DOGE cuts are hurting Idaho’s humanities, history and culture | Opinion

DOGE is not what it purports to be.

The indiscriminate, arbitrary cuts across dozens of federal agencies reflect neither its advertisement of efficiency nor its promise to root out waste and fraud. The use of a chainsaw to reduce government spending does not produce meritorious results of the sort that the employment of reason, discernment and measurement of programs based on their value and service to the nation would achieve, if officials were true to their stated goal of reducing unwise and wasteful spending.

The results of the intemperate approach, rather, has been the infliction of the sort of carnage wrought by a wanton Florida hurricane that leaves a wide swath of pain, suffering and destruction that requires years of rebuilding and restoration, if restoration is even possible. The exacting toll of the DOGE chainsaw on the life of America and the lives of Americans may be incalculable unlike, say, a business plan for spending reduction which implements a cost-benefit analysis that includes in its calculus the origins, purpose, utility and impact of a program and what its retention or elimination might mean for the organization.

After three months of blind cuts to governmental programs, without evidence of waste and fraud, we find ourselves observing a funeral parade that includes libraries, museums, the arts and humanities, scientific research and medical assistance, and a diminished capacity for fighting disease and wildfires.

That’s not all.

The elimination of USAID has hurt American farmers and the most vulnerable abroad. The elimination of inspectors general in numerous departments has removed those who hold government officials accountable. DOGE has cut VA benefits and staff and impaired our national security and national defense. The Trump-Musk cuts at the Center for Disease Control included the elimination of the team in charge of researching IVF treatments, despite Trump’s promise to expand access to those fertility treatments which, he has stated, would brand him as the “fertilization president.”

The DOGE decision to gut the National Endowment for the Humanities entails tragic consequences for the Idaho Humanities Council, a state treasure for its leadership in civic and cultural education. The IHC, like other state councils across the nation, relies heavily on NEH funding. The NEH grant to the IHC for the 2025 fiscal year was axed immediately. The Trump-Musk decision to raze the humanities canceled all the grants awarded to the IHC, including its 5-year General Operating Grants and rescinded grants that have already been awarded, in defiance of the express will of Congress, which is vested with the exclusive constitutional control over appropriations.

If Idaho’s congressional delegation are to escape culpability for, and complicity in, these devastating cuts to the IHC, they need to be heard on the floor of Congress, in public speeches and media interviews, railing against the capricious attacks on an institution that serves all Idahoans of every age and every political stripe in every county. The arbitrary demolition of the IHC — indeed, the humanities across the nation — unleashes a bulldozer that crushes historical societies, museums, literary festivals and celebrations, schools and theatres, and the work of educators, writers, philosophers, poets, researchers and scholars who contribute to Idaho’s cultural and educational landscape.

DOGE is not a governmental department, and it violates various provisions of the Constitution. Under the Constitution, Congress alone possesses the authority to create an office. Manifestly, Congress did not pass a law creating DOGE, yet it proceeds with the authorization and approval of Trump, despite the president’s aggrandizement of congressional power.

The role and authority attributed to Musk would, by any measure, elevate him to the status of a “principal” officer which, under the Appointments Clause in Article II of the Constitution requires Senate approval, a function of its Advice and Consent authority. Musk has not been nominated to an office, and thus his sweeping power represents yet another instance of executive usurpation.

Finally, the actions of DOGE violate the appropriations power, vested exclusively in Congress. DOGE’s decision to rescind funds authorized by Congress, including those funds directed to the NEH, and then sent onto the Idaho Humanities Council, represents a rank usurpation of congressional spending power. For readers concerned about the future of the IHC and the preservation of the Constitution, here are three flagrant violations that may ignite your passions.