New details on Musk's DOGE agency raise questions about its scope, transparency

Source: ABC News

January 23, 2025, 8:46 PM


As tech billionaire Elon Musk prepares to launch the new Department of Government Efficiency, answers are starting to emerge regarding how the cost-cutting agency will operate -- but government watchdog groups say the agency's purported scope and its level of transparency raise even more questions.

An executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Monday said that DOGE will be established within the Executive Office of the President, as a temporary 18-month organization under the repurposed United States Digital Service, now called the United States DOGE Service (USDS). Notably, the executive order laid out only a narrow role for DOGE: to modernize "federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity," contrary to the sweeping mission to gut the federal government that Trump and Musk have promoted for months.

Some ethics experts expressed concerns that the agency's narrow agenda as described in the executive order could be an attempt to avoid regulations under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a 1972 law that subjects advisory committees to a specific authorization process within a clear scope of the committee's activities, and to disclose its meetings and records to the public. "One thing that needs to be focused on is whether DOGE operates in a way that is consistent with that narrow executive order," said ethics director Kedric Payne of the Campaign Legal Center watchdog group.

"The executive order makes it look like their mission is very narrow, but in reality, the DOGE agenda seems to be much broader. And if they start fulfilling that true DOGE agenda, then that will indicate that they may not be operating within the compliance of the executive order. It may be subject to the federal law that applies to advisory committees, which will trigger other disclosure requirements," he said.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/new-details-musks-doge-agency-raise-questions-scope/story?id=118046176

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I had posted in another thread that since the Executive Branch CANNOT unilaterally create its own Departments or agencies, what they have attempted to do here is to take a small, already-established agency, and are trying to rename/redefine/repurpose it for this idiotic "DOGE" mess.

This is naturally raising all sorts of alarm bells.

Why the M$M continues to even entertain the possibility that the rantings and ravings and illegalities of this administration are somehow "legitimate" in order to generate column inches that will sometimes... eventually... admit that something is illegal, shows how far the "4th estate" has fallen.