Trump’s DOGE Double Down & Federal Worker Competency | 3.10.25

— Protesters target Doge and Tesla, but Trump makes clear he stands behind Musk in his efforts to slash government spending. — I mean, the money they're spending on all of this stuff, the whole thing's a scam.
— How do Americans feel about Musk and Doge? — I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, March 10th, and this is Morning Wire.
Should federal employees have to pass a competency test to be hired? The Trump administration thinks so, but a decades-old law stands in the way. We have the Daily Wire exclusive.
And Trump calls on Republicans to back a government funding bill that would give him time to put the country's financial house in order. We have to bring down the federal deficit and control the federal debt.
Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned.
We have the news you need to know. Are you looking for a better quality meat? Good Ranchers delivers 100 percent American beef, chicken and wild caught seafood straight to your door.
Every cut is steakhouse-grade with no antibiotics or hormones.

Subscribe now using code DAILYWIRE to get your free bacon, ground beef,

seed oil-free chicken nuggets, or salmon in every order for an entire year, plus $40 off.

That's goodranchers.com, promo code DAILYWIRE.

Good Ranchers, American meat delivered.

Now, he's done a great job.

He actually is a real patriot. This is something that's really not good for him, and yet he's doing it.
But he's opened a lot of eyes. That was President Trump on Sunday voicing his confidence in Elon Musk's continued efforts to cut federal spending through the Department of Government efficiency.
Though popular with voters, the independent agency has sparked left-wing protests and violent attacks on Tesla facilities. Here with more is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
So Megan, Doge is continuing to identify some really eye-popping expenditures in the federal budget, but there's been a lot of pressure from the left for the president to rein Musk in, with some interpreting Trump's recent statements as doing just that. What are we seeing on the Trump-Musk front? Well, you know, I think what you're seeing is some careful PR management surrounding a program that has been significantly slowed down by the courts and has become a key target for Democrats.
I think some of that has spooked Republican lawmakers. Reportedly, the president has been hearing from them.
And then last Thursday, he posted on Truth Social that these cuts are going to be made using a scalpel rather than a hatchet. And he also stressed that the cabinet secretaries will be making the final calls on these cuts.
And that's something that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick emphasized on Meet the Press on Sunday. There's no one watching this TV right now who, if Elon Musk said he was going to come over to their house and help them, wouldn't like cheer.
You have the best technologist and the richest guy in the world say, I'll help you. Come on.
We want his help. But at the same time that Trump is being careful to note that Musk is only advising, and we want to be clear, presidents have every right to call on private sector advisors.
He's also touting the waste, fraud and abuse that Musk's team has identified. This is what he told Fox yesterday.
He's found hundreds of billions of dollars worth of fake contracts. And I read them, just a tiny portion of them the other night.
And you'll find ultimately that the money that they sent comes back to a lot of the people that made those deals.

Trump added that Musk has convinced him that some government departments do need to see deep cuts as much as 50 to 70 percent. So it sounds like a good deal of solidarity between Trump and Musk at this point.
Yeah. Now, all of this has led, though, to protests at Tesla facilities.
Where are we seeing those? So they're calling these Tesla takedown protests, and I'd say that none have been particularly large. You're mostly hearing about gatherings of hundreds, but they are actually happening all across the country, and they're getting substantial media attention.
Now, part of that is because some pretty high-profile people are participating in these rallies. Like on Friday, former head of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, led a protest song at the Lincoln Memorial over potential research cuts.
This is a song for all the good people. We're joined together by this noble dream.
OK, so that's not something that you see every day. But as for the less famous protesters, the GOP says that many of them are actually being paid by power brokers like George Soros and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
And they say that Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue is also playing a role in funding some of these groups. Unfortunately, other protests are making news because they're going far beyond peaceful singing or carrying signs.
We're now seeing protesters attacking Tesla dealerships, manufacturing facilities, and even charging stations with Molotov cocktails, gunfire, arson, things of that nature. Just a sampling here.
Over the weekend, someone shot up a Tesla dealership in Portland, Oregon, damaging cars and shattering windows. In Massachusetts, arsonists set a number of Tesla charging stations on fire.
But we do want to note that for all of those protests, the latest polling says that the majority of Americans do backdoge. Asked how much influence Musk and Doge should have on government spending, 54% said some or a lot, compared to 46% who said only a little or none.
A narrow majority, 51%, also said that they want to see that federal workforce reduced. Well, let's see if he can hold on to that majority.
Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime.
For millions of entrepreneurs, that hero is Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout we use with Shopify.

Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash morningwire, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash morningwire to upgrade your selling today.
Shopify.com slash morningwire. The Trump administration will ask a D.C.
court to throw out a 40-year-old order that it says puts race over merit when it comes to federal hiring. The move could allow Donald Trump to permanently reshape the federal workforce.
The Daily Wire's government efficiency reporter Luke Rosiak has obtained documents showing that the Trump administration will seek to dissolve that 1981 decree on the grounds that it's no longer legal under Supreme Court precedente, Luke. So tell us what's going on here.
Hey, John. So in the 1970s, a group of minorities objected to the federal government's use of a test called the Professional Administrative Career Examination.
Now, that test accurately predicted who would go on to be an excellent employee, but a lawsuit said it was racist because blacks and Hispanics didn't score as highly as whites on average. Now, Jimmy Carter, who was president, said the test was fair, rigorously constructed, and useful.
But after he lost election, he settled with the plaintiffs and entered into something called the Luevano Consent Decree, which ended the hiring exam and gave the plaintiffs veto power over its replacement. That was only supposed to last for five years, but the Office of Personnel Management ran into a problem.
It tried six times,

but no tests that accurately identified competent employees also led to what was required by the

