Government Efficiency (3 Viewers)

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    RobF

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    I think this topic deserves its own thread, both to discuss generally the topic of government efficiency, and specifically the so-called 'Department of Government Efficiency' and the incoming Trump administration's aims to "dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal Agencies".

    The announcements have been covered in the The Trump Cabinet and key post thread, but to recap, Trump has announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will work together on a not-actually-an-official-government-Department of Government Efficiency, which is intended to work with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to "drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before," with the 'Department' to conclude its work "no later than July 4, 2026."

    Musk has previously said that the federal budget could be reduced by "at least $2 trillion", and Ramaswarmy, during his presidential campaign, said he would fire more than 75% of the federal work force and disband agencies including the Department of Education and the FBI.
     
    Naomi Anderson was on leave looking after her young baby when she was told her US Department of Agriculture job helping farmers in developing countries was being cut. A former volunteer with the Peace Corps, which sends young Americans overseas to projects in emerging economies, Anderson had expected to spend her whole career in international development.

    “I had taken this job two years ago expecting to stay here for at least 10 years, and you know, we had started to make a community and build up our life here. In January, we had started looking at buying a home,” she says.

    Now Anderson is having to consider giving up the apartment in the Washington DC commuter town of Reston, Virginia, that she shares with her husband and their four-month-old baby and almost two-year-old toddler.


    “Financially, it’s a little bit precarious, and honestly we’re not sure what we’re going to do,” says Anderson, who is also an activist with the local branch of the AFSCME union and dabbles in selling political merchandise. “We’re thinking about moving back to Ohio, where I’m from, where my family is. You know, it’s a lot cheaper there.”

    Anderson is far from alone. “In our apartment complex, there’s been lots of yard sales, people selling things and moving away. It really does seem like people are just picking up and leaving, because it’s too expensive to live here without a job,” she says.

    Tough life-decisions like these have been forced on hundreds of thousands of former federal employees in the past couple of months, as the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge), which is headed up by Donald Trump’s favourite tech billionaire, Elon Musk, has slashed jobs in a cost-cutting spree.

    Data from the latest monthly Challenger jobs report suggests Doge has been responsible for 281,452 layoffs so far – almost eight times the number of workers the government let go in the entire year to April 2024.

    Brendan Demich is among those to be laid off, losing his job as an engineer at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. All his colleagues working on mine safety, as well as those in their sister laboratory who tested equipment such as respirators, are also being laid off – more than 200 in total – as part of a wave of cuts initiated by Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

    “So many people are devastated,” says Demich, who is a branch representative for the AFGE union. He says so many workers have been removed at once that their colleagues have barely been able to give them any kind of send-off. “It’s just unceremoniously leaving, because they had their package processed and they had to walk out the door.”


    Each of these layoffs has its own human impact, but experts are warning of a growing risk that they combine to trigger an economic retrenchment – particularly in areas with a heavy concentration of government jobs.……


    There has been 280k layoffs. DC government projects 40k in the city alone. That’s before the USDA relocation announcement. With a 395k DC workforce that’s like 10% of DC people retired, RIF, or relocated. It’s local and regional destruction.
     
    Donald Trump’s bid to gut the top US consumer watchdog has left the agency unable to protect consumers amid mounting fears of recession, according to workers.

    For months the Trump administration has pushed to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and fire the vast majority of its workforce. Ripped-off Americans will have “nowhere to turn” if it succeeds, staff told the Guardian.

    “The agency that Congress created after the last financial crisis to help prevent another financial crisis is currently completely handcuffed from working,” said one attorney at the CFPB, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “And we are on the verge of another major financial crisis, so it’s terrifying.

    “The one thing we were created to do we can’t do – at a time when we’re most needed.”

    Trump officials tried to axe about 1,500 of the CFPB’s 1,700 workers last month, only for his plan to be blocked by a federal judge.

    “This whirlwind has been hard on everyone, but everyone comes back with more fight to keep the bureau going, because we know the harms that will be visited on people if it goes under,” said a software engineer at the agency. “When it comes to loans, mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, bank accounts, we’re out there protecting everyone.

    “We have helped millions of people. We have returned billions of dollars. It isn’t the way it has to be that there is nowhere to turn to when a bank or credit card rips you off. That is something everyone is exposed to. That’s what’s heartbreaking to me about the possibility of my job disappearing.”

    Jonathan McKernan, the Trump administration’s nominee to head the bureau since February, was lined up this month to be undersecretary of domestic finance at the US treasury – and the White House said it intends to rescind his nomination to lead the CFPB.

