Musk’s DOGE ‘wrecking ball’ could topple Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda

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There is a gob-smacking incoherence when it comes to actions and rhetoric in the second Trump administration.

On the one hand, Elon Musk and his DOGE minions are indiscriminately slashing jobs and canceling leases for buildings across the federal government. On the other hand, President Trump purports to want to reclaim America’s “energy dominance.”

Let me stipulate first that the job cuts are wantonly, needlessly cruel – and likely illegal – and that canceling leases at federal buildings, at the same time the White House wants employees back in the office five days a week, is both nonsensical and wasteful.

If you are White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles or Interior Secretary Doug Burgum watching DOGE slash and burn its way through the federal bureaucracy, you might be wondering who will be left to help you implement Trump’s energy agenda.

Last Friday, U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D) rang the alarm about the DOGE-led General Services Administration’s (GSA) plan to shutter more than 2 million square feet of office space at Department of Interior facilities across the country.

In all, 164 offices are slated for closure, according to a spreadsheet released by Huffman’s office, including more than one-quarter of all Bureau of Indian Affairs locations.

“Trump and Musk are taking a wrecking ball to our country – slashing staff, cutting vital funding, and creating widespread chaos and economic devastation. Shuttering these physical locations goes hand in glove with DOGE’s ‘destroy the government’ approach, and it will make their illegal cuts even more challenging to reverse,” Huffman said in a press statement.

“This decision defies all logic. While the Trump administration demands a return-to-office, GSA is shutting those offices down – eliminating jobs, destabilizing local economies, and gutting essential services,” he added.

What happened to "energy dominance"?

The White House will soon realize it needs the thousands of civil servants that DOGE operatives fired in recent weeks (and the buildings they worked in) if it wants to expand U.S. fossil fuel production.

Instead, to cite one example, the purge of probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) included layoffs of nearly the entire carbon removal team, Heatmap’s Katie Brigham reported last week. Advancing carbon removal should be something that Trump and his allies in the oil and gas industry can agree on.

I’m not the only one puzzled by the dissonance of DOGE’s actions and Trump’s rhetoric.

“I don’t understand exactly what world we’re going into, but at the moment at which you decide that you being against something means that it has to stop happening, energy abundance goes out the window,” Jigar Shah, director of DOE’s Loan Programs Office during the Biden administration, said last week on Latitude Media’s “Open Circuit” podcast. “This is having a chilling effect on the entire business of energy. … It’s not good for investor confidence.”

“If we are going to have the amount of economic development that we think is necessary for America to continue to compete in the world, we need these [energy] projects to actually get built. And I don’t think that these actions are providing a lot of confidence in the market,” he added.

When will Republicans step up?

Musk’s DOGE teams are slashing jobs and canceling building leases so quickly, and to such a draconian degree, one must ask: When will Republicans in Congress step up to defend their constituents and preserve good-paying jobs in their states or districts?

According to Huffman’s office, 60% of the Interior Department square footage slated for closure is in Republican districts.

Which representative has the most to lose? House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R), whose district could see 236,356 sq. ft. of closures.

On the chopping block in his district are buildings occupied by the Gulf of Mexico regional offices of the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).

According to a GSA lease prospectus submitted in December 2022, “the BSEE office oversees nearly 2,000 facilities and about 13,135 miles of active pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico” and the “BOEM office manages almost 2.5 billion acres of the OCS [Outer Continental Shelf], nearly equal the size of the nation's land acreage.”

Shuttering the offices of the federal government’s offshore energy regulators in Louisiana directly contradicts Trump’s goal of expanding oil and gas production. It also puts family-supporting jobs at risk for Scalise’s constituents. But based on the slavish fealty House Republicans have shown Trump thus far, I don’t expect him to do anything to stop the closures.

Trump's "energy dominance" agenda

Trump’s calls for American “energy abundance” or “energy dominance” have always been stubbornly ignorant of reality. The U.S. is already producing more oil than any other country and is expected to install a record 63 gigawatts of new power capacity this year – 93% of it solar, wind, and batteries.

Trump could have simply done nothing, allowed the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to continue to boost energy investments, and then declared victory in his quest for "energy dominance."

Instead, he’s permitting Musk’s unaccountable, shadowy DOGE squad to make cuts that actually could threaten the abundance of American energy technologies Trump loves (and loathes). Is Trump really going to allow Musk to derail one of his biggest campaign promises?