Trump’s DOGE Cost-Cutting Effort Loses a Leader

Trump on Tuesday (Reuters)
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Good evening. It's Day Two of Trump, Part Two. Here's what you should know.

Trump Announces Billions in AI Infrastructure Investment

After a blizzard of executive actions on his first day back in office, Day Two of President Donald Trump’s second term saw more moves meant to transform the country — and fresh signs of pushback to his agenda. Trump attended a national prayer service Tuesday morning, where Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde directly implored him to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” including LGBTQ people and immigrants. And legalchallenges were filed to some of Trump’s new executive orders.

The president also met with Republican leaders to discuss his legislative agenda, with questions needing to be resolved about their plans to fund the government and avoid a government shutdown in March and to pass one or two broad, partisan budget reconciliation bills. And he announced a joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle to create a new company called Stargate to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The companies plan to invest $100 billion in the project and could commit as much as $500 billion over four years. Trump claimed that the project will create “over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately.”

A Look at What Trump Did on Day One

Trump launched into his second term as president, fulfilling a host of campaign promises on Monday through a sweeping series of executive actions — more than 200 in all, according to the White House, including 42 executive orders, memoranda or proclamations as well as 115 personnel actions.

After taking the oath of office in the Capitol rotunda — where four of the five richest men in the world had prime seats, and leaders from Argentina, China and Italy were also in attendance — Trump’s moves focused largely on immigration, energy, diversity and bending the federal government to his will.

Trump quickly reversed 78 Biden administration policies, including one meant to lower prescription drug costs and another requiring executive branch employees to sign an ethics pledge. And in an unprecedented test of presidential power that sets the stage for the next four years and a slew of court fights, he also:

  • declared a national emergency at the southern border;
  • halted federal hiring and regulations;
  • ended most remote work for federal employees;
  • established the Department of Government Efficiency;
  • withdrew from the Paris climate treaty and the World Health Organization;
  • pulled the United States out of a global corporate minimum tax deal negotiated by the Biden administration and nearly 140 countries;
  • froze the disbursement of foreign aid money;
  • ordered an end to birthright citizenship;
  • declared that the government would only recognize male and female sexes;
  • renamed the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali (henceforth to be known as the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley, respectively). 

On top of all that, Trump granted clemency to all rioters charged in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, including hundreds convicted of violent felonies.

Among the things Trump didn’t do was introduce new tariffs on foreign goods, but he did promise that he’d impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on February 1. Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he is considering 10% tariffs on China that could also be imposed on February 1.

So that was Day One, or at least part of it. Buckle up.

Trump's DOGE Cost-Cutting Effort Loses a Leader

President Trump created a version of the much-anticipated Department of Government Efficiency on Monday, signing an executive order that tasks the new entity with implementing “the President’s DOGE Agenda.”

The initiative is not a new government department, however, but rather a new name for the United States Digital Service, an existing office within the executive branch. The USDS was founded in 2014 under former President Barack Obama to help improve technology infrastructure and services throughout the federal government. More recently, USDS engineers have worked on the IRS's Free File effort and on improving the Social Security Administration's website.

Within the United States DOGE Service, as the USDS is now known, the executive order authorizes the administrator, who will report to the White House chief of staff, to create “the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization,” which will expire on July 4, 2026, after 18 months of operation.

The executive order calls on agency heads in the federal government to create “DOGE Teams” with at least four members tasked with implementing the president’s “DOGE Agenda.” The typical structure of the four-man teams is defined as “one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney,” and the order makes it clear that the teams can include “Special Government Employees” — temporary employees who can work for the government for 130 days within a 365-day period. Executives from the private sector may join the initiative on that basis.

The order provides little detail on what the DOGE teams will be doing, and the few concrete references to specific areas of focus for the effort involve technology. The order says the DOGE agenda will be implemented “by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

An early shakeup: Trump first discussed DOGE in November, when he called on Tesla CEO Elon Musk and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead an initiative to aggressively reduce waste and inefficiency in the federal government. Musk boasted that he could cut $2 trillion per year from the more than $6 trillion budget but has recently walked that back by half, even as many analysts express doubt about getting anywhere close to either figure.

It’s not clear if Musk will have a formal position within DOGE, though he is referred to as its leader and The New York Times reports that he may be given an office in the West Wing. Ramaswamy, on the other hand, clarified his position this week, when he announced he is stepping down from DOGE, amid speculation that he plans to run for governor of Ohio. Politico reports that Ramaswamy had fallen out of favor with both Trump and Musk, in part due to a rant he delivered on social media about the inferiority of American workers and the need for more H-1B visas for foreign engineers. “Everyone wants him out of Mar-a-Lago, out of D.C.,” a Republican adviser told Politico.

Legal challenges: As expected, DOGE was hit with multiple lawsuits as soon as Trump took office. The suits question the effort’s legal status and charge that it violates federal law by empowering private individuals to influence the shape and scope of public agencies.

“Currently, DOGE is operating unchecked, without authorization or funding from Congress and is led by unelected billionaires who are not representative of ordinary Americans,” said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, one of the groups filing suit. CREW said there are clear requirements for federal advisory committees, which DOGE is failing to meet, making it impossible for the public “to hold it accountable for the sweeping changes its unelected and unaccountable leaders plan to make.”

Trump’s executive order, however, may complicate the issue, since it establishes DOGE within the executive branch rather than as an independent advisory committee or new department, potentially shielding the initiative from certain oversight requirements and limitations.

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