Weekly Spotlight: A Horribly Misguided "Cost-Cutting" Move

The executive branch made some more unwise cuts this week.

May 31, 2025

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GUTTING THE GOVERNMENT

Pentagon’s newest “cost-cutting” move: Gutting a crucial weapons safety office

The executive branch made some more unwise cuts this week. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) to cut more than 50% of its staff in a memo this week. Hegseth claimed the cuts would remove barriers to rapid weapons deployment and save the Pentagon $300 million a year. We are all for cutting Pentagon waste, but this approach is horribly misguided. DOT&E was created by Congress to conduct crucial oversight of weapons testing. We need this rigorous independent oversight to make sure weapons work as promised when troops need them most. Dysfunction will cost service members and taxpayers exponentially more down the line — the Pentagon should not be cutting corners on testing.

“Secretary Hegseth’s memo signals a fundamental misunderstanding — or rejection — of why Congress created an independent operational testing office in the first place. This law was designed to ensure weapons systems are evaluated outside the chain of command that develops and promotes them,” POGO’s Greg Williams told Bloomberg.
DOT&E was created after POGO pushed for stronger congressional oversight of weapons testing more than 40 years ago. Weapon unreliability is still a major and fatal issue in the military.
ANALYSIS F-35 Testing Report Reveals Problems with Production Decisions: The rushed decision to enter full-rate production on the essentially nonfunctional F-35 serves as a painful example of why we need rigorous oversight on testing.

EXECUTIVE POWER GRAB

A sneaky attempt to put the president out of the courts’ reach

One of the many things wrong with the reconciliation bill passed by the House: a sleeper provision that would obstruct the courts' ability to hold officials who disregard orders in contempt. How? By preventing the courts from spending money to enforce those orders. President Trump already has presidential immunity for any criminal activities he conducts while in office as long as he can justify it as an 'official' executive action. If this bill is passed, this provision will further bulldoze the limits on executive power and you’ll be more likely to see your rights abused. The Senate must strip this measure from the reconciliation bill to protect the foundational checks and balances of our democracy. No one, and especially not government officials, should be above the law.

The Trump administration is already defying multiple court orders. If this provision makes it through, it could further embolden the White House to ignore the judicial branch.
Not just the courts: The administration is withholding congressionally mandated funding. This is an illegal grab at Congress’s constitutional power over federal spending.

POGO INVESTIGATIONS DESK

Navy Secretary "Appalled" by Barracks Conditions in Guam

Exposed wires dangling from the ceiling, bubbling and cracked walls where mold was painted over, badly corroded plumbing — these are housing conditions faced by service members in barracks at the Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, according to photos and internal emails obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), writes POGO’s René Kladzyk. Read the new investigation on pogo.org.

ABUSING POWER AND RIGHTS

So it begins — new details on Homeland Security's surveillance abuses

In an analysis last month, POGO’s Don Bell warned that the existing surveillance infrastructure is ripe for exploitation, specifically in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. And the abuses are piling up. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been collecting the DNA of migrant children as young as 4 years old in a national criminal database "built for violent criminals and convicted sex offenders,” where their data can be stored, accessed, and used for profiling indefinitely. This dramatic and targeted expansion of biometric surveillance endangers some of our most fundamental rights and needs to be stopped by Congress now.

There’s more. ICE has reportedly tapped into a local law enforcement network of AI-enabled license plate readers to make “side-door” immigration-related searches, basically making it a national surveillance system.
Dig deeper: Season 2 of our award-winning podcast Bad Watchdog traces the history of the Department of Homeland Security from its founding post 9/11 to its current laser focus on detaining and deporting migrants. Host Maren Machles asks: How did we get to a point where every undocumented person is seen as a possible national security threat? Stream Bad Watchdog on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

OPINION

It’s Time to Ban Congressional Stock Trading and Everyone Knows It

It’s not often that Republicans and Democrats agree on public policy. So when they do, it should be a catalyst for reform, writes POGO’s Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette in Washington Examiner.