Top DOGE Democrat prepares for ‘battlefield’

By Hailey Fuchs, Katherine Tully-McManus | 02/05/2025 06:16 AM EST

Rep. Melanie Stansbury wants to go head to head with Republicans on the DOGE Subcommittee.

Melanie Stansbury stands.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) will be a leading voice in scrutinizing Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Francis Chung/POLITICO

Rep. Melanie Stansbury wants to lead her party’s fight against Elon Musk’s attempts to transform the entire federal government, an exercise that will largely be focused on messaging and rhetorical counter-programming.

The New Mexico Democrat is the new ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, also to be called DOGE — the congressional counterpart to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency that goes by the same acronym.

“As we ready ourselves for the battlefield, we’re going to have to fight across all three branches of government,” Stansbury said in a recent interview. “Because [Musk and his allies] are violating the law, they’re violating the Constitution, and they’re eviscerating the federal workforce, and we’re prepared to fight back.”

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Democrats can do little else other than make noise; they have no power to override Musk’s sweeping alterations to the federal workforce under unified Republican control.

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