President Trump and Elon Musk have introduced a “move fast and break things” model to Washington that’s inspiring aggressive outdoors advocacy campaigns and giving new significance behind previous right-wing efforts.
A “DEI WATCH LIST” is one instance of how conservatives are nonetheless discovering methods to pile on with the surprising and attention-grabbing techniques that gasoline the Trump strikes.
The recently-released record, introduced with Trump’s signature all-caps textual content, set off a flurry of concern, worry and criticism — which Tom Jones, who leads the American Accountability Basis that compiled the record, noticed as a validation of the work.
“If you’re not taking flak, you’re not over the target,” Jones informed me in an interview. “If the New York Times hasn’t called me a racist, I’m probably not doing my job.”
The record named dozens of federal staff who aren’t solely explicitly centered on range, fairness, and inclusion, however that Jones alleges are “aggressive activists in the DEI space” in different methods. The record dug into the people’ previous jobs, op-eds, social media posts, marketing campaign donations and extra.
Democrats and different outsiders decried the challenge as a scare tactic meant to intimidate public workers, expressing concern that it listed principally Black staff. The top of the American Public Well being Affiliation, Dr. Georges Benjamin, referred to as the challenge racist. Considerations swirled about security and bodily threats towards these on the record, NBC Information reported.
“It’s all bull—-. Like, they literally have no examples of anyone being threatened,” Jones mentioned, including that he has gotten dying threats in his personal electronic mail in wake of the watch record going reside.
I requested Jones about how he would really feel if the record does encourage some sort of risk towards these people. He wouldn’t entertain the notion. “It’s just a red herring. It’s not a worthy hypothetical to discuss.”
Trump signed an government order to terminate DEI within the federal workforce. However Jones is hoping to see that order applied much more broadly, similar to taking motion towards senior leaders who might need some DEI ties however not have it of their job title.
“This isn’t filling potholes. It’s not a position where your ideology doesn’t matter. It’s a position where your ideology is essential and at the core of what you do. And that’s why these people can’t be in these positions,” Jones mentioned.
The objective? “Reassign them, furlough them, administrative leave, all of those things, fire them. All those things seem to make a lot of sense to me,” Jones mentioned.
The pushback isn’t slowing the American Accountability Basis down. The group mentioned it might add much more names to the DEI Watch Checklist. And it’s not the primary watch record tactic from the group both, which revealed a “DHS Bureaucrat Watch List” final 12 months.
The American Accountability Basis has sturdy ties to the Conservative Partnership Institute, a conservative coaching and advocacy nonprofit which has been an incubator of Trump-aligned outdoors teams such because the Middle for Renewing America.
RELATED: PBS closes its DEI workplace to adjust to Trump government order
WHAT’S PAST IS PROLOGUE — Actions as soon as seen as ill-fated purple meat shows for conservatives that even bought some pushback from Republicans at the moment are extra like instruction manuals within the Trump Administration. And so they now get little if any GOP pushback.
Simply check out a variety of amendments from members of the hardline conservative Home Freedom Caucus within the final Congress.
Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) pointed to his modification that might have lower funding to the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement by 50 p.c. It failed, with extra Republicans opposing it (114) than supporting it (102). Now, Republicans are fairly uniformly supporting the Trump administration’s strikes to primarily dismantle USAID – or at the very least not publicly criticizing the transfer.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) had an modification that might have defunded the observance of Pleasure Month by the Division of Protection, failing because of opposition from 18 Republicans. Final month, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced that “Identity Months” together with Pleasure Month, Ladies’s Historical past Month and extra have been “dead” at DoD.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) had one other September 2023 modification to dam funds from going to the United Nations Aid and Works Company (UNRWA) assist company working in Gaza, which failed because of opposition from eight Republicans.
That vote got here simply earlier than the Oct. 7 assaults in Israel — which a number of UNRWA staffers have been accused of being concerned in and fired over, ensuing within the Biden administration and Congress later halting funds to UNRWA. However on the time, the vote was following Trump chopping off UNRWA throughout his first administration. Trump additionally signed an government order to yank UNRWA earlier this month.
I requested Perry about why we aren’t listening to extra grumbling from Republicans about actions from Musk and others given prior opposition.
“I think the difference is that Elon, unlike the rest of us, has this huge platform by which he communicates to the American people on a mass scale,” Perry informed me. “These are things that individual Republicans, time after time, whether it’s USAID or UNRWA or anything like that, have been shouting from the rooftops, ringing the alarm bell. Our bandwidth, our ability to communicate that to the mass volume of American people is very limited.”
These failed amendments are simply one of many methods prior advocacy campaigns and efforts are fueling and previewing Trump administration actions.
Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) annual “Festivus” report of presidency waste is one other instance of GOP-compiled wastebooks that aren’t performing like messaging playbooks.
Final 12 months’s Festivus report, as an example, criticized a USAID-funded “Ahlan Simsim” Sesame Road present in Iraq – a tidbit that Trump officers repeatedly introduced up when praising the Trump administration’s dismantling of the company.
Paul mentioned in a press release that he has shared with DOGE “egregious examples of government spending that I have spent the last ten years gathering, including over $1 trillion of waste highlighted in my most recent Festivus Report.”
DEMS DODGE DOGE — The Home DOGE Caucus is shortly shedding the preliminary Democratic curiosity that it had in wake of the flurry of Musk’sDOGE actions within the government department — posing an issue for the GOP leaders who had excessive hopes of discovering bipartisan consensus within the group.
One in every of three Democrats who joined the DOGE Caucus, Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.), introduced final week night time that she would depart the group, saying it was unattainable to work in good religion on the challenge whereas Musk was “burning down the government—and the law—to line his own pockets and rip off Americans across the country who depend on government services to live with dignity.”
She’s not the one one reconsidering affiliation with the caucus as resistance to Musk’s DOGE turns into a serious rallying cry for the Democratic Social gathering.
“I thought the purpose of the caucus was to make government more efficient and decrease the cost to the taxpayers. But it seems that Elon Musk doesn’t need Congress. He’s doing it all himself,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), one of many different two Democrats to affix, informed me. “So, I want to hear my colleagues tell me why we need the caucus.”
That’s not excellent news for the Home DOGE caucus — to not be confused with the Senate DOGE Caucus led by Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) or Home Oversight DOGE Subcommittee chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
The group hoped to draw much more Democrats and have one member from every get together to guide eight working teams on varied completely different coverage areas. However Musk and DOGE have since develop into a serious supply of concern and a logo of every thing they dislike in regards to the Trump administration, giving Democrats no incentive so as to add credibility to DOGE efforts.
The Musk DOGE strikes are additionally repelling those that expressed some preliminary curiosity in DOGE, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who thought-about becoming a member of the group to speak about protection spending cuts however opted towards it. He informed me that after the previous couple of weeks, his resolution “was the right one.”
Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Ga.), a DOGE Caucus Co-chair, mentioned that the group had simply topped 100 members, and he’s staying optimistic in regards to the prospects for bipartisanship within the group, inviting Hoyle to return again into the fold.
“I still have a personal goal to create that safe harbor where we can debate and we can add more Democratic members,” Bean informed me, inviting Democrats to return to the group’s conferences with out formally becoming a member of the caucus. “We need everybody’s input.”
Bean mentioned the following DOGE Caucus assembly will occur a while this month.
RELATED: First DOGE committee listening to turns into referendum on Elon Musk
I’m Emily Brooks, Home management reporter at The Hill, increasing to cowl the broader right-wing ecosystem, influences, and debates in Washington, D.C. Ship me observations and suggestions: ebrooks@thehill.com.
