House Democrat: It'll take ‘many years' to ‘rebuild' from Musk ‘destruction'
Stansbury, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, said during a Thursday night appearance on MSNBC's 'The Last Word' that investigations into DOGE are 'ongoing' because many court cases are in play against the advisory panel, whose work has resulted in the firing of tens of thousands of federal workers led to effectively shutting down entire agencies.
'I mean, these actual investigations are ongoing because there's so many court cases against what's going on. You know, it was just announced today that a judge was allowing a court case that's actually led by the Attorney General of New Mexico to continue because of the lawless way in which they've been conducting their activities under DOGE,' Stansbury said
'So I think it's going to take, frankly, not only many years to rebuild from the destruction that Elon Musk unleashed on the government, but to even understand what they did inside these agencies,' Stansbury told host Lawrence O'Donnell. 'And also, I mean, the impacts are still being felt to this day.'
Musk served as a special government employee in President Trump's administration, advising DOGE on cost-cutting efforts in hopes of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse and slashing down the national debt.
Those efforts have received strong pushback from Democrats in Congress.
Musk said on Wednesday that he is leaving the White House, shortly after criticizing Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act,' a massive GOP budget bill that contains the president's legislative agenda.
'I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit … and it undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,' Musk told 'CBS Sunday Morning.'
On Thursday night, Trump announced on Truth Social that he would hold a press conference with Musk on Friday at 1:30 p.m. EDT
'This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific! See you tomorrow at the White House,' the president wrote.
Stansbury told O'Donnell that the impact of DOGE's work is felt in her home state.
'Last night, I was talking to a doctor here in New Mexico, who said he can't renew his license to give prescriptions right now because DOGE messed up the DEA website,' the New Mexico Democrat said. 'So I mean, DOGE is still there, frankly, wreaking havoc on the federal government.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
a minute ago
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Texas' proposed congressional map dismantles districts flagged by DOJ
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In the Houston area, the 9th and the 18th districts, where no one race currently constitutes a majority of eligible voters, would be redrawn as just over half Hispanic and half Black, respectively. But as a result, the nearby 29th District — a fixture of east Houston's Latino community — would lose its Hispanic majority, becoming 43% Hispanic, 33% Black and 18% white. The 33rd District in North Texas, although entirely redrawn, would still have no single racial or ethnic group that constitutes a majority. Texas has long maintained that it drew these maps without an eye toward race. But tinkering with the lines now that these racial concerns have been raised risks triggering a Voting Rights Act complaint, legal experts said. States generally cannot redraw districts based on race without a compelling argument that it's necessary to protect voters' ability to elect their candidates of choice, said Justin Levitt, a redistricting expert at Loyola Law School. 'It sure seems like they have actually done what the DOJ, without any basis, accused them of,' Levitt said, noting that he had not done sufficient analysis to say for sure. Legal experts say the DOJ's interpretation of the law around coalition districts, and thus its legal threats to Texas, are based on faulty logic that could be backing the state into a discrimination lawsuit. 'Nothing in this decision suggests, much less holds, that the VRA prohibits the very existence of coalition districts,' Ellen Katz, a redistricting expert at the University of Michigan Law School, told the House redistricting committee at its first hearing last week. 'There are hundreds of these districts nationwide in which jurisdictions relying on traditional principles create these districts.' 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But in court, Texas has long argued it has not drawn coalition districts to address racial disparities, because it draws 'race blind' maps. Attorney General Ken Paxton doubled down on this argument in response to the Dhillon letter. 'The Texas Legislature has led the Nation in rejecting race-based decision-making in its redistricting process — it has drawn its current maps in conformance with traditional, non-racial redistricting criteria to ensure Texas continues to adopt policies that will truly Make America Great Again,' Paxton wrote. At the request of Democrats, the House and Senate redistricting committees have invited Dhillon to testify on the letter and her allegations against Texas, but neither she nor any representative from the DOJ has responded to the request. The Senate panel this week voted not to subpoena her. What happened to the Houston DOJ districts Three of the districts Dhillon cited in her letter are neighbors in the Houston area. All three would be radically redrawn by the House's proposed map. The 9th Congressional District is a multiracial district made up of 45% Black voters, 25% Hispanic voters, 18% white voters and 9% Asian voters. The district, which covers parts of southwest Houston and outlying suburbs, voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 by 44 points, and has reliably reelected Democratic Rep. Al Green since 2004. Under the House's proposed map, the 9th District has been redrawn around an entirely new part of Houston, retaining just 2% of Green's current district and scooping up conservative swaths of east Harris County. The Hispanic population would climb to just over 50% and the white population would almost double to 34%. Black voters would drop to 12% and Asian voters to 2%. In 2024, this new district would have voted for Trump by 15 points. 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North Carolina Senate race sets up as a fight over who would be a champion for the middle class
