State Level DOGE Inspired Task Forces Watchlist

The state actually hired 2 consulting firms to help with oversight and management of the funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

Obviously Guidehouse was one firm. The other was 929 Strategies, a public policy and "government relations consulting company." 929 Strategies was founded by former state labor commissioner, Melissa McLawhorn Houston.

McLawhorn Houston served on the current Governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt’s transition team. You can read more about Oklahoma's ARPA money and McLawhorn Houston in this article written by Oklahoma's SPN affiliate.

Once again, I find it so odd that multiple "small government" loving elected politicians across multiple states, are not only all connected by the same Heritage Foundation affiliate network, SPN which is dumping money into policy design for these state affiliates, they're also all using the same D.C. area consulting firm, which has been partnering with the F.B.I. for decades.

I honestly don't think most state citizens would be ok with so many outside influences trying to influence or purchase the policies that determine every day life for citizens of the state. I found out my own local government in Louisiana violated transparency laws and met in secret with Guidehouse, and I know I'm in no way ok with it. You cannot demand transparency and oversight, and then pretend it's somehow ok to hide shady business dealings paid for with tax dollars just because you're pointing the finger at other people.

Hiring the consultants was allegedly justified by the state because of the Federal restrictions on how the money could be spent.

As McLawhorn Houston points out, "This is not funding for pensions... This is not for funding ‘rainy days..."

She said the "basic purpose” of the federal funds was “to respond to the public health emergency” of COVID-19 and its associated impacts.

However, according to this Treasury webpage that outlines eligible uses for the funds, there were actually several ways that money could have been put directly into the pockets of some Oklahoma citizens.

This includes:

Respond to the far-reaching public health and negative economic impacts of the pandemic, by supporting the health of communities, and helping households, small businesses, impacted industries, nonprofits, and the public sector recover from economic impacts

Provide premium pay for essential workers, offering additional support to those who have and will bear the greatest health risks because of their service in critical sectors

I'm curious to know if that's how Guidehouse and 929 strategies advised it be spent? Did citizens of Oklahoma benefit from these billions of dollars?

While the economy is still trying to recover from the nosedive it took due to Trump's failed(?) AI tariffs math, Guidehouse will be getting paid to tell the Army how they should be spending money.

In August of 2024, on behalf of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Financial Management and Comptroller) (ASA(FM&C)) issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for Army Financial Improvement (AFI).](https://sam.gov/opp/1e1313d86ead46db83316abdea7c1661/view#20240828)

The RFP was a "full and open competition for a single award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, with a maximum value of about $250 million over three years."

Weird how so many of these contracts just happen to be going to Guidehouse over and over again while the government is supposedly eliminating as many consulting contracts as they can in order to cut costs.

The Energy Department has identified 16 federal sites that could house powerful data centers to advance U.S. artificial intelligence technologies. The goal is to begin construction on new AI sites by the end of 2027. DOE is seeking feedback from data center developers, energy firms and the public as part of a request for information released last week. The RFI is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to advance AI and boost energy production. Feedback to DOE is due by April 20.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60369289

Part 2: https://toad.social/@PimentoMori/114280296722159897

Part 3: https://toad.social/@PimentoMori/114280389161260976

If you find anything going on in your state, please post it here: https://lemm.ee/c/stateleveldoge

*The first link I tried to use to a hill article covering the story is working, but was showing an access denied title in the thumbnail Here is a link to the hill article

Florida Republican Rep. Donalds along with Democratic Rep. Moskowitz recently introduced a "bipartisan" bill to liberate FEMA from Homeland Security and turn it into a cabinet position.

Moskowitz, was one of Trump's early picks to lead FEMA and also the first Democrat to join DOGE

The bill was introduced the same day Department of Homeland Security Secretary Noem announced during a televised Cabinet meeting that DHS intended to eliminate FEMA

Noem has complained that offices of civil rights within DHS interfere with the DHS mission on immigration, although only two of the three offices Noem has attacked, deal with immigration

The third office is the office of civil rights and liberties within the DHS, and applies to all civil rights issues regardless of immigration or citizenship status.

Noem's attacks against Civil Rights Offices within DHS were made following statements that she plans to use polygraphs on ICE employees

Many current ICE employees are federal employees who were removed from previous positions and have been diverted to ICE.

Diversion of federal employees is seen by many as a highly politicized move that first began in early February and seemed to be a blatant act of retaliation for January 6th investigations.

