The next big DOGE threat is already here

[Celerity]

With the White House trying to ensure that no DOGE records see the light of day, the public may never know how much DOGE cut or what, if anything, it saved.

https://www.ms.now/opinion/doge-government-efficiency-records-job-cuts-elon-musk-foia


Without DOGE's records, the public is left with no clear explanation of what exactly DOGE accomplished or how much it saved, if anything. Anna Lefkowitz / MS NOW; Getty Images



The Department of Government Efficiency, which carried out the most transformative restructuring of the federal government in a generation, has formally ended — with no public accounting of its actions. Despite touting itself as the most transparent administration in history, the Trump White House is working to ensure that no DOGE records ever see the light of day.

This is a dangerous antidemocratic precedent, especially since DOGE took direction from Elon Musk, who was famously not a regular government employee. By handing over essential government functions to members of the ultrawealthy who happen to be friends with the president, while systematically dismantling America’s transparency infrastructure, the administration is effectively hiding that public policy is being dictated at an oligarch’s request. The threat is the privatization of government power, with no chance of oversight or public input.

If the DOGE model succeeds, there’s no telling how many shadow agencies may follow — and how many government decisions taxpayers could be locked out of. To date, what little the public knows about DOGE has mostly come from whistleblowers. The mechanics behind this information blackout are twofold.

Almost from its inception, the Trump administration argued that DOGE was not an agency with independent authority and therefore was not subject to the real-time scrutiny of Freedom of Information Act (or FOIA) requests. Rather, the administration said that DOGE’s sole legal function was to advise and assist the president, and that political appointees at federal agencies — not DOGE personnel — held the ultimate authority to implement its recommended mass firings and agency liquidations.

snip

[yellow dahlia]

1. This is SO off the charts bad, in SO many ways.

They spent our money. They wasted our money. They destroyed out governmental infrastructure.

They are not allowed to do this, AND then deny our access. We have the right to the information, hence the Freedom of Information Act. Imagine how many documents they are trying to hide.

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

[Karasu]

3. If it "saved" anything (it didn't), they wouldn't be hiding that information, they'd be bragging about it endlessly.

They really don't want average people to know how badly it defunded everything that can actually make a difference in their lives,.

[ColoringFool]

4. What does it matter "what it saved"? None of us citizens will....

reap any financial benefits (e g., shoring up Social Security), while many of us will suffer from the cuts and firings, especially the fired.

[warmfeet]

5. DOGE was never about saving anything.

It was about destroying/damaging institutions and allowing Elon Musk a means to eliminate potential legal entanglements. DOGE accomplished what it set out to do. The ball is in our court now.

[Karasu]

7. It was an excuse for the GQP to gut and defund popular and necessary services they had only dreamed about before.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Don't gov't appointees have to receive a "Letter of Appointment", which must be signed and certified ?

If Musk, or any of his twenty-something minions altered gov't software or hardware, or changed or moved gov't records, without an official Letter of Appointment giving them the authority to do so, then they were acting outside of the law, as private citizens, and would be liable for any and all claims of damage -- criminal or civil -- resulting from those actions.

I really, really hope that at least some of them get caught out as having no authority whatever to do what they did.