Katie Fahey joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about founding Voters Not Politicians, which successfully banned partisan gerrymandering in Michigan, and running The People, which helps others to do related work in other states using ballot initiatives.
White House Senior Advisor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
The DOGE is not the first effort to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in government. It is the first to receive such vociferous disdain along what appears to be purely political lines. Most presidents have made efforts in these areas, some more substantial than others, with limited success. Here are some modern examples.
In 1982, President Reagan used an executive order to establish a private sector task force to identify inefficiencies in government spending (commonly called the Grace Commission). The final report included 2,478 recommendations to reduce wasteful government practices, estimated savings of $429 billion over the first three years and $6.8 trillion between 1985 and 2000. Most of the savings required legislative changes, and Congress ignored most of those proposals.
In 1993, President Clinton launched the National Performance Review, with Vice President Al Gore in charge, intending to “make the entire federal government less expensive and more efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment." Their initial report identified $108 billion in potential savings, much of which required legislation and was never implemented. However, there were purely administrative suggestions as well, many of which were implemented. Al Gore indicated that 24,000 federal jobs had been reduced through the National Performance Review, mainly through buyouts, a bit more than 1% of the workforce at that time.
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In 2005, President George W. Bush proposed a savings package that included $2.3 billion in rescissions—essentially canceling unused balances from 55 federal programs, as part of a strategy to rebuild critical infrastructure in the Gulf region after Hurricane Katrina. Congress did not approve his proposal.
In 2011, President Obama launched theCampaign to Cut Waste, which aimed to eliminate misspent tax dollars across federal agencies. This included measures like consolidating federal websites and creating an oversight board to track spending. This effort was established by executive order, and Vice President Biden took an important role.
All modern presidents have made at least minimal efforts to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, though the Trump/DOGE effort has been unusual. Consider the following three examples.
First, the effort is broader and deeper than any prior effort. Many billions of dollars, American taxpayer dollars, are wasted by government agencies and paid fraudulently. Is addressing this in depth and breadth a bad thing? Should they just pick around the edges, find a few billion dollars, and go home?
Second, instead of studying the problems for months or years and then proposing legislation, a duly elected President instructed appointed members of his administration to aggressively identify and implement specific changes that were thought to be within his executive authority. He took an expansive view of his powers, and not surprisingly, there have been legal challenges.
Third, various sources suggest that between 70,000 and 150,000 federal employees have been laid off through DOGE and other administration efforts. There are plans for more. Perhaps the final number will reach 10% of the federal workforce (excluding the military and the post office). These cuts may seem extreme, but in the private sector, a restructuring that results in a 10-15% reduction in a company’s workforce is not all that unusual. Yes, there will be some hiccups in government services, but federal jobs are not sacrosanct.
We should not be surprised that the public perception of the DOGE effort is extreme, fully reflecting the current nature of our modern and highly partisan politics.
Politicians and pundits on the left are appalled by the effort. They argue that such cuts will decimate vital government services and have been handled in a cold and insensitive manner. There are claims that these efforts are unconstitutional despite the President’s Constitutional role in managing the federal government workforce (subject, of course, to civil service and related laws and regulations), managing the bureaucracy in general, and minimizing waste and fraud. Given that the full spectrum of the political left (traditional Democrats, Progressives, and a small but vocal group of Socialists) believes in a strong federal government to address societal challenges, some resistance on that basis is to be expected. However, their visceral and intrinsic rejection of all things Trump makes it appear they are either against the elimination of waste and fraud or believe it does not exist. And is it wrong to wonder if those who complain the loudest have somehow been the biggest beneficiaries of a broken system?
Politicians and pundits on the right have mostly been supportive and argue that these reductions in programs and the workforce are but a small part of the necessary reduction in government spending. However, newly approved cabinet secretaries pushed back on DOGE’s authority to implement such cuts directly. In early March, the President told his cabinet secretaries they were in charge of the actual cuts, not DOGE.
Most on the right (traditional and conservative Republicans, RINOs, and especially those of the MAGA persuasion) are supportive of the idea. Nearly one hundred days in, they may be a bit disappointed that the results seem more talk than action. They see Republicans in Congress and the administration negotiating on a “big, beautiful bill” that so far does not reflect much in the way of government reductions. Some are also wondering when they will start seeing perp walks for all the fraudulent activity they are certain is out there.