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Still, Cooper's opening message that he hears the worries of working families has given Democrats in North Carolina and beyond a sense that they can reclaim their place as the party that champions the middle class. They think it's a message that could help them pick up a Senate seat, and possibly more, in next year's midterm elections, which in recent years have typically favored the party out of power. 'I'm Roy Cooper. And I know that today, for too many Americans, the middle class feels like a distant dream,' the former governor said in a video announcing his candidacy. 'Meanwhile, the biggest corporations and the richest Americans have grabbed unimaginable wealth at your expense. It's time for that to change.' Cooper's plainspoken appeal may represent just the latest effort by Democrats to find their way back to power, but it has some thinking they've finally found their footing after last year's resounding losses. 'I think it would do us all a lot of good to take a close look at his example,' said Larry Grisolano, a Chicago-based Democratic media strategist and former adviser to President Barack Obama. Whatley, a former North Carolina GOP chairman and close President Donald Trump ally, used his Thursday announcement that he was entering the race to hail the president as the true champion of the middle class. He said Trump had already fulfilled promises to end taxes on tips and overtime and said Cooper was out of step with North Carolinians. 'Six months in, it's pretty clear to see, America is back,' Whatley said. 'A healthy, robust economy, safe kids and communities and a strong America. These are the North Carolina values that I will champion if elected.' Still, the decision by Cooper, who held statewide office for 24 years and has never lost an election, makes North Carolina a potential bright spot in a midterm election cycle when Democrats must net four seats to retake the majority — and when most of the 2026 Senate contests are in states Trump won comfortably last November. State Rep. Cynthia Ball threw up a hand in excitement when asked Monday at the North Carolina Legislative Building about Cooper's announcement. 'Everyone I've spoken to was really hoping that he was going to run,' said the Raleigh Democrat. Democratic legislators hope having Cooper's name at the top of the ballot will encourage higher turnout and help them in downballot races. While Republicans have controlled both General Assembly chambers since 2011, Democrats managed last fall to end the GOP's veto-proof majority, if only by a single seat. Republican strategists familiar with the national Senate landscape have said privately that Cooper poses a formidable threat. The Senate Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, wasted no time in challenging Cooper's portrayal of a common-sense advocate for working people. 'Roy Cooper masquerades as a moderate,' the narrator in the 30-second spot says. 'But he's just another radical, D.C. liberal in disguise.' Cooper, a former state legislator who served four terms as attorney general before he became governor, has never held an office in Washington. Still, Whatley was quick to link Cooper to national progressive figures such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Whatley accused Cooper of failing to address illegal immigration and of supporting liberal gender ideology. He echoed the themes raised in the Senate Leadership Fund ad, which noted Cooper's vetoes in the Republican-led legislature of measures popular with conservatives, such as banning gender-affirming health care for minors and requiring county sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials. 'Roy Cooper may pretend to be different than the radical extremists,' Whatley said. 'But he is all-in on their agenda.' Cooper first won the governorship in 2016, while Trump was carrying the state in his first White House bid. Four years later, they both carried the state again. Cooper, who grew up in a small town roughly 50 miles or 80 kilometers east of Raleigh, has long declined requests that he seek federal office. He 'understands rural North Carolina,' veteran North Carolina strategist Thomas Mills said. 'And while he's not going to win it, he knows how to talk to those folks.' As with most Democrats, Cooper's winning coalition includes the state's largest cities and suburbs. But he has long made enough inroads in other areas to win. 'He actually listens to what voters are trying to tell us, instead of us trying to explain to them how they should think and feel,' said state Sen. Michael Garrett, a Greensboro Democrat. In his video announcement, Cooper tried to turn the populist appeal Trump made to voters on checkbook issues against the party in power, casting himself as the Washington outsider. Senior Cooper strategist Morgan Jackson said the message represents a shift and will take work to drive home with voters. 'Part of the challenge Democrats had in 2024 is we were not addressing directly the issues people were concerned about today,' Jackson said. 'We have to acknowledge what people are going through right now and what they are feeling, that he hears you and understands what you feel.' Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge 21st Century, a group that conducts research for an initiative called the Working Class Project, said Cooper struck a tone that other Democrats should try to match. 'His focus on affordability and his outsider status really hits a lot of the notes these folks are interested in,' Dennis said. 'I do think it's a model, especially his focus on affordability.' 'We can attack Republicans all day long, but unless we have candidates who can really embody that message, we're not going to be able to take back power.' ___ Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
