Red States Follow DOGE’s Lead, Slashing Services to Fund Giveaways to the Rich

Elon Musk has left the White House, but the Trump administration has no plans to halt or reverse the destruction Musk’s slash-and-burn tactics caused over his five months leading the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). And the damage doesn’t stop at the federal level. At least 26 states have launched “government efficiency” initiatives of their own in recent months, typically through executive order, legislation, or the creation of a legislative committee, according to an April analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

The EPI briefing outlines how these state-level initiatives “use disingenuous calls to ‘root out inefficiency’ and ‘cut wasteful spending’ as a smokescreen,” with the ultimate goal of funding tax cuts for the wealthy.

“State lawmakers are using the DOGE brand to restructure government in favor of partisan interests,” Nina Mast, an EPI policy and economic analyst and a coauthor of the briefing, told Truthout. “They’re weaponizing ‘efficiency,’ in order to limit agency authority and put burdensome new requirements on agencies that serve the public.”

She added: “These efforts are not new, but this new [DOGE] brand gives them cover to enact changes that would otherwise be condemned as abuses of power.”

These state-level DOGE initiatives typically seek to wrest power from civil servants and state agencies. So far this year, four states (Kentucky, Utah, Oklahoma, and Louisiana) have enacted so-called “REINS-style” laws, modeled after the federal “Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny” (REINS) Act. The federal REINS Act, which was originally designed by a Tea Party activist and has been introduced in every Congress since 2009, seeks to give Congress the authority to block major regulations issued by federal agencies. Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, warns that the REINS Act threatens the government’s ability to protect public health and safety, enact worker protections, and institute financial reforms, noting: “It will only benefit those corporations that wish to game the system and evade safety standards and do nothing to improve protections for the American public.”

While the REINS Act has never passed the U.S. Senate, and an attempt to slip it into Trump’s massive tax bill was stripped by the Senate parliamentarian in June, several similar laws have been enacted in the states, thanks in large part to Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a libertarian political advocacy group affiliated with the Koch family. Once passed, these laws hinder the ability of state agencies to enact regulations and protections. In Wisconsin, for example, which passed the second state REINS-style law under Gov. Scott Walker in 2017, the law prevented the Department of Natural Resources from restricting manure spreading in areas sensitive to groundwater pollution.

While some state DOGE efforts seem gimmicky or designed to impress Donald Trump and Musk — or have already stalled out or died — a handful of states are using DOGE initiatives to push ahead with cuts conservatives have been wanting for decades.

“I’ve been DOGE-ing in Oklahoma since before it was cool,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt boasted earlier this year. Stitt created a “DOGE-OK” office by executive order in February, which he specified would be “dedicated to President Trump’s vision for federal regulatory and budgetary reform in coordination and partnership with the State of Oklahoma.”

Taking a page out of Musk’s book, DOGE-OK maintains a list of alleged cost-saving cuts made by state agencies. Stitt has said he wants to scrutinize any spending “more than a ham sandwich,” and many of the listed items are in fact small: One agency ended three laptop leases, another canceled contracts for a cell phone and iPad, and a third saved $600 by terminating a fax line.

More concerningly, Stitt proudly announced in April that DOGE-OK has recommended the state return $157 million in “wasteful” federal health grants, including funding for diabetes prevention, childhood vaccination, and services for children who are deaf or hard of hearing. The nonpartisan think tank Oklahoma Policy Institute cautioned against slashing this spending, noting that Oklahoma ranks 47th in overall health metrics and 45th in children’s health. The organization’s executive director warned: “Short-term savings will lead to far greater costs in the future, both in dollars and lives.”

“These efforts are not new, but this new [DOGE] brand gives them cover to enact changes that would otherwise be condemned as abuses of power.”