Then there are those of us taking a wait-and-see attitude. A few conservative Democrats, perhaps most independents, and that part of the Republican party that has not fallen into the cult of Trump. I reside in this camp – a conservative-leaning Libertarian who never voted for Trump or his Democratic challengers. I hope the effort is wildly successful. I am convinced you could find a trillion dollars in annual spending cuts. I have no doubt this would be painful for some, but we are on an unsustainable financial trajectory as a nation.
I am also in the camp that believes we do not have a revenue problem (tax rates are high enough at all income levels, though reforming the system would be a good thing). We have a spending problem. Not just waste and fraud, but spending on programs that should not be part of the federal government's mission.
I would be happy (thrilled, really) if they found a way to reduce spending by half a trillion dollars or even a third of a trillion. That could put us on a path to eventually achieving a balanced budget. I would also like to see an improved ability to find fraud, root it out, and prosecute the fraudsters.
Given the scope of the problem, an aggressive approach seems appropriate, but some changes also seem appropriate, given the chaos we experienced in the first 100 days.
First, as much respect as I have for him, after his 130-day appointment as a “special government employee,” Elon Musk should return to his day jobs. As I write this, he has announced he will step back next month and focus on Tesla. His involvement has been inspirational to those involved in DOGE and Trump acolytes. But his value to the effort has run its course, especially on the PR front.
Second, workforce reductions should be undertaken in a more orderly fashion. Terminating probationary employees and others as a cost-saving measure while claiming they were not “performing” at the high level expected is demeaning and inappropriate. Doing so without considering and addressing the implications is chaotic.
Third, with some exceptions, the President is responsible for spending approved funds, not determining what is approved. There are valid legal questions about what appropriated funds the President can refuse to spend. Absent Congressional action, many of the spending reductions will be rejected by the courts. The President and his party are missing an opportunity to have a formal and national discussion on a range of spending issues, a debate that would likely benefit them politically.
It is expected they will soon submit a “rescission” package to Congress to stop around $9 billion in spending for USAID, the State Department, NPR, and PBS. This is a start, but also a drop in the bucket of what could ultimately be proposed. It does make sense that relatively small rescission packages would be used to ensure one proposal does not spoil a large spending reduction. I hope to see more of these and look forward to the debate on individual requests.
Fourth, direct congressional action is also important. Without it, some of the administration's efforts will be rejected by the judicial system. And so far, the Republican Congress has not stepped up. The upcoming “big, beautiful bill” should be informed by whatever has been found and documented so far. The issues and proposals should be rationally debated by Congress, not just screamed about. The best way to avoid spending is not by executive order but by a Congressional bill signed by the President.
Whatever your political persuasion, let’s hope Congress steps up and does its job.
David Butler is a husband, father, grandfather, business executive, entrepreneur, and political observer.
A $288 Billion Dollar Proto-Presidency?
The 2024 presidential election saw Elon Musk spend over a quarter of a billion to elect President Trump, which is exactly $288 million according to The Washington Post report of the final tally of campaign spending on January 31, 2025. Did that staggering campaign contribution buy the billionaire the right to attend cabinet meetings and stand beside the President in the Oval Office and at other events? Did those millions buy a Proto-Presidency, complete with the opportunity to run a department aggressively dismantling government and radically changing what government does for ordinary Americans while personally benefiting from government contracts? Professor Lawrence Lessig argues that ‘Musk is the clearest example of the corrupting influence of money in politics.’ According to a recent PEW study, 72% of Americans agree that money is the number one corrupting influence in politics. So, what can be done? Are we too far down this road to make meaningful change, or are there options?
The Titanic (Our Democracy) is In Peril, but There is Hope.
Last month, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig returned to the Network for Responsible Public Policy to address political corruption and possible remedies. Opening with an ominous story, Lessig drew comparisons between the current state of our democracy and the sinking of the Titanic. With a significant gash in the hull, the captain of the Titanic knew that he must convince the passengers to get into lifeboats in the middle of the dark, freezing Atlantic Ocean. And, while that is, as Lessig describes, a terrifying picture, he sees a hopeful opportunity for constructive change to reform our Democracy, specifically, “the changes we need to make, to make our unrepresentative, representative democracy representative again.”
