Jeff McAlister

Since taking the oath of office a second time on Jan. 20, President Trump has been an activist chief executive, governing in a positively breathtaking manner.

Both friends and foes of Trump will agree that “the times they are a-changing.” Trump’s Cabinet is now complete, though controversy attended many of his picks, from Pete Hegseth to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There have been a steady stream of executive orders, many of which overturned previous executive orders of Joe Biden. And overwhelming all else, it seems, is the emergence of DOGE, the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency headed up by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk.

DOGE is producing much apoplexy among progressive bureaucrats and the oligarchs of the legacy media. Numerous examples of “waste, fraud, and abuse” have been brought to light, exposing the rot of leftist ideology and its incessant promotion via our tax dollars during the past several years.

Some striking examples of this were discovered in the U.S. Agency for International Development. Created by the Kennedy administration in 1961, the original purpose of USAID was to unite numerous foreign assistance programs under one umbrella. More than six decades later, we are learning that millions of dollars have been wasted by the agency on such oddities as transgender comic books in Peru, a DEI musical in Ireland and the promotion of atheism in Nepal, among countless other examples.

Similar waste has been found elsewhere, including the U.S. Department of Education, which recently announced that $600 million in grants had been ended — money that had been going to “divisive ideologies” such as DEI and critical race theory. Meanwhile, at the U.S. Treasury, DOGE announced that it had identified $4.7 trillion in government expenditures that are untraceable because of missing account identification codes.

Also, Musk posted on X that the Social Security database lists millions of people no longer walking this Earth, including “more than 3.9 million in the 130-139 age range, more than 3.5 million in the 140-149 range and more than 1.3 million in the 150-159 range,” all listed as though they were still alive. And on it goes, ad infinitum.

In shining a light on government malfeasance, DOGE has performed a welcome public service. But it is facing many legal battles. While Trump is well within his constitutional prerogatives as president to examine the workings of executive agencies for which he is accountable, the leadership of Musk over DOGE raises some constitutional questions.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, writing in National Review, observes, “The issue is straightforward: If an executive branch official exercises important powers without supervision, then that official is an officer of the United States. Such an officer’s appointment must either be subject to Senate confirmation or pursuant to a statute.” As necessary and important as the work undertaken by DOGE has been, more clarification of Musk’s role is needed in order for its mission to continue unimpeded.