A new bill in Congress marks another long-shot effort from Democrats to discipline DOGE.
The pithily-titled “Bad DOGE Act” — evoking the dog meme that ultimately evolved into an actual government group — targets the government efficiency entity for operating outside its scope while demanding, in part, greater data protection standards and basic proof of Elon Musk’s “special government employee” status.
“It’s meant to address the abuses of power, the illegalities, the blatant attacks on our Constitution that Elon Musk and DOGE are engaged in right now,” freshman Democratic Rep. Dave Min said of the bill he plans to introduce on MSNBC’s “Way Too Early.”
The White House executive order that created DOGE authorizes it to perform a project of data modernization, which Min says it has overstepped with federal firings and attempts to close entire agencies without the say-so of Congress.
Part of why DOGE has been able to act behind the scenes is because of a legal maneuver from the White House that shields the entity from FOIA and other transparency mandates: putting the project under the existing Digital Service, in the Executive Office of the President, means it’s subject to the Presidential Records Act, but not FOIA requests.
With Democrats in the minority in both chambers of Congress and GOP support squarely behind Musk’s effort, the bill has no chance of passing.
Acknowledging those realities, Min instead hopes it will spur a conversation with colleagues across the aisle.
“I’m hoping that we can get some Republicans on this bill,” he said, referencing the slim majority the GOP has in the House, adding that he hopes they remember “the oath that we all took when we entered office. … It doesn’t say anything about Donald Trump or the president in the oath we took, it’s about the Constitution of the United States.”
