Oval Office February 11, 2025 Standing beside a seated President Trump (and with his young son), Musk faces reporters' questions for the first time as DOGE head — on transparency, conflicts of interest and "rightsizing" government.
Standing beside a seated President Trump (and with his young son), Musk faces reporters' questions for the first time as DOGE head — on transparency, conflicts of interest and "rightsizing" government.
Transcript Panelist
From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.
Host (Potomac Watch)
Welcome back. Speaking of Doge, the Elon Musk effort at the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk was at the Oval Office this week. Here he is explaining why he sees the DOGE mission as so important.
Elon Musk
So we've got a 2 trillion dollar deficit, and if this, if we don't do something about this deficit, country's going bankrupt. I mean, it's, it's really astound. The interest payments alone on national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking because we've got a lot, we spend a lot of money on defense. And if that just keeps going, we're essentially going to bankrupt the country. So what I really would say is, like, it's not optional for us to reduce the federal expenses. It's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country. And it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens, not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt.
Host (Potomac Watch)
Kim, what's your sense, as we sit here three, four weeks into the new administration of where this DOGE effort stands? It has made some headway in the federal courts after some of these lawsuits were filed and had some restraining orders, temporary administrative stays that were issued by judges. But a lot of chatter this week about the idea that there is now a Doge constitutional crisis in Washington.
Panelist
This is absolutely nonsense. Doge, by the way, I think that there's probably a little bit of criticism to be had about its initial weeks in, whether or not it was transparent enough about everything it's been trying to do. I don't think that that was purposeful. I don't think it's trying to be shady. I think it's just an enormous effort. And I would point people to just this week they got a DOGE website up. They've also been cataloging what they've been doing on X with an account they have there. What they have done that we can see that they have successful, accomplished has been a number of cuts already in things that just make eminent sense. They did get rid of a lot of DEI contracts. They're canceling, for instance, executive coaching contracts. We know about some of the very silly and hard to defend grants that have been shut down coming out of the US International aid development group, usaid. They've also been canceling leases and consolidating space in terms of the big ones. That's where they're in court. And the reality is that a huge percentage of the steps that they are taking that stem from some of Donald Trump's initial executive orders are on pretty solid legal ground. That's what a lot of this chaos coverage, what they claim is chaos is missing, is that there has actually been a lot of thought behind a lot of these. And I would put into that category the freeze or pause on some spending. You know, look, Congress, for a lot of the spending, did not specify that money had to go out of a door by a certain day. Even the prior administration waited long periods of time before issuing some of the money from some of these laws because it was checking who was getting it and setting up programs. So that's certainly allowable. You had a judge this week that agreed with the Trump administration to allow its buyout offer of federal employees to go forward, said that the union who had sued over that did not have standing. I would mention Schedule F, which is this plan to reclassify certain civil servants, those that have a lot of policymaking authority in a way that makes it easier to transfer them or fire them if they are not doing their jobs. This was something Trump tried in the first term. Biden essentially dismantled it and even put up a regulation to try to thwart it in the future. Notably, even that Biden regulation never suggested that this was illegal. And in fact, you can look to the statutes and there's solid ground for why they would be able to do something like this. So I would argue that most of what they are doing, you never can tell with the court. The courts are adjudicating it, but they have a solid case going into court. And a constitutional crisis is when people are operating outside of a court without license. And that's not what's happening here to
Host (Potomac Watch)
that point, Alicia, I do share some of the concern that both parties are tiptoeing toward the point where one president might decide that he is going to try to flout a court order against the program. Student loan program might be one example. On the Democratic side, some of this strikes me as posturing for base of both parties. This was the tweet heard around the world this week from J.D. vance. He wrote, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the Attorney General on how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. And that was read by many people as a suggestion that the Trump administration is raring to go out and ignore the courts. And to my eye, that's not the only way to Read that. I would quibble with Vance somewhat. I mean, maybe judges can't tell the attorney general how to use discretion as prosecutor. But if the attorney general is doing targeted selective prosecution based on political party, for example, the courts I think would have very little trouble setting some of those cases aside under existing doctrines of selective prosecution, for example. But notable also that President Trump, the principal, was asked on Tuesday about court rulings and here's what he said. I always abide by the courts and then I'll have to appeal it. And so, Alicia, I mean, maybe we will get to a point where there is some ruling against Doge that the executive branch is going to say it's not going to follow. But we are certainly not there yet, at least to my eye.
Panelist
Right. They are appealing. There have been some 60 or more than 60 lawsuits filed in various district courts around the country. They're mostly concentrated, by the way, in the First Circuit Court of Appeals. And that's because that is now the most liberal circuit. All the judges who sit on the appeals court are Democratic appointees. And so the reason why Democrats are primarily suing theirs because they're betting that they're going to win and then the Supreme Court won't take up a lot of these cases. To your point about Trump has said that he will appeal these but will abide by court rulings. And that's essentially what he did in his first term. If you recall, he was sued a number of times and a few of the cases ended up going up to the Supreme Court. For instance, the citizenship question or whether the Census Bureau could include a citizenship question on its 2020 survey. It lost that it abided by the decision. It lost the question of whether it could roll back Obama's DACA program or at least the Supreme Court ruled that it didn't follow proper procedures and therefore it would have to do so. And so then it went back about trying to roll it back again and comply with the Administrative Procedure Act. And so I would expect different under during Trump's second term. I think they will probably lose some of these cases, especially the ones in which they're trying to overturn long standing precedent. For instance, the firing of one of the NLRB members, which blatantly violates in 1935 the Humphreys executive precedent. And I'm not sure the U.S. supreme Court is going to actually wade in and take that that case. But they're courting a lot of challenges, probably what they expecting. Yeah, they're going to lose, but they're going to nevertheless try. They have some of the administration's lawy to take a very originalist view of the Constitution. So they're teeing up some cases for the Supreme Court. They are, in some cases, probably stretching executive power. But as to Kim's point, you know, Joe Biden did that a number of times, and perhaps even more so with the student loan forgiveness, eviction moratorium. You could go down the line, vaccine mandates. And I'm not sure, like, what Trump is doing is, in any case, you know, more egregious. A lot of these cases will ultimately have to be settled by the courts.
Host (Potomac Watch)
Thank you, Alicia and Kim. Thank you all for listening. You can email us@pwpodcastsj.com if you like the show. Please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch.