America's Talking - Trump Signs Order Forcing Agencies to Work With DOGE

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

(The Center Square) – Billionaire Elon Musk joined President Donald Trump in the oval office Tuesday as the president signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to work with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE. The order will require federal agencies to work with DOGE to significantly reduce their labor force. A White House fact sheet, first reported by Semafor, says the order requires agencies hire “no more than one employee for every four employees” that are fired, with some exceptions, including for public safety and law enforcement. DOGE and Musk have dominated the news cycle since Trump took office by exposing an onslaught of controversial federal spending, most notably as USAID, an agency that has been all but destroyed since Trump took office.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Full story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_d333eb96-e8bf-11ef-8bdb-db2d3091b469.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. The new Department of Government Efficiency has been a hit with many, though not all, Americans, as seemingly every day the group that Elon Musk leads finds new evidence of questionable federal spending. The latest shocking example found this week has led to firings and a drawback of millions of dollars. Doge this week reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA,

the agency whose priority is to respond to natural disasters and help victims with relief, spent millions of dollars on New York hotels to house immigrants in the U.S. illegally, including members of the violent Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Araagua. Joining me to discuss this as Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, at least four FEMA officials were fired over the revelation, and new Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Noem, was blunt when she said she was drawing back the money. Tell us more. Well, I mean, I think the takeaway here, Dan, is you've been saving up for your vacation when all along you should have just been trying to get picked up

by DHS and you would have been put in a cushy New York City hotel somewhere. Maybe, I don't know if room service was included. But of course, I'm joking a little bit, but not a lot because that is really the impression that we're getting from this, the latest example of federal funding run amok your taxpayer dollars being sloshed and handed out and doled out in ways that raise eyebrows and are starting to anger people, I think. In this latest example that Christy Noams really cracked down on, we see that these are not, you know, this is not the Motel 6th and this is not the Super 8. It's not even the holiday end. These are some luxury hotels that illegal immigrants, migrants are being put in. And if there's anything, you know, Dan, if there's anything the

government does, it's moved slowly. And so these are not overnight stays. These are extended stays as the government gets its act together, processes people. And it's really a sign of just how overwhelmed the system is. Of course, you know, luxury hotels and luxury hotels are not the first choice for housing migrants. But because the illegal immigration crisis got so out of control during the Biden administration, they're running out, they ran out of places to put people. They don't really value the money that much. They don't see it as their own. And so they started putting people, these migrants, in these luxury hotels. And so Elon is uncovering it. He's uncovered all kinds of things. This is just one example. Of course, this is particularly salient because Lake and Riley's

killer is involved. And Lake and Riley has really become a symbol of the danger that it opposed to American citizens when you let millions and millions of people into the U.S. not knowing who they are, what their criminal backgrounds are. And even when you do arrest them, sometimes they get out, not deporting people. Just the whole brokenness of the system is really culminating in this very stark example of government waste and immigration dysfunction. Lake and Riley, of course, the late Georgia college student who was killed by an illegal immigrant while she was jogging near campus. Casey, Christy Noem on X, yes, day after the revelations that this money was this taxpayer, federal taxpayer money was being spent

to house migrants in the U.S. illegally at this posh New York Hotel. I'm just going to read her quote on X. I have clawed back the full payment that FEMA Deep State activists unilaterally gave to New York City migrant hotels. FEMA was funding the Roosevelt Hotel that serves as a trend of Aragua base of operation and was used to house Lake and Riley's killer, mark my words, there will not be a single penny spent that goes against the interest and safety of the American people. That's pretty blunt. It is pretty blunt, but it just shows you where there's this example, how much more is going on, Dan, that we don't know about?

