By Raphael Satter and Tim Reid
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump has officially announced the creation of an advisory group aimed at carrying out dramatic cuts to the U.S. government, attracting immediate lawsuits challenging its operations.
The group — dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE” — is being co-run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and has grandiose goals of eliminating entire federal agencies and cutting three quarters of federal government jobs. Failed Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is a co-chair but will announce his departure from DOGE next week as he gears up for a governor’s race in Ohio, a person familiar with Ramaswamy’s plans said.
“To restore competence and effectiveness to our federal government, my administration will establish the brand new Department of Government Efficiency,” Trump said in his inaugural speech Monday.
Despite the name, the committee is not a department and has little official power to carry out any reorganization, let alone the head-spinning cuts proposed by Musk and Ramaswamy.
Government employee unions, watchdog groups, and public interest organizations sued within minutes of the announcement. Among them were National Security Counselors, which alleged that DOGE was breaking a 1972 law that governed federal advisory committees. So too did the American Public Health Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. Another watchdog group, Public Citizen, is suing over the DOGE’s uncertain legal status, along with a union representing U.S. government employees.
Telsa and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which is named as a defendant in the lawsuits, didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.
Advisory committees on cutting government waste are often announced to great fanfare and typically accomplish little of note. In 1982, then-President Ronald Reagan announced a group composed of “outstanding experts from the private sector” to review the executive branch’s spending. It ended up delivering its report 18 months late; most of its recommendations were never implemented.
(Reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington and Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Diane Craft and Anna Driver)
