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The Independent
17 minutes ago
- The Independent
DOGE sprouts in red states, as governors embrace the cost-cutter brand and make it their own
The brash and chaotic first days of President Donald Trump 's Department of Government Efficiency, once led by the world's richest man Elon Musk, spawned state-level DOGE mimicry as Republican governors and lawmakers aim to show they are in step with their party's leader. Governors have always made political hay out of slashing waste or taming bureaucracy, but DOGE has, in some ways, raised the stakes for them to show that they are zealously committed to cutting costs. Many drive home the point that they have always been focused on cutting government, even if they're not conducting mass layoffs. 'I like to say we were doing DOGE before DOGE was a thing,' Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in announcing her own task force in January. Critics agree that some of these initiatives are nothing new and suggest they are wasteful, essentially duplicating built-in processes that are normally the domain of legislative committees or independent state auditors. At the same time, some governors are using their DOGE vehicles to take aim at GOP targets of the moment, such as welfare programs or diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And some governors who might be eyeing a White House run in 2028 are rebranding their cost-cutting initiatives as DOGE, perhaps eager to claim the mantle of the most DOGE of them all. No chainsaws in the states At least 26 states have initiated DOGE-style efforts of varying kinds, according to the Economic Policy Institute based in Washington, D.C. Most DOGE efforts were carried out through a governor's order — including by governors in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire and Oklahoma — or by lawmakers introducing legislation or creating a legislative committee. The state initiatives have a markedly different character than Trump's slash-and-burn approach, symbolized by Musk's chainsaw-brandishing appearance at a Conservative Political Action Committee appearance in February. Governors are tending to entrust their DOGE bureaus to loyalists, rather than independent auditors, and are often employing what could be yearslong processes to consolidate procurement, modernize information technology systems, introduce AI tools, repeal regulations or reduce car fleets, office leases or worker headcounts through attrition. Steve Slivinski, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who researches state government regulatory structures, said that a lot of what he has seen from state-level DOGE initiatives are the 'same stuff you do on a pretty regular basis anyway' in state governments. States typically have routine auditing procedures and the ways states have of saving money are 'relatively unsexy," Slivinski said. And while the state-level DOGE vehicles might be useful over time in finding marginal improvements, "branding it DOGE is more of a press op rather than anything new or substantially different than what they usually do,' Slivinski said. Analysts at the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute say that governors and lawmakers, primarily in the South and Midwest, are using DOGE to breathe new life into long-term agendas to consolidate power away from state agencies and civil servants, dismantle public services and benefit insiders and privatization advocates. 'It's not actually about cutting costs because of some fiscal responsibility,' EPI analyst Nina Mast said. Governors promoting spending cuts Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry rebranded his 'Fiscal Responsibility Program' as Louisiana DOGE, and promoted it as the first to team up with the federal government to scrub illegitimate enrollees from welfare programs. It has already netted $70 million in savings in the Medicaid program in an 'unprecedented' coordination, Landry said in June. In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt — who says in a blurb on the Oklahoma DOGE website that 'I've been DOGE-ing in Oklahoma since before it was cool" — made a DOGE splash with the first report by his Division of Government Efficiency by declaring that the state would refuse some $157 million in federal public health grants. The biggest chunk of that was $132 million intended to support epidemiology and laboratory capacity to control infectious disease outbreaks. The Stitt administration said that funding — about one-third of the total over an eight-year period — exceeded the amount needed. The left-leaning Oklahoma Policy Institute questioned the wisdom of that, pointing to rising numbers of measles and whooping cough cases and the rocky transition under Stitt of the state's public health lab from Oklahoma City to Stillwater. Oklahoma Democrats issued rebukes, citing Oklahoma's lousy public health rankings. 'This isn't leadership,' state Sen. Carri Hicks said. 