Musk's DOGE targeted by union lawsuit ahead of Trump's executive order

Zoom in: "DOGE will work with the Office of Management and Budget and all agencies to shrink the federal workforce, federal spending, and federal regulatory burdens," the fact sheet said, as reported by Semafor.

• The executive order also reportedly directs every federal agency to establish its own "DOGE team."
• The group will "oversee a substantial reduction in the size and scope of government."
• An initial focus will be to modernize software systems within the federal government to "private-sector standards," per Semafor.

The latest: Ramaswamy is reported by multiple news outlets to be preparing to step away from the group to pursue a campaign for Ohio governor.

Friction point: DOGE is already facing court challenges.

• The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing hundreds of thousands of federal employees, filed a lawsuit Monday along with two government watchdog groups, claiming that DOGE violates a 1972 law that requires any advice presented by advisory committees be objective and accessible to the public.

What they're saying: Despite the name, DOGE is not a department of the U.S. government, the group argues.

• The lawsuit claims that Trump has characterized DOGE's structure as a group providing "advice and guidance from outside of Government," and as such fails to meet the standards of a permitted advisory committee as established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).
• "This advisory committee led by Musk and Ramaswamy, who hold financial interests that will be directly affected by federal budgetary and regulatory policies, is beset both by conflicts of interest and the biased and extremist views of the libertarian billionaire class," said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, one of the watchdog groups on the suit.