President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk are looking for their next targets as they move to slash the federal government, and some allies worry that what comes next could be less popular, White House sources told Politico in a report published Tuesday.
The first picks -- the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- “were chosen because they carry little political risk, especially among conservatives,” write Politico’s Megan Messerly, Holly Otterbein, and Dasha Burns.
These agencies have been “low-hanging fruit,” a White House official told Politico.
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“You gotta light things on fire that burn the brightest and have the most distinctive smell of waste fraud and abuse,” one White House ally said.
Next, Trump has moved on to target the Department of Education; NPR reported Monday that an independent research arm of the Department of Education has nearly been shut down. Some conservatives, Politico reports, worry that this could be unpopular among “conservatives whose districts often view high schools and universities as major employers and community centerpieces.”
The Department of Defense and the Department of Health and Human Services could be soon to follow. This “could be more challenging, as it takes aim at programs that are better-known, more popular and have much more support on Capitol Hill,” Messerly, Otterbein, and Burns write.
“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud and abuse” at the Pentagon, Trump said over the weekend.
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“Once they start targeting certain benefits, that is when it will hurt the most,” a former senior White House official said.
Cuts to the Defense Department could be surprising to some as Musk’s SpaceX has a $1.8 billion contract with a spy agency that is part of the DOD to build spy satellites.
Democrats have been criticizing the cuts all along, but the White House said they are not bothered. “We look at it as a position of strength when we have the Democrats on record literally losing their minds to stop the Trump administration from cutting waste, fraud and abuse,” a White House official said.
The popularity of Musk’s next moves remains to be seen. “Elon is going to have to be very careful,” a former senior White House official said. “As we all know, it takes just one tweet for a relationship to go sideways.”
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Other potential targets include the National Science Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts.