Luke Rosiak
Appearances
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
Hi, John. So contrary to what people initially expected, Doge is more than just an advisory commission. It's now based in the executive office of the president, repurposing an existing group called the U.S. Digital Service. That means it can have paid government employees.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
Already, Doge has been mining through spending records and flagging grants it views as wasteful, and then working with the Office of Management and Budget or agencies to stop them. It said it's canceled a billion dollars in DEI contracts so far. It's also focusing on using technology to save money.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
Then there are grants, especially through USAID, that Musk said are basically slush funds funding international liberal activism.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
Oh, absolutely. Employees from Musk's businesses have taken roles at agencies that serve as the nerve centers of the federal government, specifically the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, and the General Services Administration, the GSA. Now, OPM was behind the buyout offer that will pay employees until September if they quit.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
It's also key to dealing with unions, which are going to be a big impediment to personnel reform. The Biden administration signed a contract with one union literally three days before Trump took office, and Congress's DOGE subcommittee is investigating that. Now, GSA manages real estate procurement and technology for other agencies.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
Doge said it's already terminated the leases of some government buildings. And Musk knows that government employees have a vested interest in keeping the spigots of cash flowing. He said his plan is to outmaneuver them by working harder than they're willing to. Musk aides have literally been living in OPM headquarters.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
Sure. So a GSA unit that develops websites for agencies across the government called the Technology Transformation Service had a former Tesla engineer installed at the top. Now, TTS and its major component called AT&F is a perfect example of the really hard-to-eradicate bias that's present in the government. Its X logo was a transgender flag.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
It spent time programming an inclusion bot that would monitor what staff typed and lecture them if they used phrases like nuts, which it said was derogatory. So a bot made to language police. Yeah. And this part of this happened, you know, including during the first Trump term. And it gets crazier at TTS.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
Its employee handbook said, before speaking at a meeting, employees should describe what they look like so any blind people would know if there was sufficient racial diversity. Now, OPM has ordered employees back to the office, which will have a side effect of encouraging more to accept the buyout. They expect 10% of employees to take it, which would save $100 billion.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
Now, you can see the changes this group makes through tools that track code, and they've been deleting the inclusion bot, sections of the handbook. a surprising portion of their work product that had more to do with employee comfort and left-wing virtue signaling than the mission. Sounds like it.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
He's made incredible progress. For some employees and woke policies, it appears it is over. But to some extent, DEI is the low-hanging fruit, and some things are harder to change. We'll see if the return to work orders and the buyout offers are a filtering mechanism that will result in a workforce that can be trusted to implement rather than subvert their chief executive's directive.
Morning Wire
Trade War Escalation & DNC's New Leadership | 2.3.25
I think that's right. Luke, thanks so much for reporting. Anytime.
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
Change to turf, runway 33, runway 33, clear to land. Oh, did you see that? American 3130, go around, turn left, and 250, climb Anthony 3000.
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
Hey, John. So the Century Foundation, which is an influential progressive group helmed by a member of Barack Obama's Domestic Policy Council, said school districts should resist deportation efforts because illegal immigrants bring in money for their budget. In other words, they're kind of saying the quiet part out loud.
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
More than a million Americans withdrew their children from public schools in the last couple of years, feeling let down because of COVID, critical race theory, and other issues. That would have meant layoffs for teachers and administrators, except that illegal immigrants have largely replaced them.
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
Century said it makes financial logic for school districts to stand in ICE's way, saying the task is simple. Keep students in school, maintain enrollment and funding. Let me read verbatim from this education policy group. Immigrant students have helped keep the public school district budgets from shrinking due to declining enrollment.
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
Public schools in the United States lost more than 1 million students between 2019 and 2022. These enrollment losses can lead to significant layoffs. However, English learner enrollment has grown significantly, making up for some losses and bringing enrollment-dependent funds back to public schools.
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
Exactly. We spend a lot more educating a child that doesn't speak English than we do for Americans. In Fairfax County, Virginia, the cost is $20,000 per American, but $25,000 a year for school for English learners because the extra teacher's required. So what makes financial logic for teachers actually means ruin for taxpayers? That's caused huge problems throughout the country.
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
Fairfax went from a budget surplus to a $300 million budget deficit, which is now threatening cuts to the fire department. leaders never point out in these pain discussions about the deficit is that the county school spent $158 million teaching English to migrant children last year, more than half the deficit. That's an unexpected cost, rising $70 million in just the last few years.
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
Yeah, I mean, you look at an enrollment chart for, say, Denver, which came out swinging against this new Trump policy, and it's remarkable. The schools had been hemorrhaging students for years, but then they get that godsend. A lot of new students who require a lot of very labor-intensive services, even though their parents pay very little in taxes.
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
Yeah, and they don't need to bother with upping the quality of schools to lure back Americans. There are also questions about whether schools are essentially defrauding taxpayers. In Fairfax, they say that more than one in five students needs these English learner services. So they're either
Morning Wire
Plane Crash Recovery & Cabinet Hearings Clashes | 1.31.25
totally failing to actually teach them English for years, or they're falsely claiming they still don't speak it to keep getting that extra cash.