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After years of focus on intellectual property law, Lessig turned his focus to election reform, and in 2016, he founded Equal Citizens to fix democracy by establishing truly equal citizenship. Lessig has worked as an activist for election reform. Recently, in Maine, he has worked to limit contributions to independent political action committees, or super PACs. Getting this case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court would be a major win for election reform advocates. The Equal Citizens website (https://equalcitizens.us) calls this case ‘the lawsuit that could end Super PACs’.
Lessig cited the three issues at the core of election reform: money in politics, gerrymandering, and vote suppression. In the past decade, Congress has come close to important election reform laws twice. The 2019 For the People Act, a House bill proposed by then Congressman John Sarbanes (D. Maryland), “came within two votes of passing in the Senate and would have been the most important democracy reform legislation passed since the Civil War,” said Lessig. The bill was reintroduced in 2021 as the Freedom to Vote Act, which the Republican-controlled Senate blocked. While these bills would have provided election reform fixes, another threat exists. Because of social media, we are facing bigger issues that Lessig believes are at the root of our differences that divide the country.
The Gash in the Hull: A Business Model that Thrives on Division.
Lessig describes the current media ecosystem business model driven by AI. He defines social media as not a technology. It is a business model driven to get people to constantly engage with the platform and thus sell more ads. So, to sell more ads, social media platforms (TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X, and others) need to keep users returning to their sites and scrolling longer. The algorithms that power social media look for users' interests and what they click on, and then flood their page with more of that content. The goal is to increase engagement with the platform. More time is spent on the platform through feed content that keeps you constantly engaged. More time spent on the platform is not spent engaging with others or seeking facts from other sources.
A user’s feed must be continuously filled with content that keeps the user engaged.
Content can be related to interests and hobbies; political content is designed to change minds and views. Lessig says that this type of content works to convince the user that the other side is against their views and beliefs. Perhaps an unintended consequence of this business model is consuming content that is not fact-based and is designed to inflame emotions. Lessig calls our current AI-driven media ecosystem profoundly destructive to our representative system of government. “We are seeing the consequences of social media and the business model of engagement.” And, in a Democracy, when people don’t understand or believe the same facts, we cannot begin to address problems. “The way they get you engaged is by convincing you that the other side is against you…turning us into ignorant people who hate each other,” said Lessig. He described the impact of social media use by quoting Stanford Professor, Renée DiResta, ‘we live in our own bespoke realities. A place where we believe the facts we want to believe."
Many efforts are underway to address these challenges. Lessig pointed to the work of groups like the Center for Humane Technology, where co-founders Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin are studying how to ensure that technology helps us, not hurts us.
Lessig described the 2024 election as the ‘last human election’. As AI technologies become more in tune with people and their attitudes, they will design BOTS as a tool that can be deployed to model people's behaviors and then manipulate those behaviors. So, if the foreign enemy or a political party controls the BOTS, they can control the actions of millions of people, including how or if they vote. Here, Lessig notes, reforms to democracy will, in a certain sense, no longer matter.
Get into the Lifeboats: Making Democracy Work for All and Less Vulnerable to the Negative Effects of AI
If AI and BOTS can be used to manipulate society, opinion, and destroy our Democracy, Lessig argues that we must move our Democracy into a protected space where we can learn to engage with each other in an environment free from the power of AI. Lessig introduced the concept of Citizen Assemblies a process used around the world to find seek consensus through citizen deliberation and consensus. In the December 31, 2024, issue of The New Yorker, in his article titled, “What Could Citizens’ Assemblies Do for American Politics? Nick Romeo described the citizens’ assembly process to address youth homelessness in Oregon as, “These gatherings do what most democracies only pretend to: trust normal people to make decisions on difficult policy questions.”
As defined by citizensassemblies.org,
“A citizens’ assembly is a group of citizens that is selected at random in such a way that the composition of this group reflects selected demographic or social features of the whole society. In other words, it constitutes a city or a country in miniature. A role of a citizens’ assembly is an in-depth analysis of a given issue, a deliberation over different solutions, hearing of the pros and cons, and then, making informed decisions”.