decree, which is zero statistically significant differences in hire rates by race. The result is

that more than 40 years later,

federal agencies tasked with hiring millions of people are forbidden from using objective skills tests to find the most skilled applicants. So this is like telling colleges they can't use the SAT to admit students.
Exactly. OPM finally came up with one test that would result in a high proportion of minorities.
And it's basically just a self-assessment. The government now largely relies on 136 question quiz where applicants rate themselves on how qualified they think they are.
So people who say they're the best go to the top of the stack. Right, right.
And so now the Trump administration is set to ask the D.C. court to end the consent decree on quite a few grounds, including that it's illegal under the Supreme Court's president, especially the 2023 Harvard ruling that ended affirmative action at colleges.
The Trump administration will argue that it, quote, blatantly conflicts with current law and requires the federal government to make hiring decisions using explicit racial classifications. It says it amounts to one court using a nearly half-century- exam could turn up the best and brightest who were evaluated objectively and hired based on merit.
All right, so you're saying the lines might move a little more quickly next time I go to the post office. We can hope.
Could this prove to be a lasting change? Yeah, this is one of these things that could be a legacy for Trump. In many ways, it's a big surprise that this decree is still standing so many years later, especially because blacks aren't actually underrepresented in the federal government.
They're actually overrepresented by 50 percent. Even if we weren't in a post-DEI, post-affirmative action world, this consent decree was legally hard to justify.
Well, this will definitely be one to watch as Trump seeks to get control of the federal workforce. Luke, thanks so much for bringing us this exclusive.
Thank you. With yet another government shutdown deadline looming this week, Speaker Johnson proposed a seven-month funding patch Saturday in coordination with the Trump administration.
The Trump-backed stopgap bill would keep the government funded through the end of September. Joining us now is Representative Andy Harris of Maryland.
Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. Sure.
So Speaker Johnson has proposed this stop gap bill, which he released this Saturday. What's in the bill and does it have support in the House? Well, what the bill does is essentially freezes the spending for the rest of the year.
In fact, it actually lowers it a little bit. It makes some upgrades to the defense appropriations.
So what we call stops and starts, stops some programs that are unnecessary, starts others, provides a little extra money for the deportation of the illegal alien criminals that's underway, provides a little extra money for the Women and Infants Children Food Program, just in case we need it for the rest of the year, and then also provides a little more money to the VA health system because, again, after the PACT Act, we do have more veterans seeking care and we provided funding for them. And by removing funding for some of the new IRS agents, the Biden administration plan, we can pay for it all.
And again, still decrease spending a little bit. Right.
Now, the numbers we have is something like a total of $6 billion in increases for deportations, military programs, veterans, health care, some of the things you listed. But then a $13 billion cut in non-defense discretionary funding.
Is that correct? That's right. Again, because we have the IRS rescission, the bottom line is this not only would freeze spending, it actually reduces spending a little bit.
And that's why I think that it's going to pass with Republican votes this week. And then again in the Senate, I don't think the Democrats are going to unite to shut down the government.
Now, Trump campaigned on securing the border and getting inflation under control. He has certainly tackled the first issue in a way that's really dramatic.
It's the lowest numbers we've ever seen crossing the border illegally. But many people still do struggle financially with inflation.
Will voters give Trump the time he needs to bring down prices? Well, I hope so. You know, Joe Biden took four years to increase the cost of everything and to bring on the inflation and to stop energy exploration, for instance.
It's going to take a little while to get it started back up. But once we get it started back up, I think you're already seeing the effect at the gas pump where the price of gas is coming down a little bit.
I think it can come down way more. And when that comes down, the cost of energy and electricity and all the things that run our economy is going to go down.
So it'll take a little while. But again, we're going to turn this ship around.
When we continue to have these budget battles, where can Republicans and Democrats find common ground on the next budget? Look, if the Democrats aren't willing to control spending and get our debt deficit under control, then I don't know how we're going to see eye to eye. The bottom line is we have to control spending.
We have to make sure that when the Doge Committee finds savings, potential savings, we have to incorporate that into next year's spending. We have to make sure we cut the waste, fraud, and abuse.
If they're willing to be partners on that, we're willing to work with them. Up until now, they haven't been.
Now, this bill cuts earmarks and gives Trump more power to move money around, even for new military projects Congress hasn't officially okayed. Democrats say this is a blank check for Trump and Musk, but Republicans say it's needed to fix spending by September.
Are you okay with giving up some of Congress's control to the White House? Well, I don't think we give up that much control. I think Congress, you know, sets a ceiling on spending.
And obviously, if the president finds that some of that spending is wasteful, I think the president should withhold it. And then we should do rescissions of that spending.
Again, we're still setting the ceiling on spending, and that'll be set in the continuing resolution. And again, I want to give the administration discretion.
If they find fraud, waste, and abuse, they should stop spending money on it. Well, Trump has asked for a few more months to get a lot of this done, so we'll see if Congress gives it to him through this bill.
Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. Okay, thank you.
Another story we're tracking this week, the Secret Service shot an armed man near the White House early Sunday morning. Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olihan has more.
Secret Service said in a statement on Sunday that local police had shared information with them earlier on Saturday about a, quote, suicidal individual who might be traveling to D.C. from Indiana.
Agents encountered the suspect around midnight after he parked his car close to an entrance to the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office building. As officers approached, the Secret Service said, the individual brandished a firearm in an armed confrontation ensued during which shots were fired by our personnel.
The suspect was transported to a nearby hospital, and according to the Secret Service, there were no reported injuries to their personnel.

President Trump was in Florida during the incident,

and we're still waiting for more information.

Thanks for waking up with us,

and if you liked what you heard this morning,

share this episode with a friend.