The Trump Administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has wrought havoc on the federal government, diminishing its ability to perform essential work—like administering Social Security benefits for retirees, weather forecasting to predict tornadoes, and environmental pollution cleanup—while creating new inefficiencies and increased public costs. Now, many Republican governors and state lawmakers are demonstrating their loyalty to the Trump administration by setting up state-level versions of DOGE.
Despite the novel branding, these initiatives are part of the longstanding right-wing mission to capture and consolidate government in service of the wealthy. In fact, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for deconstructing the federal government—which the Trump administration has followed almost to a T—is rooted in decades of state-level efforts to weaken democracy, suppress workers’ rights, and deepen inequality.
At least 26 states across the country have launched DOGE-style efforts purportedly related to “government efficiency” through legislation, executive action, or the creation of new legislative committees. While these initiatives vary, they all use disingenuous calls to “root out inefficiency” and “cut wasteful spending” as a smokescreen for the same right-wing agenda many conservative state lawmakers and their allies have pursued for decades: consolidating power in the hands of a minimally accountable executive, attacking public-sector workers, and cutting public services in order to finance tax cuts for the wealthy.
Ashamed to see my former home here. And it needs all those programs.
Nothing wrong with government efficiency. The problem is that the phrase is just a dogwhistle for oppressing minorities.
It’s a lot like OpenAI where the name is a complete misnomer having very little to do with the nature of the business.
Nah, that’s more Trump’s shtick. Elon’s goals are obvious: he’s just trying to privatize everything valuable and destroy everything that can regulate him.
Elon is a white South African who has over a dozen kids because he’s bought in deep to the “great replacement” theory. Let’s not underestimate how racist he is.
Edit: oh yeah, and he also seems to have gone off the deep end when his daughter came out as trans, so let’s not underestimate how sexist/LGBTQ-phobic he is, either.
Cut the right govt agencies and gain yourself more control. No oversight.
Government efficiency is really just the worst possible version of a product or service that the market will continue to accept.
And even that isn’t what they’re going for. They’re just smashing the government to privatize everything. If a service doesnt get privatized, well you’re shit outta luck
No it’s not. Government efficiency is “not having to jump through stupid hoops to get things done”, not “reducing how much money the government spends”. For example, government efficiency is the IRS filling out my taxes for me - they already know what I owe them.
DOGE is just a misnomer intended to obfuscate the real goal, which you stated.
I mean yeah you’re right, that’s what it should mean. But that’s not what they mean by it. They want to “run the government like a business.” That means cutting costs and distributing the cheapest product possible in order to maximize profit. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to for their base to gobble it up.
Oh look, it’s all of the states run by conservative governments… and most have been run by conservative governments for MANY years. So they’ve been running inefficiently all this time?
I don’t think VT, NJ, and RI are on that list (of being run by conservatives) but it also seems those doge wannabes there are just proposed from a few conservatives in each of those. So unlikely to pass.
The conservative states… Yeah. They’ll do it.
As far as I can tell, there is no DOGE NJ. Only some republicans in NJ supporting the idea.
And never going to pass for sure.
I’ve only ever watched that clip and never the movie itself, but damn if I can’t hear that picture.
In case you don’t know, it’s from the film Oh Brother Where Art Thou. The film is an absolute trip, and it’s a modern retelling of Homer’s Odyssey but set in depression era US South. Great music and honestly just a completely hard to predict movie at every twist and turn
We thought you was a toad!
I’m the got-damn pater familias!
They’re emboldened
A more honest way to state the conservative, aka corporate America agenda is: we need to stop these poors and working class from taking more of our money.
Like they pay taxes.
More accurately, “We need to stop these poors and working class from taking money the government can give to us instead!”
Not paying taxes is part of it. If everyone making less than $100k was tax free and that tax was then being paid by the upper percentile, that is “the working class taking more of our money”.
Oh look, all the shit states are being shitty. Hope they shit themselves to death.