    No alternative nominee has been announced, fueling suspicions inside the agency that the administration never intended to move forward with McKernan’s nomination in the first place.

    “I don’t think they ever intended to confirm him,” said the CFPB attorney, who noted McKernan had been nominated right before a high-stakes court hearing on the administration’s actions inside the agency. “They used that in the hearing as a way to argue they weren’t trying to close the bureau.”

    McKernan’s nomination was moved forward in a Senate banking committee hearing in early March, along with three other Trump nominees. While all three were approved by the US Senate within two weeks of the hearing, McKernan was not.

    Since February, the CFPB’s interim director has been Russ Vought, the White House budget office director and the architect of the rightwing Project 2025 manifesto. His term in the acting role has a cap of 210 days.

    “I think the goal is to try and close the agency before Vought’s time is up as acting director, which is why they keep pressing so hard to try to be allowed to [terminate] everybody immediately,” the attorney said.

    Workers also criticized the actions of the so-called “department of government efficiency” at the agency, noting the CFPB is funded by the Federal Reserve, and has returned over $21bn directly to Americans.

    “They are not interested in efficiency,” said another employee. “There was no plan on how to keep congressionally mandated programs like our military veterans office running. They shot first and didn’t even bother to ask questions later. Russell Vought and this Trump administration are reckless and needlessly cruel.”………

     
    Never let the GOP forget the damage Musk as done, the chaos it's unleashed and the damage DOG is continuing to do

    Now, up to and during the mid terms
    =======================================================================

    Elon Musk and Donald Trump were the main characters on the internet and across Washington day after day. Then the world’s richest man started to fade away.

    On Truth Social, where Trump is known for sharing his unfiltered thoughts, the president used to mention Musk every few days but now has not posted about him in more than a month. Trump’s fundraising operation has largely ceased sending emails that name-check the Tesla CEO. The billionaire’s name, once a staple of White House briefings, now hardly gets mentioned at all. Even members of Congress have essentially dropped him from their newsletters.

    It’s a remarkable change for the man who was seemingly everywhere in the early days of the second Trump administration. Musk was in the Oval Office, in Cabinet meetings and on Air Force One. He was at inauguration, then in the House gallery for Trump’s first address to Congress, where Trump praised his hard work. He posed with the president and a row of Teslas on the White House lawn.

    But Musk’s highly visible presence in Washington has ended, a POLITICO analysis found. In Trump’s rapidly evolving second presidency, Musk’s monopoly on political discourse, news coverage and social media seems to have broken — driven in part by how Trump and Republicans have all but stopped talking about him.

    “I miss him,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).

    Musk’s shrinking presence could have political benefits for the GOP. Public polling has revealed him to be increasingly unpopular — far more so than Trump. Early last month, Republicans also lost a major Wisconsin judicial race where Musk had become both a major funder and a campaign issue. And in Washington, the cost-slashing efforts of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have continued, but have taken a political back seat to tariffs and the budget fight.

    Republicans still speak favorably of Musk when asked about him. And they of course want his massive wealth, army of supporters, and online influence machine backing them in future elections. But while Kennedy argued that Musk stepping back won’t “make any difference one way or the other” for the midterms, others are starting to say the best way for the tech CEO to help the party might not be on the campaign trail ahead of 2026.

    “Those polls on favorability basically tell you Elon’s doing a great job when he’s on the inside,” said David McIntosh, CEO of the conservative Club for Growth. “And hopefully he stays a long time to do that, but doesn’t take on this role of a campaign surrogate.”............

     
    Never let the GOP forget the damage Musk as done, the chaos it's unleashed and the damage DOG is continuing to do

    Now, up to and during the mid terms
    =======================================================================

    Elon Musk and Donald Trump were the main characters on the internet and across Washington day after day. Then the world’s richest man started to fade away.

    On Truth Social, where Trump is known for sharing his unfiltered thoughts, the president used to mention Musk every few days but now has not posted about him in more than a month. Trump’s fundraising operation has largely ceased sending emails that name-check the Tesla CEO. The billionaire’s name, once a staple of White House briefings, now hardly gets mentioned at all. Even members of Congress have essentially dropped him from their newsletters.

    It’s a remarkable change for the man who was seemingly everywhere in the early days of the second Trump administration. Musk was in the Oval Office, in Cabinet meetings and on Air Force One. He was at inauguration, then in the House gallery for Trump’s first address to Congress, where Trump praised his hard work. He posed with the president and a row of Teslas on the White House lawn.

    But Musk’s highly visible presence in Washington has ended, a POLITICO analysis found. In Trump’s rapidly evolving second presidency, Musk’s monopoly on political discourse, news coverage and social media seems to have broken — driven in part by how Trump and Republicans have all but stopped talking about him.