Despite the fact that polygraphs are known to have high false positives rates, Noem said she plans to use polygraphs to root out individuals leaking information to the press. Noem's threat was followed by similar threats made against employees of the Dept. of Justice and Dept. of Defense.

Notably, FEMA also has a civil rights office within the agency, which deals with any civil rights issues that arise during emergency management Elimination of FEMA as a federal agency by absorbing it into the president's cabinet would place FEMA under complete executive control.

What a surprise to now see Donalds running for governor with House Speaker Mike Johnson's official approval.

Total Contract Value: $38,127,127.20

Omg how is that even a real number. For one single contract?!? Are you fucking kidding me!?

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/25573398

Congratulations, Wisconsin!

Again, we have "savings" coming from DOGE at the state level from cuts.

When Landry proposed his original 2026 budget, state level cuts were supposedly making things more efficient. These cuts will somehow be offset by federal rewards in more funding for the states efficiency effort. However, the federal government seems to be slashing more funding anyway.

So are we really being "rewarded" or just fucked over at the state and federal level?

If Medicaid is unsustainable that means healthcare cuts.

When you're looking for where you should be making healthcare cuts what makes the most logical sense to you?

At least having a discussion about how these administrative salaries and positions are actually justified?

Or

•Slash and burn policy eliminating doctors that were already accepting Medicaid

•Reducing care offered to patients so that the patients will then indeed become less healthy, rely on emergency services and require more costly care in the long run

•Claiming Medicaid is unsustainable bc "no doctors want to accept Medicaid patients."

If you abruptly eliminate all the doctors that do accept Medicaid and then claim you need to increase the Medicaid budget to incentivise doctors in order to get them to accept Medicaid patients, then yes, by default it becomes easy to make the argument that no doctors in your hospital "want to accept Medicaid."

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/59903645

I will put references for all of this info in a comment to save space:

So back in Feb Landry announced he found $11M in savings from Louisiana Department of Health (LDH).

It turns out that a few weeks before that, Louisiana DOGE held secret meetings with Tara LeBlanc, an employee who works for Guidehouse, a consulting firm in the DC area. Before she worked for Guidehouse, she was director of Medicaid at LDH. Since these meetings were held in secret, there is no public record and we don't know what they actually discussed (which is a violation of transparency law).

1 week after Landry said he found $11M in savings, he announces LA DOGE was partnering with the LA Legislative auditor to find savings.

A little under two weeks after that, the LA Legislative auditor releases a report saying that LDH is being audited for misspending funds for Medicaid program MCIP, which was designed to enhance health outcomes for patients on Medicaid. The program was created in 2018 and implemented in 2019.

The audit is blaming the hospitals that were running the programs. However, think back to that secret meeting for a second: A Guidehouse description of Tera Leblanc welcomes the former Medicaid Executive Director for the LA Department of Health, and says she previously "designed and implemented plans to elevate Louisiana’s pioneering public health emergency unwinding strategy and enhance outcomes for Medicaid beneficiaries."

Tera LeBlanc was deputy and then executive director of Medicaid from (2019-2023). This means that LeBlanc was involved in designing and implementing plans to improve outcomes for Medicaid beneficiaries during 4 of the 5 years (2019-2024) that the Louisiana Legislative Auditor claims MCIP funds were misspent on administrative costs such as submitting reports and meetings.

Why do I bring up your LCMC doctors?

Around the time this audit was announced, I learned that several doctors who accept Medicaid were suddenly no longer with LCMC. Nobody seems to understand exactly what is going on. Nurses trying direct people on where to find care are being informed by patients that doctors they are recommending patients contact are no longer with LCMC. There is no reporting on this, which is why I am asking people to help me figure out exactly how widespread this issue is.

According to Landry's team, they found $11M in savings at LDH by eliminating contracts and almost 60 of the health department’s 7,700 employment positions in an effort to reduce spending. I would really like to see exactly what contracts and positions those were.

However, Landry's team also says the overall LDH budget for next year is also increasing due to Medicaid costs being out of their control. This is all apparently coming from federal money, but the day after an article came out clarifying that LDH budget was increasing by $1.5B, another article came out that said the Federal DOGE was suddenly slashing $55M in grant money already given to LDH. Some grants had already expired, but others hadn't.

The most recent estimate of budget elimination when considering expired vs not expired grants is ~$10M. Now LDH is having to figure out how to make up for that $10M in other ways. Which seems like it kind of offsets any "$11M savings" Landry found, but honestly I am very confused by most of this.

I do know that the LA Surgeon General Ralph Abraham, who has long opposed Medicaid expansion, claims that one reason the Medicaid budget is growing is because they have to offer doctors more money as an incentive to get them to accept Medicaid.