Even Republican legislators expressed misgivings about returning the federal health funds at a press conference following the report’s release. At the conference, Oklahoma House Speaker Kyle Hilbert noted the legislature was also hearing of cuts to agencies that could cost the state in the long run, such as firing employees only to replace them with expensive contractors. What’s more, Hilbert said, some contracts are being retroactively revised for services already rendered, a practice he called “bad business” which “just sets us up in a terrible position in any potential lawsuits.”

Even as they question some of Stitt’s cuts, Hilbert and the Republican legislature support the overall DOGE ideology. In May, the Oklahoma legislature passed two bills granting itself oversight over agency regulations, including a REINS-style Act.

But not all Oklahomans are on board with the DOGE agenda. When DOGE-OK launched a portal soliciting public feedback on government “inefficiency,” people flooded it with trolling submissions, including song lyrics or expletives directed at Stitt or Musk. Many suggested firing Ryan Walters, the state superintendent who last year directed every teacher in the state to teach the Bible.

One anonymous poster suggested: “Focus more on helping residents of Oklahoma (who pay your salary, just for the record) than boot-licking Donald Trump and Elon Musk. This is getting embarrassing.”

“Before It Was Cool”

Stitt is not the only governor flaunting his track record of slashing government in the name of efficiency. “I like to say we were doing DOGE before DOGE was a thing,” Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in her January Condition of the State address. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used similar language in February, boasting: “I say we were DOGE before DOGE was cool.”

State DOGE efforts tend to concentrate power in the hands of conservative governors — or in some cases, conservative legislatures.

DeSantis, who has long sought to increase state power in Florida, created a DOGE task force by executive order that extends his authority over local governments and public institutions. In addition to cutting 70 state boards and commissions, his task force’s stated goals are to audit and “expose bloat” within local governments, and return “unused or surplus” federal funds. The task force also instructed public college and university presidents to hand over massive amounts of information on staff research, publications, grants, and research funding, and has suggested it may request course syllabi in the near future.

Florida lawmakers have also proposed eliminating the office of lieutenant governor entirely, and replacing it with a cabinet position titled “commissioner of government efficiency.”

The political dynamics are different in Kentucky, where an overwhelmingly Republican legislature is using DOGE tactics to usurp power from Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat. In floor debate over a REINS-style act, which would give the legislature oversight over executive regulations, House Majority Floor Leader Steven Rudy explicitly stated that the bill’s intent was to concentrate power in the hands of the state legislature. “It is about a reset to make sure and remove all doubt that the most powerful branch of government is [the legislature],” he alleged.

Governor Beshear vetoed the legislation in March, calling Rudy’s claim of legislative superiority “contrary to the United States and Kentucky Constitutions, which recognize three equal branches of government.” The legislature overrode Beshear’s veto three days later.

Similar dynamics played out last year in Kansas, when the Republican legislature overrode the veto of Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, to pass similar REINS-style legislation.

Chasing “Efficiency” With Artificial Intelligence

Several state DOGE efforts promise to increase “efficiency” with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) — although EPI cautions that “the underlying agenda is to usurp the investigatory authority of civil servants and replace it with untested technological tools that lack accountability.”

In North Carolina, pending legislation would instruct the office of the state auditor, a Republican, to use AI to recommend government offices and jobs to cut. Democrats in the state legislature warned that AI should not be trusted to make these sorts of recommendations in congressional debate in April. Democratic Sen. Sophia Chitlik reminded her colleagues that a University of North Carolina initiative to study youth vaping was recently canceled “because their NIH (National Institutes of Health) grant had the word equity in it.” She added: “We do not need to look any further than our state for examples of what happens when you let an algorithm take control of our workplace.”

“While some states have put forth performative bills that didn’t get anywhere, other states fully mirrored the federal DOGE in hypocrisy and bureaucracy, adding another agency that just consolidates power into the hands of bad actors.”

Other state-level DOGE initiatives have similarly touted AI as a cost-saving tool. Florida DOGE plans to use it not only to identify and “cut unnecessary spending and eliminate bureaucracy” within state agencies, but to interfere with county governments as well. In March, the task force sent a letter to local governments throughout the state, requesting their financial information, and announcing plans to use “advanced technology to identify, review, and report on unnecessary spending within county and municipal governments.”

