All posts tagged "Doge"

A judge dealt a setback to Trump's power by ruling his administration broke the law by firing a civil servant, per Politico.

According to reporting by Politico, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that the Trump administration violated federal law when it fired Mary Comans, the chief financial officer of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), without going through congressionally mandated steps.

"This is huge," said Mark Zaid, one of Comans' lawyers, according to Politico. "It's an incredibly significant victory."...

A Nobel laureate held the world's richest man Elon Musk responsible for the deaths of millions of children in a scathing takedown.

Renowned economist Paul Krugman called Musk "a horrible, terrible person" in a recent episode of his podcast. Krugman mostly focused on Musk's cuts to USAID while in the Trump administration.

"For most of last year, Elon Musk was the second most powerful man in America," Krugman explained. "He was running a large part of the government's budget, and during that time, he established a track record of evil incompetence."...

A federal pest-control agency that suffered budget and staff cuts under Trump is now stuck with a bed bug infestation, according to reports.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which protects agriculture from pests, is dealing with a bed bug takeover at the Agriculture Department building, according to reporting by NOTUS.

One USDA employee told NOTUS that the irony of the situation "was lost on no one." Headquarters News noted on X that DOGE slashed the APHIS budget and fired its employees. ...

The fallout from President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has created serious concerns among judges, who issued an urgent plea to lawmakers Tuesday over crumbling courthouses, according to a new report.

Falling ceilings, contaminated water and malfunctioning elevators are among the problems facing federal judges and courts, Politico reported Tuesday. A top federal courts official has asked for courts to have the right to build or manage their own facilities. Courthouses are currently operated under the General Services Administration.

“Federal courthouses are in crisis. Without immediate action, the problems will continue to worsen,” Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr., director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, wrote in a letter to Congress. “Action is needed now to reverse a downward spiral of critical-system failures, long-term underfunding of repairs, security risks, and climbing costs.”...

The Department of Government Efficiency is still active and has an "unorthodox power" according to a political analyst.

Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat says the ongoing work of DOGE, not as a central government project but "entrenched in departments across the administration, is an issue that will have long-term consequences for the public. Writing in NOTUS, the professor of history and Italian studies at New York University suggested there should be more awareness of just how much power DOGE still maintains.

The department had been established at the start of the year by Elon Musk, though his departure from the administration at the end of May seemed to call time on the government efficiency project. ...

An ethics board are asking "what happened" under Elon Musk during his brief time as head of the Department of Government Efficiency.

DOGE was established early into Donald Trump's second term as president, but Musk, who headed up the department tasked with cutting government waste, left the administration by the end of May. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington representatives are still trying to establish what happened while Musk was in charge of the department.

CREW deputy chief counsel Nikhel Sus, speaking to The Guardian, said, "I know it feels like all this happened over the course of several years, but the first year of this administration isn’t even done. We still want to know what happened, and we still want the record to be out there, because the public is entitled to this information."...