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.
“We were looking forward to figuring out with this administration how we could work collaboratively,” she said. “We have never been given that opportunity.”
The Trump administration has moved on policies that conservatives have dreamed about for years. But some of the changes have blindsided even Republican officials, and turned many of those interested in reform into institutionalist resisters.
Trump’s allies are quick to call this hypocrisy, gleefully watching as their opponents defend programs and policies the White House is happy to keep on attacking.
“We kind of like that they’re attacking [these issues] because they’re basically writing the ads for us for the midterms,” a GOP strategist close to the White House said of its critics. “They’re defending the indefensible stuff, like paying for ridiculous social programs in far-off countries. … Good luck countering that ad.”
The administration doesn’t seem very interested in playing an inside game with those eager for a seat at the table, whether it be Republican lawmakers or those working in government-funded programs. Where past administrations have worked with Congress on budgets and reductions in workforce, this presidency has brashly skipped debate and deliberation in a way that thrills some allies but has created havoc, drawing frustration from both sides of the aisle.
What’s happened to the U.S. Agency for International Development is a good example of this new dynamic. Those involved in the NGO space told NOTUS there were problems with the way foreign aid was distributed.
“I don’t think some of the programs being attacked by the administration would have been things our members would have prioritized,” Bos said. “But the previous administration, you know, they made decisions.”
But the way the Trump administration has gone about addressing these issues has treated recipients of federal funds as complicit. That’s left nonprofit veterans like Bos floored, warning that a better system could now be further out of reach. InterAction was recently on a list of “terrorist organizations” reposted by Musk on social media. In that environment, reform now feels like a punishment, Bos said, rather than a promise.
“You’ve decimated the system and the trust so much that I don’t even know what implementing reform looks like, because what partners are going to be there to do that?” she said. “It’s really hard to square the circle. How can you actually reform this system when you’re not going to have many of the partners who are really, really good at this work at the end of the day to actually help you implement that reform agenda?”
This sentiment is being shared across the government. Reddit has emerged as an almost official repository for government workers aghast and angry at administration attacks on them. r/fednews and r/professors have shifted from work talk and complaints about the bureaucratic morass of applying for government grants to defending a system now under attack by DOGE. Members shared an FAQ by the Association of American Universities aimed at defending against the administration’s allegations that a significant portion of government grant money is wasted.
“I’m going to take a controversial stance and say that capping indirect costs is a good idea but done in a very, very, very bad way,” one member of the group who identified themselves as a chemistry lecturer wrote. Reform is welcome, the poster wrote, but “a shock and awe executive order” was not the way to go about it.
The poster later told NOTUS they haven’t applied for grants, but wrote on the forum that the administration’s approach felt like part of a general misunderstanding that “investment in education and research takes decades to yield dividends.”
Amid the resistance, there’s also a tinge of envy among some of the Trump administration’s fiercest critics.
Some frustrated allies of the Democratic Party have demanded for decades that their leaders be willing to forego the more cautious path of traditional governance. Even while recoiling in horror watching Trump dismantle parts of the housing, education and health departments, some remain convinced that there’s something to the way Trump runs a government.
“If you’re fighting for people with a sledgehammer, that’s great. If you’re fighting against people with a sledgehammer, that’s bad,” said Joe Jacobson, a Democratic strategist. “I just think it’s about the values you’re bringing to the table, but all tools should be on the table.”
Jacobson takes no pleasure in Trump’s actions; he is actively running ad campaigns to tear down support for him.
“If you’re delivering good outcomes, I’d be a fan of the tactics,” he said of Trump, “but he’s delivering bad outcomes.”
Trump’s willingness to grab power has caught the attention of his Republican detractors as well.
“The minuses are more constitutionally and principally concerning, but in terms of the positives I’ve been amazed with, is first of all, President Trump has set a higher standard for the first 100 days of being in office as a newly elected president,” former Arkansas governor and 2024 GOP primary candidate Asa Hutchinson told the Never Trumpers assembled at the recent Principles First conference in Washington. “And seriously, subsequent presidents are going to be measured by the speed and the action that President Trump has been trying to enact his agenda.”
The line was met with boos, but Hutchinson wasn’t done: To him, it wasn’t just the standard Trump set, but the substance of some of his accomplishments that was notable. He said that Trump has kept his promise on border security (though he warned that “there’s going to be a lot of difficulties ahead in that regard.”)
Hutchinson, a conservative by any measure, just not a MAGA one, also pointed to Trump’s push to make many right-leaning dreams about government a reality for now at least.
“He has elevated the presidency over the federal bureaucracy,” he said. “And that’s something governors want to be able to do, presidents want to be able to do, they want to run the executive branch of government.”
Trump allies see a power in using long-standing calls for a different kind of Washington against their opponents. The White House has poked apoplectic critics of its executive actions with videos stringing together statements from Trump predecessors they say show that Trump is simply bold enough to do what other presidents have shied away from.
“I think there are a lot of people who are mad just because it’s Trump and it’s not Biden,” a Republican ally of the president outside the White House said, speaking a version of a commonly heard MAGA take on Trump’s moves, which numerous court rulings so far have said could violate the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.
Claudine Schneider was a moderate House Republican from Rhode Island during the Ronald Reagan years. It was another time a conservative group of outsiders grabbed the reins of power and freaked out a lot of traditionalists with attacks on institutional power. Reagan wasn’t only the first politician to say Make America Great Again, he was also deeply invested in slashing the size of the federal government through measures that struck his critics as draconian. “Starve the beast” was that era’s “flood the zone.”
But the way Schneider remembers it, Reagan was a president eager to engage in the political process. She recalled getting called by the Oval Office after opposing Reagan’s first budget to discuss why she had done so rather than being threatened to support it. She is now among a group of former House GOP members who last cycle urged voters to support the Democratic ticket. She said the language Trump and Musk uses to describe what they’re doing is powerful, but warned people against taking their words at face value.
“It is a platitude that the administration is offering because, of course, everyone wants to get rid of ‘waste, fraud and abuse,’” she told NOTUS a day after protesting in Colorado cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s a truism. But are they really doing that?”
The Reagan revolution really did want to root out waste, fraud and abuse in government, she said.
“But now, it’s ideologically driven,” Schneider went on. “Then, we understood the role of the balance of powers of our three different branches of government.”
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Evan McMorris-Santoro and Jasmine Wright are reporters at NOTUS. Katherine Swartz, a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, contributed to this report.