'It's negligence." Stitt's Oklahoma DOGE has otherwise recommended changes in federal law to save money, opened up the suggestion box to state employees and members of the general public and posted a spreadsheet online with cost savings initiatives in his administration. Those include things as mundane as agencies going paperless, refinancing bonds, buying automated lawn mowers for the Capitol grounds or eliminating a fax machine line in the State Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order in February creating a task force of DOGE teams in each state agency. In the order, DeSantis recited 10 points on what he described as his and Florida's 'history of prudent fiscal management' even before DOGE. Among other things, DeSantis vowed to scrutinize spending by state universities and municipal and county governments — including on DEI initiatives — at a time when DeSantis is pushing to abolish the property taxes that predominantly fund local governments. His administration has since issued letters to universities and governments requesting reams of information and received a blessing from lawmakers, who passed legislation authorizing the inquiry and imposing fines for entities that don't respond. After the June 30 signing ceremony, DeSantis declared on social media: 'We now have full authority to DOGE local governments.' In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched her cost-cutting Arkansas Forward last year, before DOGE, and later said the state had done the 'same thing' as DOGE. Her administration spent much of 2024 compiling a 97-page report that listed hundreds of ways to possibly save $300 million inside a $6.5 billion budget. Achieving that savings — largely by standardizing information technology and purchasing — would sometimes require up-front spending and take years to realize savings. ___
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
We're becoming inured to Trump's outbursts – but when he goes quiet, we need to be worried
In the global attention economy, one titan looms over all others. Donald Trump can command the gaze of the world at a click of those famously short fingers. When he stages a spectacular made-for-TV moment – say, that Oval Office showdown with Volodymyr Zelenskyy – the entire planet sits up and takes notice. But that dominance has a curious side-effect. When Trump does something awful and eye-catching, nations tremble and markets move. But when he does something awful but unflashy, it scarcely registers. So long as there's no jaw-dropping video, no expletive-ridden soundbite, no gimmick or stunt, it can slip by as if it hadn't happened. Especially now that our senses are dulled through over-stimulation. These days it requires ever more shocking behaviour by the US president to prompt a reaction; we are becoming inured to him. Yet the danger he poses is as sharp as ever. Consider the events of just the last week or so, few of them stark enough to lead global news bulletins, yet each one another step towards the erosion of democracy in and by the world's most powerful country. On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs – yes, he's climbed back on that dead horse – on Brazil, if the judicial authorities there do not drop the prosecution of the country's Trump-like former president Jair Bolsonaro, charged with seeking to overturn his 2022 election defeat and leading a coup against the man who beat him, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. As concisely as he could manage, Lula explained, via social media, that Brazil is a sovereign country and that an independent judiciary cannot 'accept interference or instruction from anyone … No one is above the law.' This is becoming a habit of Trump's. He made the same move in defence of Benjamin Netanyahu last month, hinting that Israel could lose billions in US military aid if the prime minister continues to stand trial on corruption charges. In both cases, Trump was explicit in making the connection between the accused men and himself, decrying as a 'witch-hunt' the efforts to hold them to account. 'This is nothing more, or less, than an attack on a Political Opponent,' he posted, of Bolsonaro's legal woes. 'Something I know much about!' It's easy to make light of the transparent effort by Trump to forge an international trade union of populist would-be autocrats, but he's not solely moved by fraternal solidarity. He also wants to dismantle a norm that has long applied across the democratic world, which insists that even those at the top are subject to the law. That norm is an impediment to him, a check on his power. If he can discredit it, so that a new convention arises – one that agrees that leaders can act with impunity – that helps his animating project in the US: the amassing of ever more power to himself and the weakening or elimination of any rival source of authority that might act as a restraint. He is being quietly assisted in that goal by those US institutions that should regard themselves as co-equal branches of government – Congress and the supreme court – and whose constitutional duty is to stand up to an overmighty executive. Republicans in Congress have now approved a mega bill that they know will leave future generations of Americans drowning in debt and deprive millions of basic healthcare cover. Even so, they put aside their own judgment and bowed to the man who would be king. Less discussed was the bill's extraordinary expansion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or Ice. Its budget has been increased by a reported 308%, with an extra $45bn to spend on detention and $29.9bn for 'enforcement and deportation'. It will soon have the capacity to detain nearly 120,000 people at any one time. And, remember, latest figures show that about half of all those detained by Ice have no criminal record at all. No wonder even conservative critics are sounding the alarm. The anti-Trump Republicans of the Bulwark warn that within months, the 'national brute squad' that is Ice will have twice as many agents as the FBI and its own vast prison system, emerging as 'the primary instrument of internal state power'. In this view, Trump has realised that corrupting the FBI is a tall order – though still worth trying – so he is supplanting it with a shadow force shaped in his own image. As the Bulwark puts it: 'The American police state is here.' Those