agencies. “They have to pick a lane here. It’s not as if they could be exempt from both FACA and FOIA and all the other government transparency laws,” Sus argues. It’s possible, Sus acknowledges, that DOGE will fight disclosure under both laws. Trump’s order officially renamed and reconstituted the US Digital Service, a little-known presidential office, as the United States DOGE Service. The USDS began in 2014 as an Obama-era initiative to improve government technology following the disastrous rollout of Healthcare.gov, and has since been housed in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a part of the Executive Office of the President that is subject to FOIA. But the executive order is ambiguous on whether USDS remains part of OMB, or is now more directly under the purview of the Oval Office. If it no longer is in OMB, the courts would have to determine whether in its new form it remains subject to FOIA, after assessing whether it is limited to advising the president or if it is more broadly active across government. Trump’s day one executive order called for DOGE to advise agency heads—a scope that seemingly goes beyond advising the president—but, as we have seen, when it comes to rulings on government records, it really depends on which judge you get. The president’s order envisions an 18-month timeline for DOGE’s work, and sorting this out in the courts could easily take longer. “The clock will run out on DOGE well before litigation, including all appeals, can be concluded,” warns Bob Bauer. As Bauer, White House counsel under President Barack Obama, told the Dispatch, that’s especially true since Trump administration lawyers are likely to make a “backstop claim that FACA’s limits on how a president gets advice are unconstitutional.”  Such a push to invalidate FACA would be in line with the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority who are skeptical of any limits on a president’s power, having already rejected repercussions for presidents who break the law in their infamous 2024 immunity decision. DOGE’s mandate is now muddied by an executive order that conflicts with its original stated goals, leaving uncertainty about what the effort will try to accomplish. But its unstated capabilities are dangerous: The newly constituted USDS is entitled to suck up an enormous amount of data from every part of government. As the executive order lays out, it should have “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” That data could be used to determine which jobs would be made redundant through technology. Or those decisions could be made after scooping up the emails of all federal employees and finding justifications for dismissal—especially if Trump can eliminate civil service protections. Musk could, as he has done before, publicly target federal employees, but this time with their own communications in hand. It’s not just the rank and file that could be terrorized by DOGE. While Musk has not been officially named as head of DOGE, in some sort of leadership capacity he could have vast amounts of intelligence on—and sway over—agencies that regulate his own businesses. Based on the executive order, it’s possible he could even have access to cabinet members’ communications, eroding any independence they may have and creating leverage over them. That makes it worth asking: Is his goal IT modernization, or the power to be had along the way?

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to upend the federal government, and he has enlisted firebrands Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to help him do it. The two men are set to lead the Department of Government Efficiency and aim to trim $2 trillion from the US budget. That’s about one-third of all federal spending, and the pair also believe they can cut the government workforce by 75 percent. In announcing the office, known as DOGE, Trump said that “these wonderful Americans” will “dismantle” bureaucracy, “slash” regulations, cut “wasteful” expenditures, and “restructure” agencies. Ramaswamy took to X to promise, “We will not go gently.” Overall, that’s likely going to be bad news for US environmental policy and the Biden administration’s landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. But there’s a chance that, if DOGE wields its cleaver widely enough, the department may actually please environmentalists by eliminating a few things they have long-loathed, including fossil fuel subsidies.  “It’s a truth test to all of their messaging,” said Matthew Tejada, a former Environmental Protection Agency official who’s now a senior vice president at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “These handouts to the oil and gas industry, which allows these multinational corporations to earn billions of dollars a year, fly in the face of everything else they talk about.” The extent of these federal subsidies depends on how they are counted. The Fossil Fuel Subsidy Tracker pegged them at nearly $18 billion in 2023. The International Monetary Fund estimate is $757 billion, including what it calls “implicit” subsidies, such as undervaluing environmental harm. While the exact number is debated, it is clear that ending these industry benefits could reap billions in revenue.  > “The biggest subsidy is allowing these companies to freeload off our health.”  “The enormous handouts that we continue to make to an industry that extracts tens of billions of dollars out of our country already should certainly be somewhere within their line of sight,” Tejada said. “There are dozens and dozens of different subsidies.”  One major tax break allows companies to deduct most of the cost of drilling new oil and gas wells. The Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan panel of Congress, estimates that repealing this “intangible drilling costs” provision could bring an additional $6 billion in revenue by 2032. Another—the percentage depletion tax break—allows independent producers to recover development costs of declining oil, gas, and coal reserves and has been on the books since 1926. Eliminating it could generate an additional $7.3 billion.  “I don’t know how much they will be able to cut the tax code subsidies,” said Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering. In all likelihood, he said, oil and gas companies will lobby successfully to preserve their interests. And, he argued, the largest benefit they receive from the government is the ability to pollute, which is outside DOGE’s mandate.  “They don’t touch on hidden subsidies,” said Jacobson. “The biggest subsidy is allowing these companies to freeload off our health.”  Neither the Trump transition team or the American Petroleum Institute responded to multiple requests for comment.  Both Tejada and Jacobson said their wishlist for DOGE would go beyond fossil fuel subsidies. One deadline Tejada is watching arrives this spring, when the tax cuts of the first Trump administration expire. Letting them lapse could be one way the government could work toward a balanced budget. Jacobson said another often overlooked topic is Washington’s support for corn ethanol fuels. The government has spent billions propping up a fuel that studies show has greater climate and environmental impacts than gasoline and now accounts for 45 percent of all the corn grown in the US.  But, they say, for now these hopes for DOGE tackling environmental concerns remain just that. “They probably will end up cutting a lot less than they want to cut,” Jacobson said.