I mean, if you find a bottle of alcohol in your teenager's room and you take that bottle and you throw it away, you don't say, oh, we've solved the problem. No, you assume this has been going on for a while and there's a lot more where that came from. And this is the same thing. I mean, I'm glad that we found this example. We cleaned it up. The government now seems intent on, you know, preventing future spending of this kind. But how are they even going to know? I mean, the government is so massive as Musk has continued to point out. There are so many, you know, actually millions of employees who are doing things at different levels and no accountability. The IGs release these reports that no one reads and they're not very thorough and they're often too nice. Nothing changes. It's basically almost impossible to fire these people. I mean, we're starting to see some firing, some buyouts. But I think the question that I'm asking, and I think some Americans are asking, is this just a fad den where we're going to pretend to crack down on government waste for a couple of months and make an example out of some of the worst things? Or are we going to have a multi-year systemic overhaul reformation of how the government does business, the accountability, the ability to fire people, shrinking the overall size of government, shrinking the responsibilities and them not doing things they shouldn't be doing. Are we going to have a total reformation, or is this just a fad? I think that's my question. Yeah. And many Democrats have pushed back on all of these cuts that Trump and that Trump has announced that Musk has found. But Trump did double

down again this week when he signed in an executive order requiring federal agencies to work with Musk Doge. Tell us about that. So this, you know, Trump has issued a flurry of executive order since taking office, some of them relating to federal spending, Doge, which Musk is leading, as we've said. This one in particular gives Doge some more specific legal authority. There's been some questions about, hey, what is Doge anyway? And do we really have to report to these, you know, basically teenagers or young kids that Musk, this little rag-tag bunch of 20-year-olds that are 20, 25-year-olds that are helping Musk do these things. And now the answer legally is, yeah, you do. You career bureaucrats who are balking and working with Musk and his team. Yes, you do have to work with him.

The order also put in place some restrictions around hiring that basically agencies cannot just go and replace these people who are being fired. They can, I think the order said they can hire one person for every four that are fired. This is really just laying a legal groundwork and framework moving forward because we have not yet seen the mass firings that some of the Doge community promised. We've seen buyouts. We've seen some firings. But for instance, Vivek Ramoswamy, he's no longer part of Doge, but used to help lead it.

I mean, he was talking about going alphabetically and basically firing every. every other person in the government. And so it's been really interesting to see if we ever get there, this order is going to provide some legal groundwork where these agencies can't just go hire a bunch of people back and replace them. And of course, there's big freezes on hiring now. And a lot of agencies don't even know their budget or what's going to happen moving forward. There's kind of a limbo in the federal government. So this order requires them to work with Doge. He's going line by line. Of course, he started with USAID. And we saw what happened there. I mean, Most of that agency is basically gone now.

It's all but destroyed. And the examples coming out of USA, and of course there are good things that USAID has done. But the examples coming out of it of what they've done badly have just really discredited that agency in a lot of ways. And given Musk sort of the moral impetus, the moral imperative to keep going, to keep finding examples like these, like the luxury hotels that we're talking about, like the transgender operas overseas. You know, I mean, there's so many examples. like this, that I think Musk and Trump still have the backing of the American people to go after this thing. Now, a lot of these spending cuts are going to be going through the court system as 22 states attorney generals filed suit against the Trump administration to block cuts to the National Institute

of Health grants that go to pay for administrative costs. Democrats say, you know, that's going to hurt health care research. Trump says that's just going to delay the federal government from easing the debt burden and the deficit burden on the budget. Final comments, Casey. Yeah, I mean, they're kind of undercutting each other. In one sense, you know, Trump talks about the budget, ring a little bit hollow when he's pushing the sizable tax cuts that he is now. I mean, you know, lower taxes are generally popular among Americans and Republicans, but pushing them at the same time that you're talking about spending cuts and

those spending cuts don't make up for all the tax cuts you're pushing. I think it weakens his argument a little bit. But Democrats are in an even bigger pickle because Trump has such a mandate. If they oppose Trump right now, it's almost like they're opposing the recently elected, duly, you know, president and really the will of the people by proxy. And they're not unified. They're not uniform in their messaging, their argument. They're saying, they're complaining about the process, which is never a good place to be. And they don't have any kind of like philosophical unity. or moral fiber to their push. They're just complaining about the way Trump is doing things.

And that is not enough to stand up to this Trump train, which is going 180 miles an hour right now, Dan. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.