most directly threatened might share clips of masked Ice agents snatching suspected migrants off the streets and manhandling them violently, just as reports circulate of appalling conditions in Ice premises, with people held in 'dungeon-like facilities', more than 100 crammed into a small room, denied showers or a chance to change clothes, and sometimes given only one meal a day and forced to sleep on concrete benches or the floor. But it is hardly a matter of national focus. Because it is not accompanied by a neon-lit Trump performance, it is happening just out of view. The same could be said of a series of recent decisions by the supreme court. They may lack the instant, blockbuster impact of past rulings, but they accelerate the same Trump trend away from democracy and towards autocracy. On Tuesday, the judges gave Trump the green light to fire federal workers en masse and to dismantle entire government agencies without the approval of Congress. Earlier, the supreme court had ruled that Trump was allowed to remove Democrats from the leadership of government bodies that are meant to be under politically balanced supervision. More usefully still for Trump, last month the judges limited the power of the lower courts to block the executive branch, thereby lending a helping hand to one of the president's most egregious executive orders: his ending of the principle that anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen of the US, a right so fundamental it is enshrined in the constitution. In ruling after ruling, the supreme court is removing restraints on Trump and handing him even more power. Small wonder that when one of the dissenting minority on the court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was asked on Thursday what kept her up at night, she answered: 'The state of our democracy.' Meanwhile, Trump is succeeding in his goal of cowing the press, extracting serious cash from major news organisations in return for dropping (usually flimsy) lawsuits against them, a move that is having the desired, chilling effect. It all adds up to the steady erosion of US democracy and of democratic norms whose reach once extended far beyond US shores. Even if it is happening quietly, by Trump's standards, without the familiar sound and fury, it is still happening. The work of opposing it begins with noticing it. Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
NBC News
4 hours ago
- NBC News
Cannabis farmworker in California is on life support after chaotic federal immigration raid, family says
LOS ANGELES — A farmworker at a Southern California cannabis farm is in critical condition after being injured during a chaotic immigration raid by federal officers, county officials said Friday. Jaime Alanis Garcia is hospitalized at Ventura County Medical Center and remains in critical condition, officials said in a statement authorized by the man's family. His family told NBC Los Angeles that the man is on life support using an assistive breathing machine and has "catastrophic" injuries. He has a broken neck, broken skull and a severed artery, a niece said. The United Farm Workers had previously said he had died from his injuries. The labor union said the employee of Glass House Farms north of Los Angeles plummeted 30 feet. 'These violent and cruel federal actions terrorize American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families,' UFW President Teresa Romero said in a statement to NBC News. Immigration officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Federal agents lobbed less-lethal weapons and tear gas at protesters who gathered outside the Camarillo grow house Thursday while employees were being rounded up and arrested inside. Officers pepper-sprayed a disabled U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq and works as a security guard at the facility, the man's wife told NBC News. George Retes complied with federal officers when he arrived to check on friends and colleagues who might have been affected by the raids, she said, but instead he was arrested on suspicion of assault, according to immigration officials. A hearing is scheduled Monday. 'He wasn't even a protester,' Guadalupe Torres said of her husband. 'They smashed his window, and after they smashed his window, they pepper-sprayed him.' Aerial footage from NBC Los Angeles showed farm equipment being loaded up into tow trucks and people standing around in handcuffs. President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post Friday night that he watched the protests 'in disbelief' as unruly demonstrators threw rock and bricks at cars belonging to federal agents. He directed Homeland Security and immigration officials to use 'whatever means is necessary' to arrest people who do not obey the law. At a cultivation center in Carpinteria owned by Glass House Farms, manager Edgar Rodriguez said federal officers assaulted and handcuffed him after he repeatedly asked them to identify themselves and provide a warrant. Rodriguez was standing behind a window when 10 unidentified men in fatigues arrived Thursday morning in unmarked cars and one armored vehicle. Rodriguez, a U.S. citizen, said he asked the men several times to identify themselves and provide a reason for arriving heavily armed. The officers refused and responded by saying they were 'not ICE' but did not specify which agency they were from. One of the officers can be seen in video obtained exclusively by NBC News attempting to coax Rodriquez outside by telling him he wouldn't be harmed. 'I'm just trying to talk to you. We're not here for you,' the officer said in the video. 'We have a federal warrant. We have a right to be here. Please come out.'