This story was originally published on Judd Legum’s Substack, Popular Information, to which you can subscribe here. President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficency. Despite the name, it is not a government department. In fact, it is not part of the government at all. It is a non-governmental commission that will provide advice to the Trump administration. Musk says he will identify “at least $2 trillion” in savings from the $6.5 trillion federal budget. How will Musk do it? Details are scarce. Musk is recruiting “high-IQ revolutionaries” to work 80-hour weeks for no pay to help him with the task.  Cutting $2 trillion is impossible politically. But if Musk is serious about cutting government spending and waste there is only one place to start: the defense budget. About half of the discretionary budget—the spending that Congress approves each year—is spent on defense. For the 2024 budget, the amount allocated for the Department of Defense (DoD) exceeded $840 billion.  > The 15 agencies that could not properly account for their finances in the > latest audit account for 68 percent of the Pentagon’s budget. About half of the massive defense budget goes to military contractors, with tens of billions directed to “Big 5” firms—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. These contractors, according to a “60 Minutes” investigation last year, “overcharge the Pentagon on almost everything the Department of Defense buys.” The misuse of taxpayer dollars became more acute “in the early 2000s when the Pentagon, in another cost-saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts.” Another factor is the consolidation of the defense industry, resulting in less competition for contracts.  Still, Musk may have a difficult time cutting DoD spending. First, Musk is the CEO of the company, SpaceX, that actively seeks billions in defense contracts. Second, if Musk is able to overcome his conflict-of-interest, defense industry lobbyists will lobby Congress to reverse any planned cuts. Finally, Trump has pledged to increase military spending during his second term.  “I will provide record funding for our military,” Trump said in a video posted on his campaign website.  Trump is calling for more defense spending even though defense spending has doubled over the last 20 years. The D0D struggles to accurately account how it spends this gusher of money. For the seventh year in a row, it has failed an independent audit.  This year’s audit failure means that the DoD has not passed since Congress began mandating the audits in 2018. The 2024 audit, which surveyed 28 separate agencies that operate under the Pentagon’s umbrella, found that 15 agencies failed to provide enough information for the auditors to assess how they handle their money.  Michael McCord, the Pentagon’s comptroller and chief financial officer, was unfazed by this failure, calling it “expected.” He also argued that because some agencies passed, the audit was actually a success. “So if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure,” McCord told reporters at a press conference on Friday. “We have a lot of work to do, but I think we’re making progress.” Nine agencies passed their audit and three agency audits are still pending. In 2023, auditors failed 18 agencies. Eight agencies also did a better job this year of balancing their spending and the amount of cash they have in government accounts. But of those eight, only two agencies actually passed their audit. The other six, while properly accounting for their cash, did not have enough information about their other assets to pass the audit. Even with the improvements McCord touted, the scope of the Pentagon’s failure to keep track of its assets is still vast. According to the audit, the 15 agencies that could not properly account for their finances make up 44 percent of the Pentagon’s total assets and 68 percent of its budget. This year, the Pentagon held over $4.1 trillion in assets and had a budget of over $840 billion, meaning that auditors were unable to pin down $1.8 trillion in assets and $571 billion of the budget.  Despite these failures, Congress continues to appropriate more money every year to the DoD. The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act requires the department to pass its audit by 2028, but has no mechanism for penalizing failure.  McCord insisted that the Pentagon was on track for a clean audit by 2028, but that it would take the cooperation of the incoming Trump administration to reach that goal. If Trump is serious about improving government efficiency, he could push his DoD to do a better job tracking its assets. But if he decides not to, the Pentagon will not face any consequences.