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A resurfaced 2011 video reveals former President Barack Obama launching a "Campaign to Cut Waste," strikingly similar to the current Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative to eliminate government inefficiency. In the video, Obama emphasizes the need to reduce wasteful spending, highlighting the appointment of former President Joe Biden to lead the effort, saying that “nobody messes with Joe.” This initiative aimed to increase government accountability, reduce unnecessary costs, and promote fiscal responsibility echoes what the Trump administration is currently trying to do. Elon Musk recently shared a 2011 video featuring Obama promoting his initiative, "Campaign to Cut Waste," which...

Two labs at Kansas State University that work on global food security are scheduled to shut down in less than a month because the Trump administration has cut off funding. K-State will shed about 10 jobs. Abroad, hundreds of low-income students that were recruited to advance sustainable agriculture in their countries will lose funding to go to college. The two Feed the Future Innovation Labs will close on April 12, K-State announced in a news release. The closures are related to the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. The lab was paying for about 275 students...

If you’d have asked a Roman citizen on New Year in the year 1 AD what kind of a nation he lived in, he’d have likely said a Republic. And he would have been right. That year, just a few years after Jesus was born, Rome was ostensibly a proud republic. While they had a Senate, which was an unelected aristocratic, they also had Consuls, a two-man quasi executive which was elected by representatives of the people. They had Tribunes, who were elected by the people (sans the aristocrats) and who acted as a check on the Senate and Consuls....

Who knew that Johns Hopkins University had a head count so bloated that it could easily cut 2000 staff members? Honestly, I could have guessed that without looking up the student enrollment. It is a university of some size, and therefore has an uncounted number of useless or worse employees whom they can afford to keep on board because the federal government keeps pouring ungodly amounts of money into Higher Ed, even though the return for both the country and for the students is getting worse and worse. Johns Hopkins University announces it will fire nearly 2,000 workers over cut...

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy informed members of Congress on Thursday he has signed an agreement with the General Services Administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to cut 10,000 workers and billions of dollars from the U.S. Postal Service budget. In a letter to Congress, DeJoy lamented that the Postal Service has a "broken business model that was not financially sustainable without critically necessary and core change." "Fixing a broken organization that had experienced close to $100 billion in losses and was projected to lose another $200 billion, without a bankruptcy proceeding, is a daunting task," DeJoy wrote....

A federal judge refused Friday to block the destruction of classified documents as part of the building cleanout at the U.S. Agency for International Development, finding that records slated for shredding or burning are old or no longer needed. The documents don’t appear to be related to the ongoing court battles over the near-dismantling of USAID by the Trump administration, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols found as he refused to grant a temporary restraining order. The cases come as the Trump administration dismantles USAID, cutting off most federal money and terminating 83% of the programs abroad. All but a few...

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York went off on members of her own party Thursday amid a looming government shutdown, saying, "American people, whether they are Republicans, independents, Democrats, are up in arms about Elon Musk and the actual gutting of federal agencies across the board." snip AOC: It is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to to hand the few pieces of leverage that we have away for free when we've been sent here to protect social security, protect medicaid, and protect medicare

*** On Tuesday, Trump issued a memorandum entitled “Ensuring the Enforcement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c),” and directed it to “the heads of executive departments and agencies.” The order opens by describing the way activists, using donated and government-granted funds, have been obtaining sweeping injunctions from carefully selected district court judges (that is, those seated in forums friendly to Democrats). With the judges’ help, the activists have been ” functionally inserting themselves into the executive policy making process and therefore undermining the democratic process.”...it’s mandatory, although the government never seems to have bothered pushing for security before: The...

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Universities across the U.S. have announced hiring freezes, citing new financial uncertainty as the Trump administration threatens a range of cuts to federal contracts and research grants. Some have announced layoffs. Johns Hopkins University said Thursday it is eliminating more than 2,200 workers because of a loss of funding from USAID. Some employees are in Baltimore but most work in 44 other countries in support of the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school and an affiliated nonprofit organization. Some schools already have shelved projects because of the cuts, which have been delayed temporarily by a court challenge....

