What Is DOGE and Who Runs It? Trump Says One Thing, Government Lawyers Say Another.
What is the Department of Government Efficiency?It’s a question that has come up over and over again in the avalanche of court cases challenging the authority of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to conduct a full-throttle effort to gut and remake the federal government.Over two months of litigation playing out across more than 170 lawsuits, the government has offered limited answers but insisted on one thing: that Mr.Musk exercises no authority over the office and is not even an employee.But that assertion flies in the face of Mr.
Musk’s own words and deeds as the ideological leader and public face of the still-secretive office — and President Trump’s praise of his team as an engine of upheaval.Mr.
Musk and his associates have been involved in the effective shutdown of an entire agency, had a hand in thousands of federal workers losing their jobs and helped put millions of dollars in government funding and programs on the chopping block, sowing chaos at home and around the globe.Often, judges have sided with the scores of lawyers demanding clarity about what Mr.Musk and members of his team are doing, showing willingness to expedite the process for groups challenging those actions to demand documents and written answers to questions about the details of the Musk team’s operations.In a filing on Wednesday, lawyers for the plaintiffs asked a judge to hurry along a case focused on how DOGE, which was first announced by Mr.
Trump as a limited private-sector task force shortly after he won the election, came to exercise such dramatic influence over the federal government.“The entire thrust of this motion has been to get a definitive answer to one question,” they wrote.“What is the Department of Government Efficiency?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
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