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, Republican Rep. Amanda Nedweski, who is leading a new DOGE congressional committee, told Stateline her committee will seek to increase state efficiency through AI. Emily Schmitt, a businesswoman appointed by the governor to lead a DOGE committee in Iowa, made similar statements to Business Insider. And in Oklahoma, DOGE-OK claims that “modernization efforts” have already saved 100,000 staff hours.

“Efficiency” Is Not the Sole Aim of Government

Advocates are pushing back on the idea that a well-run government is one that cuts as much spending as possible.

“‘Efficiency,’ reduced to cost savings alone without consideration of effectiveness, doesn’t lead to ‘more and better’ service — whether within public agencies or outsourced private contractors,” noted the nonprofit In The Public Interest (ITPI) in a March briefing. ITPI contrasts what it calls “smart efficiencies” — such as making the most of innovative technologies, improving processes, and employing people with expertise — with “extractive efficiencies,” like slashing staffing levels, cutting compensation, and reducing service availability.

“One person’s concept of waste is another person’s vital service,” William Glasgall, a public finance adviser at the Volcker Alliance, a nonprofit that aims to support public sector workers, told Stateline. He noted that government services are not designed to operate like for-profit companies.

Instead, if politicians are interested in eliminating government waste, Glasgall suggests they look at tax breaks, incentives, and abatements, which his organization estimates cost state governments $1 trillion a year.

As is apparent at the federal level — where brutal DOGE government cuts were followed by a Republican spending bill that amounts to a massive, expensive giveaway to the wealthy — cutting government services in the name of “efficiency” is often really about funding tax cuts.

This holds true in the states. Iowa Governor Reynolds boasts about her state’s spending cuts: Over the past several years, she oversaw the elimination of 21 of 37 executive-level cabinet agencies, as well as cutting 600 open positions and 1,200 regulations. But over the same timeframe, Iowa has drastically slashed taxes for the wealthy while underfunding public services.

Iowa Democrats also point to the hypocrisy of Reynolds’s plans to root out so-called “waste” by creating a new “advisory body” made up of business leaders. They note that in 2023, Reynolds signed legislation stripping power from the state auditor, an elected government watchdog who happens to be a Democrat. “We have someone who has a whole office whose job is to work on this,” State Rep. Adam Zabner pointed out to Stateline. “I think we’re more likely to find efficiencies through the state auditor who Iowans elected to that role than we are through a major supporter of the governor’s campaigns.”

And in many states where DOGE efforts are underway, critics call it ironic to create a whole new bureaucratic department, in the name of rooting out inefficiency.

“While some states have put forth performative bills that didn’t get anywhere, other states fully mirrored the federal DOGE in hypocrisy and bureaucracy, adding another agency that just consolidates power into the hands of bad actors,” Jasmine Payne-Patterson, senior state policy strategist at EPI, told Truthout.

In Texas, for example, legislation creating a Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office (TREO) was signed into law in April. Gov. Greg Abbott promised the law — which is largely a deregulation measure — would “make government more efficient and less costly,” by identifying “unnecessary and ineffective rules.” The law also states that Texas courts do not have to defer to a state agency’s interpretation of the law, following in the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the Chevron doctrine. Yet despite promising efficiency and lowered spending, the TREO office comes at an expected cost of $22.8 million over the next five years.

“The point of DOGE is to cut government, reduce spending and shrink the bureaucracy,” one Republican Texas representative said on the House floor, in opposition to TREO. “Unfortunately, this bill does the exact opposite.”

In Oklahoma, one submitter made a similar point in Governor Stitt’s efficiency feedback portal: “Let’s make Oklahoma more efficient by not inventing a whole bureaucracy whose mission is to stop other bureaucracies from being bureaucratic. Bold idea — I know. But sometimes the most efficient thing to do is … nothing.”