Using a simple and sweeping executive order, President Donald Trump has sought to further empower Elon Musks DOGE to gut the federal government andas both billionaires have put itmake it more efficient. On Tuesday, Trump published yet another EO that sought to enshrine DOGEs authority to lay waste to the federal workforce, while also giving it new powers. Until now, much of Musks efforts to attack the government have been unfolding in a confusing, shock-and-awe style pell-mell of firings, contradictory policies, and dramatic media antics. However, Trumps new order gives more of a structure to the effort. The order instructs agencies across the government to prepare for reductions in force, or RIF (which is basically code for large-scale layoffs), stating that agency heads should work closely with DOGE representatives while the effort to gut the government proceeds. Indeed, the order claims that, as part of a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Governments workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition, agencies should hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart. Additionally, the new hires at those agencies need to be carried out in collaboration with DOGE, as the order states that agency heads must necessarily develop a data-driven plan, in consultation with its DOGE Team Lead, to ensure new career appointment hires are in highest-need areas. That said, the legality of much of what is happening continues to be unclear, and DOGE has suffered an increasing number of legal attacks in recent weeks. On Tuesday, the transparency organization American Oversight sued DOGE over numerous Freedom of Information requests it had filed regarding the agencys activities. Despite Musks claims that the government should be more transparent, the Trump administration reorganized the structure of the existing U.S. Digital Service to create DOGE, in an apparent attempt to evade FOIA, the litigation claims. The suit seeks Musks communications in an effort to shed light on his organizations goals and activities.Its impossible to disentangle DOGEs overall goalwhich is to downsize the agencies tasked with providing public services to Americansand the newly announced budgetary aspirations of the GOP, which appears to be to drastically scale back spending on public services. The intersection between those two mutualistic goals was on full display during the first hearing of the Houses Committee on Oversight and Government Reforms new DOGE subcommittee, which is ostensibly designed to discuss and investigate government waste. The subcommittee is helmed by the notoriously insane MAGA nutcase Marjorie Taylor Greene who, during her opening remarks on Wednesday, called government spending debt slavery and went on an extended rant about how the federal bureaucracy was shackling Americans. Yet contrary to what Republicans have long claimed, a leaner government does not necessarily mean less debt, and the Republican Congress has made it known that theyre less interested in reducing budgetary expenses than they are in giving tax breaks to Americas richest people. Indeed, the new budget that the GOP is currently attempting to pass would add $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, new estimates show. The way Republicans plan to pay for the renewal of Trumps tax cuts is by making deep cuts to healthcare and anti-poverty programs that help millions of Americans (including many Trump voters) survive.The ongoing Republican talking point about irresponsible spending and the national debt is humorous given the fact that, during his first administration, Trump reportedly added to the debt more than any other U.S. president had at the time. Most of that debt came (again) from Trumps decision to give giant tax breaks to his fellow billionaires. Musks focus on government waste and fraud is also ironic, given the fact that the Trump administration seems to be doing everything in its power to gut the internal watchdog services designed to look out for that sort of thing. Trumps team recently fired a bevy of inspector generals at agencies across the government. IGs are generally tasked with rooting our fraud and abuse at the agencies at which they are stationed. Some of those IGs are now suing the government, in an effort to get their jobs back. The lawsuit calls the administrations firings illegal and, as such, constituted illegal interference with the IGs official duties.