You've probably heard the often repeated phrase "no doctors want to accept Medicaid patients." So why were several doctors that accept Medicaid patients abruptly no longer practicing at LCMC?

Seems kind of counter intuitive to claim you need more money to pay doctors to incentivise them, only to have one of your largest contractors suddenly no longer employ doctors who have been accepting Medicaid patients for years, right?

If you get rid of all the doctors that will accept Medicaid, then it becomes pretty easy to prove the point that no doctors want to accept patients on Medicaid. Weird.

For the most part Louisiana, pretty much tends to be the epitome of voter apathy.

2/3rds of voters showed up and said fuck fascism. We might not win, but we're not going down without a fight.

If we can do it, anyone can.

Here are the 2023 salaries for the CEO, President, and COO of the largest chain of hospitals in Louisiana, LCMC.

Here is some information about Louisiana and Federal cuts to Medicaid if it's allowed to be released from the freedom loving, patriotic state of Louisiana:

https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/louisiana-doge-secret-meetings-may-have-involved-plans-to-cut-medicaid-2/

Glad to see the former physician seems to be coming around to the idea of vaccines maybe not being just a "political weapon."

And to think, all it took to change his mind was the completely unnecessary death of two infants.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/louisiana-surgeon-general-depoliticize-medicine-statewide-mass-vaccinations

I saw someone on Mastodon mentioning Musk and the Wisconsin election and decided to do a quick dive into Wisconsin government to get things started.

Anyone from Wisconsin (or anywhere) that sees this please feel free to take the wheel and pick up where I leave off, or go somewhere else completely. The point of this is just to give you an example of how easy it is to find the corruption links in the massive SPN network.

So starting from scratch and knowing nothing about Wisconsin politics:

Wisconsin here's your SPN (and totally not the Heritage Foundation 😉) small government loving affiliate:

https://will-law.org/

I have to admit they seem to have their shit much more together than the majority of these places:

https://will-law.org/will-unveils-open-records-guide-to-promote-transparent-government/

Transparency is apparently very important to them, but not a whole lot of DOGE talk like most affiliates.

Oh wait, nvm, apparently Wisconsin's DOGE goes by GOAT, Government Operations, Accountability and Transparency, how cute goat 🐐

https://www.wpr.org/news/wisconsins-version-of-doge-called-goat-getting-started

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/17/what-to-know-about-wisconsins-doge-inspired-goat-efficiency-committee/82337215007/

From these two articles I learned:

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos created GOAT.

The committee chair is Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie. The co-char is Rep. Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers.

Also on the committee: Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth; Rep. Nate Gustafson, R-Fox Crossing; Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard; Rep. Dan Knodl, R-Germantown; Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, and Rep. Angelina Cruz, D-Racine.

I started searching around for any of those member's names on WILLs website and on the first try, I found Amanda Nedweski mentioned in an article talking about how much she liked some education research WILL did in 2021.

The "research" these institutes do is usually how they justify the money SPN throws at them, so this is also usually a good place to find corruption if you're wondering where you should start.

(Side note:I included this information in another post, but this is a really great resource to get a quick overview of SPN shady nonsense. From the SPN source watch page: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=State_Policy_Network

SPN groups operate as the policy, communications, and litigation arm of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), giving the cookie-cutter ALEC agenda a sheen of academic legitimacy and state-based support.

SPN groups increasingly peddle cookie-cutter "studies" to back the cookie-cutter ALEC agenda, spinning that agenda as indigenous to the state and giving it the aura of academic legitimacy.)

So anyway, back to Wisconsin, WILL's research director is William Flanders. Looking at his LinkedIn it looks like 4 weeks ago he helped present some data about why Medicaid expansion is wrong for the state. Not surprising, this is sounding very typical for an SPN affiliate.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/wilawliberty_statebudget-medicaidexpansion-healthcarereform-activity-7300621776840007680-7Qvv

Presenting that data with Flanders was Robin Vos, creator of GOAT as well as Senate President Mary Felzkowski.

A quick search of Mary Felzkowski shows she's a member of Alec 🚨🚨🚨

Specifically, she's an Alec Health and Human Services Taskforce chair, so her involvement with this SPN affiliate peddling "research" about why Medicaid expansion is bad for everyone in Wisconsin checks out 100%

https://alec.org/person/mary-felzkowski/

If I were any Wisconsin citizen looking for low hanging fruit in order to expose some corruption and point out hypocrisy (and probably more direct ties to the Heritage Foundation and big corporations) in government officials promoting "accountability and transparency" I would say this is a great place to start. And that's coming from somebody who has never been to Wisconsin or heard of any of these people before making this post.

