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Most Americans want President Trump to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government but are increasingly wary of how Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency are doing it.
The unease, according to polls, stems from the unparalleled and dizzying pace with which DOGE is slashing government spending and the federal workforce with hundreds of thousands of federal employees fired, others fearing layoffs, and whole departments shuttered.
It’s also spawned a slew of lawsuits to halt or roll back the cuts.
Mr. Trump himself seems to have taken notice of Americans’ skepticism. Earlier this month, he posted on social media that Cabinet secretaries should use “the scalpel” rather than “the hatchet” to make cuts at their agencies. The notice came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy challenged Mr. Musk’s efforts to make cuts in their departments.
“I have no idea how it plays out in the public … but something has to be done,” Mr. Trump said at a Cabinet meeting Monday, a tacit admission that DOGE’s efforts may not be popular.
An NBC poll released last week encapsulates voters’ feelings toward Mr. Musk and DOGE. It found that 46% of respondents said creating DOGE was a good idea, compared to 40% who said it was a bad idea.
However, when voters are asked about their feelings towards how DOGE is executing cuts, the results reverse: 41% said they hold a positive view of the effort and 47% hold negative views.
The same percentage of respondents (33%) said cuts should continue and the cuts need to stop immediately.
A recent Fox News poll yielded similar results with 57% saying “almost all” or “a great deal” of government spending is “wasteful and inefficient” compared to 36% saying it accounted for only “some” of the spending. Yet, only 44% rated DOGE as doing an “excellent” or “good” job at cutting wasteful spending while 57% said the government is doing a “fair” or “poor job’ at eliminating it.
What’s more, 65% of respondents said they are “extremely” or “very concerned” that not enough thought went into the cuts. In comparison, 36% said that was not a concern.
In North Carolina, a state Mr. Trump won handily in the 2024 presidential election, the results mirrored the national polls. An Elon University poll released Tuesday revealed that 51% of Tar Heel state residents say they distrust Mr. Musk and his team compared to 40% who said they trust him. When asked about funding for 14 specific federal agencies, the majority of North Carolinians said they favor only minor reductions or no change at each of the agencies.
“Though polls have found for decades that the public is skeptical about the overall federal bureaucracy, we are not finding unified support for budget cuts when it comes to support for budget cuts when it comes to specific parts of the bureaucracy,” said Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll. “Society is experiencing the disconnect between a desire to see less federal spending in the abstract and the reality that many of the agencies and departments are engaged in work that is broadly popular.”
The Trump administration went on offense this week to explain to Americans what DOGE is doing and the types of wasteful spending agency heads have uncovered.
During Monday’s Cabinet meeting, Mr. Musk said the Small Business Association discovered it had awarded loans to children. He said the SBA awarded three loans totaling $30,000 to 11-year-olds and a 9-month-old who got a $100,000 loan.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said his agency shelled out $83 million for “surveys.” He did not say what the surveys did or what they were meant to accomplish.
“The surveys came back and it was a survey like eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper with ten questions that anyone’s child in junior high could put together or AI could have done. $830 million so that’s one that we’ve stopped,” Mr. Burgum said.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins ticked off a list of canceled spending including a $300,000 contract for “food justice” education for queer and transgender farmers in San Francisco and New York; a $600,000 studying the menstrual cycle of transgender men and another contract promoting diversity equity and inclusion in the pest-management industry.
Meanwhile, opponents of DOGE have staged protests, including nearly 100 reports of vandalism or arson to Tesla vehicles in the U.S. and Canada. At least 10 Tesla dealerships, charging stations and facilities have been hit by vandals, many of whom have lit cars on fire.
English (US) ·