    “I miss him,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).

    Musk’s shrinking presence could have political benefits for the GOP. Public polling has revealed him to be increasingly unpopular — far more so than Trump. Early last month, Republicans also lost a major Wisconsin judicial race where Musk had become both a major funder and a campaign issue. And in Washington, the cost-slashing efforts of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have continued, but have taken a political back seat to tariffs and the budget fight.

    Republicans still speak favorably of Musk when asked about him. And they of course want his massive wealth, army of supporters, and online influence machine backing them in future elections. But while Kennedy argued that Musk stepping back won’t “make any difference one way or the other” for the midterms, others are starting to say the best way for the tech CEO to help the party might not be on the campaign trail ahead of 2026.

    “Those polls on favorability basically tell you Elon’s doing a great job when he’s on the inside,” said David McIntosh, CEO of the conservative Club for Growth. “And hopefully he stays a long time to do that, but doesn’t take on this role of a campaign surrogate.”............

    Just to be sure, just because he's no longer being talked about doesn't mean anything has actually changed behind the scenes.
     
    A federal judge allowed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to remain in control of the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent nonprofit created by Congress, but expressed concern about their conduct.

    U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said Wednesday she was offended by DOGE staff’s use of threats and law enforcement to gain access to the USIP headquarters and to remove the institute’s president, George Moose, from the building on Monday.

    But she declined to immediately restore the former board members, who filed the lawsuit late on Tuesday, to their positions. Howell also declined to bar DOGE staff from USIP’s headquarters, which they gained access to on Monday in part with the help of the police.…..

    Washington — A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration's efforts to take over the U.S. Institute of Peace, finding that the moves led by the White House's Department of Government Efficiency were made by leaders who were illegally installed and lacked the legal authority to dismantle the organization.

    U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled in favor of several institute board members and its president, who had been fired and challenged their terminations, as well as the administration's efforts to take over and disassemble the organization. The institute's mission is to promote conflict resolution and the prevention of conflict around the world……

     
    Washington — A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration's efforts to take over the U.S. Institute of Peace, finding that the moves led by the White House's Department of Government Efficiency were made by leaders who were illegally installed and lacked the legal authority to dismantle the organization.

    U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled in favor of several institute board members and its president, who had been fired and challenged their terminations, as well as the administration's efforts to take over and disassemble the organization. The institute's mission is to promote conflict resolution and the prevention of conflict around the world……

    Meanwhile, DOGE has been inside there for weeks. I fear they have already done a great deal of damage.
     
    Does Musk honestly think he hasn't harmed anyone?

    Does he think he hasn't harmed anyone who "matters"?

    Only considering physical harm? "I didn't set anyone's car on fire, I just needlessly and callously fired people, lied about why they were fired, causing them to have to sell the car they just bought, but that's different"

    ===================================
    ...........Musk was asked if the Tesla backlash made him regret or have second thoughts about his political endeavors, in a virtual interview at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday.

    "I did what needed to be done," Musk said, criticizing what he called the "violent, antibody reaction" to his political work.

    "I'm not somebody who has ever committed violence. And yet, massive violence was committed against my companies, and massive violence was threatened against me.

    "Who are these people? Why would they do that? How wrong can they be?

    "They're on the wrong side of history. And that's an evil thing to do. To go and damage some poor innocent person's car. To threaten to kill me. What's wrong with these people? I've not harmed anyone."...........

     
    Does Musk honestly think he hasn't harmed anyone?

    Does he think he hasn't harmed anyone who "matters"?

    Only considering physical harm? "I didn't set anyone's car on fire, I just needlessly and callously fired people, lied about why they were fired, causing them to have to sell the car they just bought, but that's different"

    ===================================
    ...........Musk was asked if the Tesla backlash made him regret or have second thoughts about his political endeavors, in a virtual interview at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday.

    "I did what needed to be done," Musk said, criticizing what he called the "violent, antibody reaction" to his political work.

    "I'm not somebody who has ever committed violence. And yet, massive violence was committed against my companies, and massive violence was threatened against me.

    "Who are these people? Why would they do that? How wrong can they be?

    "They're on the wrong side of history. And that's an evil thing to do. To go and damage some poor innocent person's car. To threaten to kill me. What's wrong with these people? I've not harmed anyone."...........

    Oh, boo hoo. He’s evil incarnate in the guise of a bigoted eugenicist. He has serious personality disorders and is harming thousands and thousands of people. In fact, his actions are killing people both here (with his Tesla lies and his obliteration of important government services) and abroad with his dismantlement of USAID.