Lessig believes that Citizen Assemblies are part of a long-term solution to addressing issues like political reform and, as a solution that brings us together to solve problems. Lessig explained how Ireland used Citizen Assemblies to address constitutional issues that, because of the significant influence of the Catholic Church in the Irish Parliament, the government could not address, like same sex marriage and abortion. After lengthy and cautious deliberation, the citizen assembly recommended changes to the law. Those recommendations were put to the people of Ireland through a referendum. Both issues passed. Citizen Assemblies are a regular part of government in several countries, “the people are called upon to make important decisions,” noted Lessig.
Short-term, Lessig sees opportunity. He believes that then candidate Trump tapped into a populist fury spreading nationwide. It is not a left or right populism, but, as he described it, an “inside vs. outside deep frustration that many Americans have about government.” Lessig says that Americans don’t believe that their government is serving them and believe that the government is corrupt. Lessig said, “They believe that no matter what the government promises, it’s never going to deliver for ordinary Americans.”
He said that Trump, “convinced Americans (right or wrong) that he would make government responsive to Americans”. Lessig sees that passion for a working government as hopeful and something that we should all fundamentally agree upon, “to reform our government to be more efficient in serving the public”. We should all want to get more for the taxes that we pay, that’s what efficiency means, ‘more for the same, or more for less.” Lessig says that this administration is “acting in the name of the people to make government more responsive to them,” responding to populist fury.
Lessig says we are in a moment of opportunity. We should all agree with the passionate claim that government does not work, but turn that around to say, “We can make it work by working to make it work for ordinary Americans, not just the billionaires.”
The full NFRPP program with Professor Lawrence Lessig can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGLW_mEFmIE
Moving Forward Together
At The Network for Responsible Public Policy, we remain committed to fostering thoughtful, fact-based conversations that educate the public on our time's most pressing political issues. Our mission is to encourage dialogue based on truths.
Please join us as we continue to explore key issues with renowned experts.
Our upcoming events:
Thursday, May 8 at 7:30 PM. Please go to nfrpp.org to sign up. We will host a panel discussion on opportunities on the federal, state, and local levels, both occurring and potential, by the public and private sectors that will mitigate the carbon footprint.
To register for an upcoming NFRPP program, please visit our website at nfrpp.org and click on subscribe. All our programs are conducted virtually via Zoom and Facebook Live. Videos of all previous programs are available free of charge on our website for personal viewing and classroom use. Please visit nfrpp.org
For further information about the Network for Responsible Public Policy, please email info@nfrpp.org.
Jennie Smith Wilson is a board member of The Network for Responsible Policy and a program host.
At the end of March, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case about religious freedom. In late April, it heard two more. By summer, the Court could decide to give religious employers another tax break, let religious parents excuse their children from classes that mention queer people, and give religious charter schools access to public funding.
Religious freedom in these cases is about conservatives’ religious right to be exempt from certain laws and taxes. They give a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees a chance to carve three new religion-shaped holes in American law.
But is religious freedom only for conservatives? Hardly. The Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment has protected progressives many times over the past century, including all kinds of religious minorities. Even atheists and agnostics have a well-established right to religious freedom under American law, and spiritual people have it, too.
In 2019, for example, Scott Warren defended himself in federal court against claims that he’d violated U.S. law by leaving food and water for migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert. Warren claimed that his Constitutionally guaranteed right of religious freedom protected his sincerely held spiritual beliefs, which required him to care for those migrants even if it meant breaking the law. His defense was modeled on that of Christian leaders in the 1980s who harbored migrants from federal agents by giving them “sanctuary” in their churches and transporting them to sanctuary churches around the country. Their defense mostly worked, and so did Warren’s.
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That same year, Columbia University Law School published a report that described examples of religious freedom supporting progressive causes. The report failed to make waves in part because progressives weren’t ready to embrace their religious freedom. Now, in Trump’s second term, with a conservative Supreme Court firmly in place, likely for decades to come, the calculus has changed. As Adam Liptak noted recently in the New York Times, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of religious people and groups more than 86 percent of the time since John Roberts became Chief Justice in 2005. If the Court rules for religion in the three cases it’s hearing this spring, that rate will jump to nearly 90 percent. The future is clear: religion is winning.
What does religious freedom look like for progressives? The sanctuary movement has shown us that traditional religious leaders, like ministers and Rabbis, can resist laws they consider unjust on religious grounds. Scott Warren proved that spiritual people have this right, too.
