Newsletter
DOGE Weekly Watchdog: Trump’s DOGE is a Trojan Horse to Gut Services Americans Need, Enrich Himself
The Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has one purpose only: to gut checks and balances, kneecap oversight and accountability, and use the federal government to line the pockets of himself and his companies, Donald Trump, and their ultra-wealthy buddies. The biggest loser is working families whose essential benefits, from health care, child care, veterans’ services, and farmers’ to food assistance, are on the chopping block to pay for corporate giveaways. All the while, the world’s wealthiest man cashes in on his multi-million investment in Trump’s campaign, with billions in government contracts awarded to his businesses and pushing new tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.
Americans deserve real reform to root out wasteful federal spending, cut red tape and bureaucracy, and make the government run better. But that’s not what this crusade is after. DOGE is a trojan horse for reform, and everyday Americans are already being left to pay the price with skyrocketing costs.
HOW THE TRUMP-MUSK ADMINISTRATION’S DOGE IS HARMING FAMILIES
- Gutting consumer watchdog looking out for Americans’ pocketbooks: The Trump Administration “shuttered” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has helped return $21 billion to consumers harmed by predatory financial services. Just days before Musk targeted the CFPB, his X platform announced an “X Money” payment system that likely would have been under CFPB oversight. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said there is “‘no other federal regulator’” that protects average consumers like the CFPB.
- Pulling funding and forced closures of Head Start child care centers: Trump’s funding freeze caused payment system failures that interrupted Head Start, which provides child care to vulnerable young children, and interfered with community health clinic systems that serve low-income and uninsured patients. The National Head Start Association reported that funding issues affected grant recipients serving about 15,000 children across 20 states and D.C. As one Head Start provider in Madison, Wisconsin noted she’d “heard from families who were afraid of losing their childcare, and from teachers afraid of losing their jobs” and that “a lot of our families are either homeless or they are at risk of becoming homeless.”
- Cutting cancer and heart disease research funding: Trump cut billions of dollars in National Institutes of Health (NIH) biomedical research funding, which experts warned would “‘cripple lifesaving research and innovation’” and would threaten smaller university labs, with some already preparing to shut down. A top MIT science advisor noted she was “at loss to understand how this is beneficial to Americans,” and the former dean of Harvard Medical School said “a sane government would never do this.”
- Axing veterans’ service providers potentially making it harder to receive the care they need: Trump fired more than 1,000 Veterans Affairs Department (VA) employees, straining resources toward services which 6.2 million veterans rely on. One North Carolina veteran, Scott Peoples, “worrie(d) even more change is possible – ultimately impacting health services.”
- Hurting heartland farmers’ balance sheet: Trump’s freeze on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) could hurt U.S. farmers, with the agency spending billions on U.S. farm products and with one farmers union leader saying his members were already struggling from rising costs and the threat of tariffs, noting that the program supports American “wheat farmers, but also grain sorghum farmers.”
- Dismantling labor rights, limiting Americans’ ability to unionize for better wages: Trump and DOGE “paralyzed” the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which protects labor rights, with what was seen as an illegal firing of one of its board members. Amazon-owned Whole Foods has already used the firing to try to block what could be the first unionized Whole Foods in the U.S. and Elon Musk’s SpaceX is challenging the NLRB’s constitutionality.
- Security risks and privacy violations for Americans’ personal financial data: Elon Musk has been given unparalleled and potentially illegal access to Americans’ private financial data through the Treasury Department’s highly sensitive government payment system. One cybersecurity expert described the threat by saying, “If I were a nation like China, Russia or Iran, I’d be having a field day with a bunch of college kids running around with sensitive federal government data on unencrypted hard drives.”
- Eliminating education funding: Elon Musk’s DOGE slashed $900 million from the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which tracks school quality – including ensuring effective education for underserved students. The cuts come as students continue to face academic recovery challenges due to pandemic learning loss, with one expert noting that “cutting out at the knees the one independent agency that helps improve student outcomes is ridiculous.”
- Firing officials responsible for managing public health threats: Trump fired at least 1,300 CDC employees responsible for combatting public health outbreaks and the spread of infectious disease – the cuts come as Avian Flu spreads across the country, skyrocketing egg prices and infecting humans.
- Devastating cuts for Tribal communities: The Administration fired at least 2,600 federal officials responsible for providing health care, education, law enforcement, and other services to tribal communities depend on, with one community leader noting that “if no action is taken to protect tribes, the impact will send shockwaves through every tribal community.”
- Next Up: Targeting Americans’ health care by taking aim at Medicare and Medicaid: Musk and cronies reportedly began targeting the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which covers 140 million older, low-income, and disabled Americans. Without evidence, Musk claimed, “this is where the big money fraud is happening.”
