Government Capacity

Even on the brink of a shutdown, the GOP remains committed to shutting down the federal government.

Musk Connections: Unknown
Other Corporate Affiliations: Partner at Brewer Attorneys & Counselors, Counsel at Bailey and Ehrenberg PLLC
DOGE Deployment: Senior Advisor, Office of Personnel Management (OPM)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the backbone of climate and weather research and information in the United States. Its annual budget is under $7 billion, and the value of the weather information that it shares with the public is estimated to be over $100 billion annually. That means the American taxpayer gets a more than fourteen-fold return on investment. (Now that’s government efficiency, contrary to the claims of DOGE and its sympathizers about eliminating government bloat.)

There’s a lot of back-and-forth right now about whether Congressional Democrats should, effectively, negotiate with terrorists. It goes like this: Congress has until March 14 to pass a bill funding the government to avoid a government shutdown. Republicans need some Democrats to vote in favor of the bill in order to get it past the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Democrats don’t want to see millions of federal workers furloughed. But supporting the Republicans’ bill amounts to agreeing that business as usual can continue despite the coup; despite the illegal shutdown of agencies and unconstitutional impoundment of appropriated money and the flaunting of court orders. Despite, in other words, the five-alarm-fire that is our political reality.

Musk Connections: Firm invested in SpaceX, xAI, and $400 million in Musk’s X (formerly Twitter)
Other Corporate Affiliations: Co-Founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz 
DOGE Deployment: Unofficial advisor

In a recent episode of Pod Save America, the hosts argued there was a “right” and “wrong” way to reduce the size of the federal government. We wholeheartedly disagree with that perspective. What the Trump administration is doing is indeed incredibly destructive and “wrong” and ostensibly center, center left and left wing voices need to push back against the idea that there’s a “right” way to slash the federal budget and workforce. We should be pushing for more resources for non-defense agencies, not less. 

With rumors growing that Trump plans to sign an executive order which would effectively dismantle the Department of Education, this factsheet highlights the likely deleterious effects for millions of students across the country.

On January 20 2025, President Trump issued a memorandum ordering a 90-day freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees. This blog post will break down the memorandum, compare it to the 2017 hiring freeze and discuss implications for government capacity, corporate crackdown, and the American public.

We won’t know the full scope of what went wrong to cause the horrific in-air collision at DCA until the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completes its investigation. That could take up to two years. Oh, and that’s assuming the investigation is independent–which didn’t previously need to be specified, but, well… look around. Given all of that, the opposition to Musk and Trump, including but not limited to Democrats, must not wait to assign blame.

Trump’s nominees need to be asked hard questions about their records of harming the public. So we did the work ourselves and wrote some!

The U.S. Forest Service is already underfunded and understaffed. Slashing its resources further is likely to unleash more severe wildfires.

DOGE is a new weapon in Trump’s ongoing war against the administrative state. But it’s important to remain clear-eyed about the value federal civil servants provide. These individuals help ensure the safety of our food, medicine, transportation, air, and water. They are also the backbone of our education, health care, and financial regulatory systems. There is no doubt that many Americans feel burned by their recent interactions with these systems, but federal employees are the wrong targets of their ire.

Reid Hoffman hates Lina Khan, but the polling firm he funds keeps demonstrating the popularity of her crackdown on corporate monopoly power.