During the first Trump administration, a Catholic chapel in Texas refused to allow the government to build a border wall on its land. In states across the country, we’re seeing religious leaders argue for religious exemptions to abortion bans.
Churches don’t pay taxes, and they don’t have to file financial statements with the IRS. This includes progressive churches. Churches are also exempt from some zoning laws. Last year, California legislators passed Yes In God’s Backyard (YIGBY), a law that allows churches to build bigger, denser affordable housing in places where other people can’t.
Atheists, agnostics, and spiritual people also have the right to form religious organizations that can use these exemptions. The courts and the IRS have never challenged that right significantly. The Columbia report highlights many more examples.
Not all of these strategies will work, and yes, this Supreme Court seems to favor Christians over religious minorities. Christians embraced a tenuous religious freedom strategy en masse to resist vaccine mandates, and it was effective even though Christian doctrine has little to say about vaccines.
The fact is that progressives have hardly even tried to exercise their religious freedom because many remain wary of religion. Sociologists have shown that religion’s association with conservative politics has caused a lot of progressives to leave religion altogether.
In my research, I’ve found that nonreligious people can have a strong, visceral dislike for religion. They associate it with authority, groupthink, and dogma rather than community, tradition, and progressive politics. For some, their dislike stems from trauma, including physical and emotional abuse. These are legitimate feelings that are important to acknowledge. It’s also important to remember that not all religions are the same, and not all religious people are conservative. There are even progressive evangelicals, though fewer than there used to be.
For now, progressives are likely to have a surprising advantage. The Supreme Court needs to maintain the appearance of fairness while facing criticism from long-time observers for being too political. If the Court wants to give religious freedom to closely held corporations like Hobby Lobby, then it would look that much worse trying to take it away from atheists and religious minorities who’ve had it for many decades.
Religious freedom is stronger than ever, and it’ll grow in the years ahead. Now’s the time for progressives to get over our purity politics and our bias against religion. Now’s the time to start exercising our religious freedom.
Joseph Blankholm is a professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Public Voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
Nate Gilliam is the co-founder and director of Milwaukee Freedom Fund and a Public Voices Fellow of Transformative Justice with The OpEd Project.
Established in May 2020, the organization is a response "to the Uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd, and builds on decades of work to defend and protect Black Lives."
I spoke with Nate on a recent episode of the Fulcrum Democracy Forum (FDF). The program engages citizens in evolving government to better meet all people's needs. Consistent with the Fulcrum's mission, FDF strives to share many perspectives to widen our audience's viewpoints.
We started the conversation with Nate, explaining how the Milwaukee Freedom Fund helps people against the discriminatory cash bail system. "There's a huge incarceration problem around the country, (and) also in Milwaukee, that primarily impacts Black and Brown folks in our city," he said.
According to the organization, in Wisconsin, about one-third of all county jail inmates were locked up because they couldn't pay low-cash bail, and the fastest growing population in the state's jails is people incarcerated without a conviction.
The Fulcrum published Nate's column: Selling Out? The Rightward March of Black Elected Politicians. He wrote: The Black voting bloc is ostensibly the most progressive political bloc in the U.S. Yet many Black politicians appear disconnected to the needs, desires, and aspirations of Black people."
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Nate shared more insights about a column he said was born out of love and frustration. "Love for the people that I am in community with, but also frustrated with Black elected officials. I think particularly here in Milwaukee we have a Black mayor, a Black county executive, Black police chief, Black sheriff, and other high-ranking Black officials, but yet the disparities, the socioeconomic disparities have not lessened, and in some cases they've gotten worse."
Nate's background includes graduating from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, serving on an advisory board, being a lead organizer in the healthcare industry, and being a baseball coach. He told me about his upbringing and what motivates him to do the work he leads. "My parents instilled a great sense of pride in me being Black and loving Black people. I think that is foundational to who I am and how I observe the world. I think another thing that has motivated me is being a parent. Once you start caring for something greater than yourself, then you start logically thinking about the world that they're in. You want to try to help make it better for them."
Editor's Note: Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and a board member of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, the parent organization of The Fulcrum. He is the publisher of the Latino News Network and an accredited Solutions Journalism and Complicating the Narratives trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network.
