(A News and Sentinel Op-Ed - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

The so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) was always a farcical ruse, but the fact that it was never about saving tax dollars; eliminating waste, fraud and abuse; or increasing government operational efficiencies has become even more clear in recent days.

Donald Trump has announced that he will seek a $1 trillion defense budget for Fiscal Year 2026, a record high amount for a single fiscal year for a Defense Department that has failed seven audits and cannot provide an accounting for over 60% of its assets. What’s more, Trump has promised to boost payments to private Medicare Advantage plans from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), now run by a TV quack platformed by Oprah, by $25 billion.

The group Social Security Works, an advocacy group, has said recently that “privatized Medicare plans are denying patients the care they need, while defrauding the government of billions a year. Trump is giving them even more taxpayer money. Trump-Musk don’t care about ‘efficiency.’ They care about stealing our money.”

DOGE obviously doesn’t care about exorbitant and unaccounted for defense spending or wasteful spending to private health insurers, but they claim that having practically unfettered access to the personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI) and private financial and tax information of virtually every American will somehow magically reveal a treasure trove of savings and efficiencies and careless spending to be ended. It would be laughable if it weren’t both potentially and imminently devastating to millions of lives.

What do I mean by “imminently devastating?” I’m talking about things like the Supreme Court of the United States deciding that unions with statutory authority to represent bargaining unit federal employees (see: The Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute, also known as Title VII of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 – 5 U.S.C. 7101 to 7135) lack standing in a court of law to claim on behalf of directly impacted, dues-paying members and others protected by Master Labor Agreements violation of their civil service protections via illegal firings that occurred in February. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) subsequently found that unions were not mentioned in this ruling, just other nonprofits that signed on to the suit, but the impact of the ruling for the employees remains to be seen.

In a 7-2 ruling this week on an “emergency” appeal from the Trump administration, SCOTUS decided to at least temporarily block one of two federal district court rulings reinstating about 16,000 federal probationary employees, including at least 85 in Parkersburg, who were illegally fired on or about February 20th. These folks have been through hell as this administration has wreaked havoc on their lives and attempted to deprive them of their livelihoods for no valid reasons whatsoever. Now they could be re-fired in states that did not join a separate lawsuit, including West Virginia, and may be by the time you read this.

If that weren’t enough, Reuters News reports this week that DOGE has been using AI to monitor federal employee work communications for “hostility to President Donald Trump and his agenda.” Reuters reporting also noted that DOGE has used Signal app chats to communicate and Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot as part of their efforts to slash the federal government, in addition to using Google Docs with multiple people editing documents simultaneously. Neither Signal nor Google Docs are approved communication and document-editing software for proper vetting processes and chains of custody in accordance with government information security and records retention laws. As far as Grok AI chatbot, Reuters rightly points out that “As a special government employee, Musk is prohibited under ethics laws from involving himself in government activities that would benefit him or his companies.”

Federal employee unions have been fighting this onslaught in the courts and via administrative bodies like the Federal Labor Relations Authority and Merit Systems Protection Board. As a result, Trump issued a recent executive order attempting to deprive almost 2/3 of the federal civilian workforce of collective bargaining rights on “national security” grounds. Federal employee bargaining rights were established by President John F. Kennedy and expanded under President Richard Nixon and no president since has seen fit to deny federal employee collective bargaining rights on national security grounds, even following 9/11 during the “War on Terror” with the mass public opposition to it or during the Vietnam War as a mass countercultural movement formed in opposition to that war.

A White House fact sheet on the executive order gave away its true purpose when it said, “Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.” Wrong. Federal employee unions have carried out their duties to protect and uphold bargaining agreements; protect and uphold civil service protections; and to help protect and uphold merit systems and equal employment opportunity laws, rules and regulations against this administration’s endless attacks on all of the above. NTEU has filed suit against this unlawful executive order and is seeking emergency relief in court to stop its implementation.

Over 5.2 million people spoke out in “Hands Off” protests across the country last weekend, including over 500 in Marietta, Ohio. Contrary to right-wing delusional propaganda, these were not paid demonstrators or agitators; these were everyday Americans turning out in almost twice Donald Trump’s 2024 win margin numbers and saying we have had enough of this slide into dictatorship. We’ll be speaking out peacefully in greater and greater numbers and with greater frequency until our secular constitutional democratic republic can be restored to sanity.

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Eric Engle is a resident of Parkersburg.