How DOGE is planning to cut down the feds

President-elect Donald Trump’s appointees for his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planning to crack down on employees who work from home — those who are left, anyway, after the duo’s round of “large-scale firings.”

In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy laid out “the DOGE plan to reform government,” in which they purport to “reverse a decades-long executive power grab” while “following the Supreme Court’s guidance.”

The tech entrepreneurs note how “most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies…”

To combat this trend, which the DOGE leaders write is “antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision,” they propose issuing a return-to-office (RTO) order combined with new locations for said offices. 

“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: if federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” they write.

According to Just the News, “Ramaswamy has suggested [employees] return the office five days a week — 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. – instead of a ‘mass firing’ to trim the federal bureaucracy.” The publication further reports that, “A Federal News Network survey earlier this year showed roughly 30 percent of the 6,338 federal workers surveyed were working fully remote. Six percent was entirely in-office, which would leave about 64 percent with a hybrid work schedule.” 

A recent CNN article reports how the new policy could serve “as a way to help reduce the federal workforce through attrition” and includes interviews with government employees who said a RTO order would cause them to quit their jobs.

In-office work isn’t the only change the pair suggests. They’ve also floated the idea of the “relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area.”

The Journal itself, however, notes “there’s a hitch” in the RTO plan, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out how relocating Beltway agencies would likely backfire.

Clyde Wayne Crews writes:

Spreading swamp vegetation to the Heartland will permanently undermine the deregulatory legacy Trump seeks to restore. No future legislator, no matter the party, will agree to shutting down the useless satellite agency in his district; that should be obvious.

Instead of relocating agencies, DOGE and Trump should emphasize abolishing unnecessary departments and agencies entirely. 

-Teresa Mull

On our radar

NOT A FLASH IN THE PAM President-elect Donald Trump announced that former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi will be nominated to serve as his attorney general. The nominee slot was vacated by former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz amid concerns he wouldn’t pass the Senate confirmation process. 

CASEY CRACKS Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey conceded his race against Republican challenger Dave McCormick, weeks after Election Day. The original margin handing McCormick victory was less than half a point, which triggered an automatic recount. Pressure increased on Casey to concede the race when one local election official controversially promised to count ineligible ballots.

HERE TO STAY Judge Juan Merchan indefinitely postponed sentencing for president-elect Donald Trump in his “hush money” trial, knocking down a previous sentencing date of November 26. It is unclear if Merchan will reverse the order after Trump leaves office for a second time. 

Project 2025 is cool again?

In the latest instance of Trump letting bygones be bygones, his transition team is reportedly welcoming a glut of résumés from Project 2025. “There’s a lot of positions to fill and we continue to send names over, including ones from the database as they are conservative, qualified and vetted,” one person who worked on Project 2025 said. “Hard to find 4,000 solid people, so we are happy to help.”

However, not all Project 2025-aligned people, policies and causes are created equally in the aftermath of the election. While prominent architects of some of the group’s policies, like Tom Homan and Brendan Carr, have gotten high-profile gigs in the second Trump White House, Project 2025’s critics caution that lower-level staffers may still find themselves on the outside looking in. Remember that Howard Lutnick, Trump’s transition chair and likely commerce secretary, said that any résumé that came from Project 2025 is radioactive, after all. 

For more than a year, Cockburn has covered the drama between Project 2025 and Trump’s orbit, which seems to have two main causes: Heritage president Kevin Roberts’s extensive ties to Trump’s rival, Governor Ron DeSantis, and how some of its more conservative policies were (unsuccessfully, we should note) used by Democrats to attack Trump electorally. 

“Despite its PR efforts, Project 2025 still seems to be persona non grata, and Kevin [Roberts] is working to repair the relationship,” a policy advisor who was involved with the transition noted to Cockburn. “Who knows if that’s working.”

That hasn’t stopped Roberts from trying. For weeks, Cockburn has heard that Project 2025 was worming its way back into Trump orbit’s good graces. The Heritage Foundation launched an ad campaign reeking of “pick-me” energy that will target Senate Republicans who oppose Trump’s cabinet picks.

–Cockburn

Bill Clinton on women

President Bill Clinton, ever the ladies man, predicted in a recent interview that a conservative woman similar to Margaret Thatcher might be elected as the first female American president before a Democrat. 

“Well, I think all these cultural battles that we’re fighting make it harder in some ways for a woman to run,” Clinton said. He rejected the idea that the issue with his wife, Hillary, and Vice President Kamala Harris was solely about political party rather than sex, but conceded, “I think it would probably be easier for a conservative Republican woman to win.”

He also threw an errant jab at President Barack Obama, insisting that Hillary would have also won the presidency had she been the nominee in 2008, suggesting Obama’s victory was more due to political circumstance than talent. 

–Amber Duke