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scarab92 | on: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
[flagged]
sympil | parent | next
> They are unelected, So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government.

The 2.5 million you speak of operate within agencies whose mandates have been given by Congress and their actions are subject to judicial reciew. There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE. They are the rogue agency people like you spent years worrying about.

refurb | root | parent | next
DOGE is an agency, it took over the digital services agency that existed before.[1]. Obama had created the original agency, not Congress, so Trump had the ability to change it.

"The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President."

And I’m not sure why you think a “congressional mandate” is required for the executive to do things, it’s not. Especially for an agency that a former President created on his own.

As for data access, my understanding is the digital services agency already had data access to other agencies through pre-existing agreements (it goes back to the original mandate to fix the Obamacare website which required pulling data from numerous databases).

[1]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...

toyg | root | parent
The mandate and personnel of the Digital Service are completely different from DOGE, so they are effectively different things. Renaming an existing one was just an administrative shortcut taken by an executive that clearly does not care for the spirit or the letter of any law (as stated by the president himself in his infamous tweet).
refurb | root | parent
As you are well aware Washington DC isn’t big on following “the spirit of the law” and is a big fan on quick workarounds for the bureaucracy that slows things to a crawl.

I give credit to Trump and Musk for playing the DC game like professional politicians.

It’s pretty clear you can’t get anything done in DC without it.

zpeti | root | parent | next
> There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE.

There is. It was given during Obama. You might not like it, but it looks like DOGE is likely to be completely legal and working within the frameworks of the government.

briandear | root | parent
Doge doesn’t need a congressional mandate. There’s Article II.
Timwi | parent | next
> or are just inherently anti-Musk

The dude made a Nazi salute in public in broad daylight. So yes, I'm inherently anti-Musk because I'm inherently anti-Nazi because Nazis are inherently anti human rights and anti basic freedoms.

brigandish | root | parent
Are Nazis for big government or for small government?
throwawayqqq11 | root | parent
Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else.

Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about?

Communication is so messy man, two sides, same iterpretation ... just tell me when i can lower my arm of friendship, that absolutely noone could misunderstand.

brigandish | root | parent
> Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else.

Historically, that has not been the case, hence the question.

> Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about?

Just yesterday this[0] was a headline: "Hegseth wants Pentagon to cut 8% from defense budget for each of the next 5 years"

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-pentagon-8-percent-cuts...

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