President Donald Trump is overseeing an executive branch that’s acting with near omnipotence, daring Congress and the courts to try to stop their complete transformation of government operations and federal spending. But before Trump — and Elon Musk — began slashing contracts, firing federal workers and shuttering programs, they were selling a large-scale audit of the government that even those on the opposing side of the ideological spectrum were open to.
Now with the Department of Government Efficiency steamrolling its way through federal agencies, those could-have-been allies in reform feel disenfranchised and worse off.
“Our members were really, really clear that we wanted to have reform conversations,” Lisa Bos, head of global development policy at InterAction, a consortium that represents hundreds of — until very recently — noncontroversial global aid nonprofits, said of the days before the White House turned reform rhetoric into a mostly ongoing pause on global aid money.