    He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and spend many years in a federal prison. He should have his ownership in various companies taken away as a national security risk.
     
    I've seen it up close. Fork everyone who voted for this

    And Musk has the forking nerve to say "I haven't harmed anyone"
    ===========================================

    The president had called federal employees “crooked” and “dishonest,” and his deputies had vowed to purge them from government and make them suffer. And now, on the sixth day of Trump’s second term, a federal health researcher was missing.

    Her husband searched every room of their Baltimore townhouse, calling her name. “Caitlin?”

    Caitlin Cross-Barnet had struggled with depression, and now her husband, Mike, found her on their narrow, third-floor fire escape. As he tried to coax her back in, she replied: “It’s not high enough to jump.”

    On the 26th day of Trump’s term, Richard Midgette, 28, was fired from his IT job at Yellowstone National Park. He drove to the only bridge in his town, stopping just past its edge. From the car, he listened to the rushing of the water and, for the first time, contemplated whether to end his life.

    On the 30th day of Trump’s term, Monique Lockett, 53, tried to block out the stress. The U.S. DOGE Service was demanding access to sensitive databases she worked on at the Social Security Administration. Her top boss had just been forced to resign, and rumors of layoffs were brewing. Monique settled into her cubicle just before 8 a.m., then slumped to the floor.

    When Trump took office in January, 2.4 million people worked for the federal government, making it America’s largest employer. In four months, Trump and a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk have hacked off chunks of government in the name of efficiency, with tactics rarely seen in public or private industry.

    The cuts so far represent roughly 6 percent of the federal workforce, but they have effectively wiped out entire departments and agencies, such as AmeriCorps and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was slashed 85 percent; the Education Department was cut in half.

    Some have found themselves fired, rehired, then let go again. Many have been ridiculed as “lazy” and “corrupt.” They’ve been locked out of offices by police, fired for political “disloyalty,” and told to check their email to see if they still draw a paycheck.

    In interviews, more than 30 former and current federal workers told The Washington Post that the chaos and mass firings had left them feeling devalued, demoralized and scared for themselves and the country. Many described problems they’d never experienced before: insomnia, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts. Others with a history of mental struggles said they’d found themselves pushed into terrifying territory.

    In response, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said, “President Trump wants all Americans to thrive under his administration, and he has done more than any president to end the chronic disease crisis in our country.” She added, “It is an honor, not a right, to serve your country in a taxpayer-funded position, and workers unaligned with the American people’s agenda can take part in the growing private sector.”

    Trump has blamed federal workers for “destroying this country.” He and his officials have vowed to eliminate employees promoting diversity, to force those who “aren’t doing their job” back to offices five days a week, and to slash $1 trillion from the federal budget — a still-distant goal, even with the layoffs. And more hits may be coming: Republicans in Congress are proposing to save $50 billion by forcing government workers to pay more into retirement benefits while shrinking the value of those benefits.

    Many workers said they believe cruelty is part of the plan.

    In a 2023 recording surfaced by ProPublica, Trump budget director Russell Vought said, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

    Vought, who was giving a private speech for a pro-Trump think tank, concluded: “We want to put them in trauma.”..............

    By sheer numbers, America has rarely seen sudden job losses on this scale. In 1993, IBM fired 60,000 people, setting the all-time record for largest layoff. Since Trump took office, the government has pushed at least 130,000 people out of jobs — with more than 50,000 fired and 76,000 accepting buyouts, according to media reports. Additional reductions planned in coming weeks could double that total.

    Roughly a third of the 30 workers who talked to The Post had been fired. The rest feared being laid off or reassigned — having to move to offices hundreds of miles from family or leave behind the people and missions to which they’d devoted their careers.

    Some interviewed by The Post said they had joined the federal workforce for the stability and security of a government job. Many noted that they could earn more in the private sector. Almost all mentioned the chance to help others and make a difference.

    They worked at 12 federal agencies and in more than a dozen states. One had spent more than 30 years in government; another only two weeks.

    A manager in the Midwest for the Department of Veterans Affairs, forced in February to lay off probationary employees, said she kept scheduling emergency meetings with her psychiatrist, who increased her antidepression meds from 25 milligrams to 50 to 100.

    “You spend every day worrying about those under you,” said the VA manager. “The depression now is worse than during my divorce, worse than when my mom died of cancer.”

    Phone operators for the Veterans Crisis Line said they’d seen a rise in calls from federal employees and others worried about cuts to the VA.

    With so many federal workers seeking help, Rosalyn Beroza, a therapist in the D.C. suburbs, convened a network of more than 60 counselors to provide free and low-cost therapy.