The Air Force canceled its premiere acquisition seminar and collaborative meeting with industry for 2025 to comply with Trump administration efficiency directives, the Air Force Materiel Command’s Life Cycle Management Center said March 11. The Life Cycle Industry Days 2025 event was to be held the Convention Center in Dayton, Ohio, July 28 and 29.“Based on Air Force guidance on mission-critical categories of exempted travel consistent with Executive Order 14222, ‘Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Cost Efficiency Initiative’, and in consultation with the Dayton Development Coalition and representatives of the State of Ohio, we have canceled the 9th...

“The words that I give you today should not be taken as some kind of wild and crazy judge in San Francisco has said that the administration cannot engage in a reduction in force. I’m not saying that at all,” Alsup noted as he issued his ruling. “Of course, if he does, it has to comply with the statutory requirements: the Reduction In Force act, the Civil Service Act, the Constitution, maybe other statutes,” the judge continued. “But it can be done.”

Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., erupted over Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) while delivering remarks to colleagues on the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday. During a markup of bills related to providing the House with information on DOGE access to Treasury Department payment systems and the Social Security Administration, Larson turned red and shouted at Republican colleagues, "You will do whatever Elon Musk and Donald Trump tell you to do. "Where's the independence of the committee? Where's the legislature? We're an equal branch of government," an enraged Larson yelled, "Look at the empty seats here....

Over a two-day period, 239 "wasteful" contracts with a "ceiling value" of $1.7 billion have been terminated, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said Thursday, including a grant intended to teach transgender and queer urban farmers about "food justice." The elimination of the contracts represents a savings of $400 million, according to a DOGE tweet posted on X. Among them included an $8.5 million consulting contract for "fiscal stewardship to improve management and program operations in order to drive innovation and improve efficiency and effectiveness of business services; rethink, realign and reskill the workforce; and enhance program delivery through a...

US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has signed an agreement with the Department of Government Efficiency and the General Services Administration to work with the US Postal Service In a letter DeJoy sent to Congress on Thursday, he said DOGE teams will “assist us in identifying and achieving further efficiencies,” saying the Elon Musk-led agency will focus on improving the management of USPS retirement assets and the Workers’ Compensation Program, as well as addressing the agency’s legislative mandates and regulatory requirements.

An Obama-appointed federal judge ordered Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reveal its plans to downsize the government and to identify all its employees, among other actions. The directives from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan come as 14 Democratic state attorneys general are suing President Donald Trump, Musk and DOGE, arguing that Musk is unconstitutionally wielding power, according to Politico. Chutkan gave Musk and DOGE three weeks to produce the information, which ultimately will help her decide whether to block DOGE’s operations altogether, it added.

The Internal Revenue Service’s top lawyer has reportedly been demoted as Elon Musk’s DOGE agency continues its push to get access to confidential taxpayer data. William Paul, the IRS’ acting chief counsel, was recently removed from his position, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing multiple sources. Paul is expected to be replaced by another IRS lawyer, Andrew De Mello, who was nominated to be the Education Department’s inspector general during President Trump’s first administration, according to the sources. The exact circumstances surrounding Paul’s demotion weren’t immediately clear. Paul, who is a non-political appointee, has been running what is essentially...

The Department of Government Efficiency announced that the National Institutes of Health has canceled more than $2.1 billion in grants, including one for $620,000 involving a "teen pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys." In addition to the teen pregnancy program, DOGE wrote in a post Tuesday night on X that the NIH canceled a $699,000 grant for studying "cannabis use" among "sexual minority gender diverse individuals," $740,000 for examining "social networks" among "black and Latino sexual minority men in New Jersey," $50,000 for assessing "sexual health" among "LGTBQ+ Latinx youth in an agricultural community," and $75,000 for researching "structural racism."...

It's a realistic question: A shutdown means the executive branch can furlough all non-essential employees. But isn't that EXACTLY what DOGE is doing (among other audits). If that were the case, shouldn't we be encouraging the DEMS to vote for a shutdown, then let it play itself out? Or am I missing something?

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been squandering money on thousands of unused software licenses, an audit found, according to DOGE. For example, there were "11,020 Acrobat licenses with zero users," DOGE noted in the post on X. The list also included other examples. DOGE's "initial findings on paid software licenses" also included, "35,855 ServiceNow licenses on three products; only using 84," "1,776 Cognos licenses; only using 325," "800 WestLaw Classic licenses; only using 216" and "10,000 Java licenses; only using 400." "All are being fixed," the tweet concluded.