STORY OF THE WEEK: Everyone talks about waste and fraud, but no one does anything about it. That may sum up the view of many, if not most, supporters of President Donald Trump as his administration quickly moves to drastically reshape the federal government. “He campaigned on these promises and now he’s following through,” Rhode Island Senate GOP Leader Jessica de la Cruz (R-North Smithfield) said last week in an interview with my colleague Luis Hernandez.

But Trump also distanced himself during the campaign from Project 2025. Now, the architect of that plan, Russell Vought, will lead the powerful U.S. Office of Management and Budget, despite sharp opposition from U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and other Senate Democrats.

For supporters, the alacrity with which the Trump administration is making big changes marks a welcome contrast from how generations of pols have cited the ambiguous catchall “waste and fraud” when asked how to trim government spending. The Government Accounting Office estimates annual government losses due to fraud to be between $233 billion and $521 billion.

But there’s a difference between cutting fraud and remaking the government with disregard for local control, fewer checks and balances and a vast expansion of executive power – all with a leading role for the world’s richest man, who wields enormous influence in his unelected post and is rife with potential conflicts of interest due to his extensive government contracts.

In the short term, taking a chainsaw to the federal government probably resonates with many Americans. Ronald Reagan got a lot of mileage with his line about the nine most terrifying words in the English language. (He nonetheless presided over a big boost in federal spending.) But Musk’s might is helping to galvanize Democrats, courts are blocking some of Trump’s envisioned changes, and people sometimes develop a different view of government when they realize it helps to promote health and wellness.

THE RESPONSE: A coalition composed of Indivisible RI, Climate Action RI, the RI Working Families Party, Common Cause of RI and Black Lives Matter RI attracted hundreds of people to gather outside U.S. Sen. Jack Reed’s Providence office on Saturday, Feb. 8, “to call on Rhode Island’s federal delegation to use every tool at their disposal to stand up to Elon Musk’s illegal takeover of the U.S. Treasury.” According to a news release for the event,“The United States is in the midst of a five-alarm fire. Elon Musk has illegally taken over the mainframe of Treasury’s payment systems, and in doing so is seizing the means of cutting off spending to any federal program. He can delete the file that controls your Social Security payments, or the payments to your kid’s Head Start program. He can unilaterally shut down an agency’s funding or cut off all benefits to blue states like Rhode Island. This is an unimaginably dangerous crisis.”

THE RESPONSE, PART II: Here’s a look at how some of Rhode Island’s Democratic elected officials are reacting to Trump initiatives and nominations.

***Sen. Whitehouse voted no on RFK Jr’s nomination to be Health and Human Services secretary. In a statement, Whitehouse said, “Mr. Kennedy has not come remotely close to providing adequate assurances that he will follow the well-established science on vaccines, nor remedy the ways CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] hurts Rhode Island, so I cannot support his nomination.”

***Attorney General Peter Neronha joined a coalition of 20 AGs urging the Senate to seek more answers from FBI nominee Kash Patel. With 14 other AGs, Neronha was also part of a group issuing a statement on protecting access to gender-affirming care.

***U.S. Rep. Gabe Amo criticized a shrinking commitment to scientific research. He asked Rhode Islanders to share how they are being affected by the new administration.

***U.S. Sen. Jack Reed signed onto a letter calling the Trump administration’s “deferred-resignation” offer deceptive, legally dubious and a threat to important services.

***U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner helped organize a protest against Elon Musk and DOGE and raised a flag about an apparent cut-off in funding for local health centers.