    “To so many people, it feels targeted to injure and break them,” Beroza said. “With natural disasters, we have mental health workers helping people on scene. This one’s a man-made disaster, but it’s no less traumatizing.”

    A National Institutes of Health employee in the South, worried for weeks that she’ll lose her job, said she’s checked her government benefits to calculate how much money her family would receive if she killed herself. She took the job several years ago because the stable hours and job security helped her manage bipolar disorder, a family affliction she inherited. But in recent weeks, suicidal thoughts have come back so strongly that she’s depended on a safety plan with her husband — limited medication in their house, no guns, and emergency contacts on speed dial.

    “Federal workers aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet,” she said. “We’re real people with families who are hurting and, in the worst cases, dying. Why don’t people out there see that? Why doesn’t anyone care?”.

    On Feb. 14, Richard Midgette cleared out his desk at Yellowstone National Park headquarters. On the way home, he blasted indie rock music to drown out the sound of his own sobbing. The route home took him across the only bridge in Gardiner, Montana.

    He had never suffered from depression or other mental problems, he said. But as he sat, newly unemployed, in his idling car just past the bridge, he was overwhelmed by dark thoughts.

    He wondered how he would pay for a new apartment lease, his student loans and medicine for his Crohn’s disease. He’d worked at the park for only two months. He recalled the foolish pride he’d felt when he first put on a National Park Service uniform after besting 200 others for an IT job he had worked years to attain.


    “I thought I was finally getting somewhere,” he said, “building a career and a life.”

    He pulled into a gas station next to the bridge and considered calling his parents. His dad had voted for Trump, and for weeks had been cheering the president’s promises to purge the government.

    Instead, he dialed Kat Brekken, 69, his boss from a previous job in park concessions. She immediately drove to the bridge and gave him a hug.

    “I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” he told her...........

    The last time the federal government massively shrank its workforce, President Bill Clinton was in office. Musk has likened his cuts to those reductions: “What @DOGE is doing is similar to Clinton/Gore Dem policies of the 1990s. The current Dem party has just gone so crazy far left that it isn’t recognizable anymore!”

    But former officials say the 1990s “Reinventing Government” initiative was undertaken slowly and carefully, with bipartisan authorization from Congress. Over the span of seven years, the program eliminated roughly 400,000 federal jobs — a 17 percent cut — mostly through voluntary buyouts and attrition. Back then, the White House pushed back on painting federal workers as lazy.


    “Most federal workers believe in service and could be making a lot more in the private sector,” Robert Reich, who was Clinton’s secretary of labor, said in a recent phone interview. “There’s a humane, rational way to do this. You don’t need to parade around a stage with a chainsaw.”

    For weeks now, Vought’s quote about deliberately traumatizing workers has played over and over in the mind of one U.S. Forest Service biologist in California.

    He first came across it on a sleepless night in January, scrolling on his phone and wondering if he’d lose his job. That night, he said, his heart began juddering, as if it were trying to escape his chest.

    He recalled turning to his wife, a nurse, to say: “These people are going to f---ing kill me.”

    Asked to comment on Vought’s quote, the White House sent a statement from an unnamed senior administration official: “What about the January 6 defendants and political prisoners who suffered real trauma and committed suicide over the harassment, bullying and imprisonment by bureaucrats who weaponized the government against them?”

    For the biologist, the panic attacks soon were coming three times a day. He’d never thought much about mental health in his 15 years of federal service, but now he signed up for therapy and went on meds. He declined calls from his mother, he said, because he didn’t want to hear her praise Trump for streamlining government — and say that if her son didn’t like it, he could find another job.

    One day, the biologist’s 9-year-old son came home from school with a question. Schoolmates had been talking about Musk and Trump, the boy said, and how they were going to fire the stupidest workers.

    “Dad,” he asked, “why would they want to fire you?”..........

    White House officials wanted to put federal workers ‘in trauma.’ It’s working.


     
    Last edited:
    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to block court orders requiring Elon Musk ’s Department of Government Efficiency to turn over documents about its operations to a government watchdog group.

    The Justice Department’s latest emergency appeal to the high court concerns whether DOGE, which has been central to President Donald Trump’s push to remake the government, is a federal agency that is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The administration argues DOGE is merely a presidential advisory body that is exempt from requests for documents under FOIA.

    The administration wants the justices to freeze orders that would force DOGE to turn over documents to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and have acting DOGE administrator Amy Gleason answer questions under oath within the next three weeks. CREW sued in February, claiming that DOGE “wields shockingly broad power” with no transparency about its actions.…..

     

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