A committee part of the General Services Administration (GSA) focused on efficiency has been eliminated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The GSA Federal Advisory Committee’s (GAP FAC) goal was to increase efficiency in the government through the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) with its members being experts who volunteered their time for GSA. Nicole Darnall, a former member of the committee and the Arlene R. and Robert P. Kogod Eminent Scholar Chair in Sustainability at American University, said the termination of the committee was “unexpected,” especially given their emphasis on increasing efficiency in the government.
“There was no indication this was going to happen,” Darnall said.
The GAP FAC was partly established due to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) of 1972, which is the “legal foundation” for how committees, like Darnall’s, operate. FACA is reenacted every so often, with the last being on Dec. 27, 2022.
“[A committee] is established or utilized to obtain advice or recommendations for the President or one or more agencies or officers of the Federal Government,” FACA stated.
Before its total termination, the GAP FAC had two committees with two subjects. The first GAP FAC, founded in 2022, focused on increasing sustainability efforts in the government. Darnall, who is an expert in sustainability, was asked to join then. The second committee, which began in around October right before the 2024 presidential election, was the one studying how to responsibly use artificial intelligence in the government to increase efficiency.
According to the law, the over 1,000 FACA advisory groups, including the GAP FAC, have to follow certain rules like allowing their meetings to be open to the public by publishing meeting information on the Federal Register for at least 15 days.
The law also states committees can only be established for two years after which they are terminated or renewed.
“It’s sanctioned by Congress, so it’s very official,” Darnall said.
Darnall said members of the committee received an email on Feb. 25, explaining the reasoning for determination. The letter did not come from DOGE but rather from a senior official at GSA:
“On February 19, 2025, the President issued an Executive Order, “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” which set forth the Administration’s policy of reducing the size of the Federal Government in order to minimize waste, fraud, abuse, and inflation and to promote American freedom and innovation. As part of that Executive Order, the President directed the termination of several named Federal advisory committees and further ordered the identification of ‘additional unnecessary Federal advisory committees’ for termination. In accordance with that order, the Acting GSA Administrator has terminated the GAP FAC.”
Along with Darnall and the 19 other members of GAP FAC, over 121,000 federal employees have been laid off since Trump took office in January, according to an analysis from CNN.
FACA states there are certain ways committees can be disbanded by the president. The president is allowed to terminate any on-statutory federal advisory committee, or not established or mandated by a law. Presidents can also disband committees if they were created by their own executive order. But the president cannot terminate a committee because it is required by law.
The GAP FAC is a statutory committee, meaning it was established by law.
Those who sent a letter to members of the committee, saying their work was no longer needed, did not respond to comment.
Besides Darnall, a former member of the GAP FAC, who is an expert in artificial intelligence governance and wanted to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, was brought on at the beginning of the second committee.
Although GAP FAC’s advising in artificial intelligence was only beginning, the member said they were “disappointed” the committee did not get to do the work they planned in preliminary meetings.
The member said they believe the committee was cut because of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) or how everything is going to be purchased by the federal government. The member added the new administration wants to redo FAR and the committee’s recommendations were going to get in the way.
A policy statement from the Department of Homeland Security states how they use artificial intelligence must align with ethical, legal, and regulatory standards outlined in the FAR with this same standard applying to other government agencies and departments.
“You are much stronger when you have multiple voices weighing in,” the member said. “Even if there’s disagreement, you still get a broader perspective on all the opportunities to consider.”
The member added there are “high-risk areas” where artificial intelligence can be abused in the government. For example, they said civil rights issues come into play when making an algorithm to ensure it does not discriminate against gender or race.
“I’m really concerned because I’m an AI expert,” the member said.
Maggie Rhoads is a student journalist attending George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. At The Fulcrum, she covers how legislation and policy are impacting communities.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.