gotchanewsdaily.com 
CNN
—
When a multi-million federal grant program for dairy businesses was shut down earlier this month in line with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency push to downsize the government, Wisconsin lawmakers on both sides of the aisle sprang into action to try and save it.
The Democratic senator who created the program, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ran into resistance, facing dead ends in the Trump administration before eventually reaching the Agriculture secretary.
GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden, meanwhile, spoke with the secretary but was also able to go straight to Elon Musk, making his case directly during a closed-door meeting with Republican lawmakers last week.
“I was eyeball to eyeball with Elon Musk,” said Van Orden, who told CNN he now has a meeting with Musk’s top lieutenant, Steve Davis, secured for this week.
The funding was ultimately released.
The episode pinpoints a developing pattern on Capitol Hill: Republican lawmakers are enjoying more access – and having more success – in their attempts to convince the White House to reverse cuts to certain programs and workers, while Democrats are largely striking out.
Even in cases where they are advocating for the same thing, Republicans are able to leverage entry points into Trump administration in ways that Democrats simply can’t, leaving them in the dark on many of the recent reversals the administration has agreed to.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said Friday that “after working closely” with the Trump administration and DOGE, he was able to keep open offices in his district that provide key Social Security, health care and weather services that had been at risk of shutting down.
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada told CNN that when DOGE moved to end a Social Security services location in his district, he wasn’t notified and didn’t have the information needed to help his constituents.
“My constituents deserve the same treatment that Rep. Cole’s are receiving, but that’s not happening,” Horsford said.
This dynamic puts millions of people living in districts and states represented by Democrats in Washington at a significant disadvantage. As lawmakers lobby the new administration to restore programs and workers caught up in the sweeping DOGE cuts, Republicans have been far more effective in pressing their case because they are more likely to find a willing ear.
A representative for DOGE has not responded to CNN’s requests for comment.
With Congress holding the purse strings, lawmakers have long back-channeled on key federal projects with Republican and Democratic administrations alike on a bipartisan basis. But in recent weeks, lawmakers have for the most part been left out of Trump and Musk’s federal government overhaul, and only those with personal or political relationships with the administration have made some progress.
It’s raising concern among Democrats.
“It’s hard to get answers,” Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan told CNN. “Almost impossible to get answers.”
“I don’t get the sense that there’s any opportunity for Democrats to backchannel,” Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said. “The whole point of the spending freeze is to force every entity that receives federal funding to pledge their political loyalty to Donald Trump in order to get money. It’s a fundamental corruption from beginning to end.”
Where Republicans are finding successes
GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine immediately reached out to the Social Security Administration, which on Friday reversed course to allow Maine parents to register their children for Social Security at hospitals instead of offices, her office told CNN.
GOP Rep. Austin Scott lobbied the State Department, which ultimately reinstated a Georgia plant’s contracts with the US Agency for International Development.
GOP Rep. Zach Nunn of Iowa told CNN he convinced the Department of Agriculture to keep workers who were addressing avian flu in turkeys that were at risk of losing their jobs.
“We found that when you’re able to highlight where there’s a need, we’ve been successful in getting those turned on,” he said.
Not all Republicans’ attempts have been successful. And not all Republicans are advocating for reversals – many fully support the DOGE cuts. But reversals have come on case-by-case basis and often require a direct line into the upper echelons of the administration and DOGE.
“If you have a compelling project that you support, make sure that it gets visibility,” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said of the need to advocate. “I’m doing it every day.”
GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa said he has “a good liaison with the White House” to point out what funding needs to be protected, or which employees should remain unaffected.
But as Republicans have found windows of success, lawmakers are also becoming more open in their direct engagement with Musk. House Speaker Mike Johnson, for one, has said he speaks to Musk almost daily.
Musk gave his cell phone number to Republican senators in a private meeting this week, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“I was actually texting with Elon last night at one in the morning,” Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin quipped Friday on Fox News when discussing how Congress can play a role in DOGE cuts.
The struggle for Democrats
The problem for Democrats is figuring how to get that visibility in a system that trades on personal relationships and political backchannels, while lacking some of the personal access into Trump world and the world of tech executives that Musk has used to staff his DOGE initiative.
“If the Republicans have a backchannel to DOGE operators who have control over people’s destinies and livelihoods, I would love to get the number from them,” Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland told CNN.
Democrats have instead reverted to public pressure campaigns through press conferences, letters, protests, supporting lawsuits and in some cases legislation. In some cases, those efforts have included filming their attempts to enter various agencies and demanding to meet with DOGE officials.
In one instance, Democrats were able to push the White House to reverse course on a funding freeze of HBCU agriculture scholarships, but it was done largely through public pressure, a source familiar with the process told CNN.
Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts has been trying to advocate to unfreeze a federal grant for a manufacturer stockpiling personal protective equipment but has had to rely on civil servants because his conversations with DOGE have gone nowhere.
“We tried with DOGE and got stiff-armed,” he said.
Democrats on various committees have sent dozens of letters across the administration demanding transparency, documents and briefings on DOGE’s efforts – largely to no avail.
House Veterans Affairs Committee Democrats, for example, have yet to get a fulsome response to the more than 30 letters they’ve sent to the Department of Veterans Affairs about program cuts and staffing reductions, according to a source familiar. Democrats on the House Oversight panel have sent over 75 letters to the administration and DOGE with very little response, another source said.
It’s an approach most Republicans so far haven’t needed to rely on.
Raskin said when DOGE cuts first began, he tried to make calls to fight for getting specific programs back on or constituents their jobs back, but couldn’t get through to anyone and has since turned to public outrage and questioning the legality of the firings.
“The increasing reports of backchannel communications by Republican members of Congress to try to save specific programs or specific jobs for specific people only deepen the lawlessness,” Raskin added. “If you cherry pick it so that favored Republican employees get reinstated at that point, you also have a very clear violation of the Civil Service Act.”
And the administration’s blocking of Democratic requests is taking a toll.
“I think people’s heads are exploding,” Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner, a Democrat, told CNN.
Even Republicans acknowledge that the gutting of the federal government and its workforce needs to be streamlined.
Musk, in his meetings with Republicans last week, admitted that mistakes have been made and agreed that lawmakers need to play more of a role in implementing the overhaul. Trump, for his part, said Thursday, that the reductions in force need to be made more with a “scalpel rather than the hatchet.”
“We’ve got to come up with a process,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said, when asked what federal programs he has successfully protected.
But until then, Republicans continue to take advantage of their exclusive access to Musk.
When Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz called last week on his Republican colleagues to join him in a public letter to Musk, GOP Rep. Darrell Issa opted for a better option.
“I will be with Elon Musk this evening oddly enough,” the California Republican said.