Imagine what Wisconsin citizens with insider knowledge can dig up in no time.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40897823

Because the existing workforce keeps getting deported.

Somehow completely missed this plan that has been in the works for a very long time.

And in completely surprising twist of fate, turns out we're not the only state 🙃

I guess this got removed from the first place I tried to post it. Not sure why, but sorry if I broke a rule. This is not disinformation. All of my sources are always cited in a references list at the bottom of each blog post, but I will go ahead and add them here too.

I'm not trying to spam, but this is my home and I'm sick of watching corruption being carried out in public and ignored because it gets lost in all the noise. There is a reason they are quietly pushing these policies at state levels across the country while hiding it behind claims of small government and transparency.

By the time the federal government completely collapses they will have everything in place to start over with their new network of support built and ready to go. There will be just as much bureaucracy and bullshit as before, but we'll also lose the few rights and protections we had to fight like hell to achieve. I found this shit happening in my state, but I promise it is happening everywhere. It is growing so fast each day. Post what is happening in your state, because I guarantee it's something. Even if you live in a blue state, they have people there pushing for these same policies. Help me call this shit out!

Original Post with references list from blog added.

This all happened a week ago on the same day, but neither story really got much attention. Somehow nobody seemed to realize the order grants authority to the director of the office that is being absorbed by the national guard.

The former director is being given a new title and the interim director is National Guard Brig. Gen. Jason P. Mahfouz.

So, Louisiana, heads up I guess?

https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/comparing-edwards-original-state-of-emergency-cybersecurity-incident-with-landrys-renewal-2/

I also have been pointing out the odd timing of an allegedly bipartisan bill being put forward to liberate FEMA from the department of DHS.

The bill is being proposed by Florida Rep. Moskowitz.

If this bill succeeds, it means that FEMA no longer responds to an emergency situation as an agency. It will be changed to a cabinet position and under the control of a single cabinet member who answers to the president.

Given that the National Guard was just granted full control in any emergency situation, this means in an emergency, Louisiana loses protection of the civil rights office within FEMA that ensures full enforcement of federal civil rights laws before, during, and after disasters.

Its pretty scary to consider, and there are actually several reasons to find it suspicious.

I wrote a blog post about it: https://pimento-mori.ghost.io/states-continue-to-push-law-and-policy-that-coincidentally-aids-federal-government-agenda/

As well as a shorter plea on Lemmy to people in Louisiana desperately trying to get their attention: https://lemm.ee/post/59618046

You might be asking how a governor can have so much executive power over an entire office like that. Well it turns out that Louisiana's emergency management office has existed since the 1970s.

Funny thing about that, I just learned that it used to be the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness and was under the direction of the Louisiana National Guard adjutant general from 1990 to 2006. However, if was changed to a cabinet position in the Governor's Office and became GOHSEP after Hurricane Katrina.

So, America, heads up I guess?

References:

Governor shifts GOHSEP under National Guard:

https://www.nola.com/news/politics/jeff-landry-restructure-gohsep-under-louisiana-national-guard-fiscal-responsibility/article_7e9e08f2-ee67-463c-a2b3-424f6165a087.html

Governor Renews State of Emergency granting GOHSEP director authority to act:

https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/acadiana/2025/03/21/gov-landry-louisiana-omv-emergency-software-failure/825908

Original 2019 Order for State of Emergency:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190726183751/http://gov.louisiana.gov/assets/EmergencyProclamations/115-JBE-2019-State-of-Emergency-Cybersecurity-Incident.pdf

Landry's Executive Order Renewal:

https://gov.louisiana.gov/index.cfm/newsroom/detail/4810

Florida Rep. Moskowitz bill to "liberate FEMA" and make it a cabinet position:

https://moskowitz.house.gov/posts/fema-independence-act-2025

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/congress/2025/03/lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-break-fema-out-of-dhs/?readmore=1

Office of Civil Rights within FEMA:

https://www.fema.gov/about/offices/civil-rights

Department of Homeland Security Secretary announcing plans to eliminate FEMA the same day the Moskowitz bill is released:

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5213057-noem-plans-eliminate-fema/

Department of Homeland security plans to cut back civil rights offices due to immigration. Only 2 of the 3 offices deal with immigration:

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/03/homeland-security-makes-cuts-to-offices-overseeing-civil-rights-protections/