California Gov. Gavin Newsom Sues DOGE Over AmeriCorps Cuts
Americans want and end to waste, fraud, and abuse. AmeriCorps failed its 8th audit in 2024, and DOGE had recently placed most of its staff on administrative leave. Therefore, Newsom is giving the ‘middle finger” to Americans…many of whom live in California.
One aspect of the 2024 election was that voters selected “change” when they pulled the lever for President Donald Trump.
Trump cleverly ran with a “team” and SpaceX/Tesla CEO Elon Musk was prominent in the group effort. Specifically, Musk’s team brought smart and tech-savvy people into look at the government books. Since Trump took office in January, Musk’s team has uncovered vast swaths of waste, fraud and abuse…and most Americans are shocked and appalled.
But even before the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) hit the ground running, one organization was already identified as problematic. In November of 2024, AmeriCorps failed its eighth audit.
This pattern of fiscal dysfunction raises serious questions about AmeriCorps’ ability to operate effectively. Lawmakers—and the incoming Donald Trump Administration should prioritize reviewing AmeriCorps’ operations and consider significant reforms, reductions, or even its elimination to ensure responsible stewardship of public funds.
AmeriCorps, the federal agency for national service and volunteerism, was established by the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993 during the Bill Clinton Administration. In FY 2024, it received $1.3 billion in taxpayer funding.
While the “volunteer” mission of this government agency may sound commendable, it has become a financial liability for American taxpayers, rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. Not only does this translate to inefficient use of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars, it also means that the aim of volunteerism and community service intended to help Americans in need throughout the country is not being effectively achieved.
Just to underscore: The agency, established in 1993 and receiving over $1 billion in taxpayer funds each year, had seven chances to correct course. Yet, no change was made.
The DOGE team reviewed the books thoroughly and made a few changes on behalf of the American people.
AmeriCorps placed most staff members on administrative leave with pay this week, effective immediately, according to a staff member and an internal memo shared with The Associated Press.
The memo from AmeriCorps’ interim director told staff that the administrative leave would remain in effect until future notice. It was sent Wednesday, the day after the agency’s National Civilian Community Corps members were informed that they would be discharged from their service terms early. The dismissal of young volunteers came as the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency make cuts to government workforce and services.
About 15% of the agency’s staff remained active, according to an AmeriCorps staff member who provided the internal communications to the AP on condition of anonymity because the staff member was not authorized to do so. AmeriCorps employs more than 500 full-time federal workers and has an operating budget of roughly $1 billion.
“During the period that you are on administrative leave you are not to enter AmeriCorps premises, access AmeriCorps systems, or attempt to use your position or authority with AmeriCorps in any way without my prior permission or prior permission of a supervisor in your chain of command,” the memo reads.
We have already noted California Governor Gavin Newsom’s desperate bids for relevancy and money as the state budget collapses and his time in his current position is term-limited…with that term ending just as the next presidential cycle begins. He has already filed 15 lawsuits in Trump’s second term (and we aren’t even 100 days in yet).
He is now filing a 16th suit to undo the move recommended by the DOGE team. Newsom tried to be hip and edgy in his statement announcing the move by saying Trump was giving volunteers the ‘middle finger’.
California is suing the White House and the federal Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, over cuts being made to AmeriCorps, Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., confirmed in a statement.
“We’ve gone from the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society to a federal government that gives the middle finger to volunteers serving their fellow Americans. We will sue to stop this,” Newsom said in a statement on his website.
Earlier in the week, DOGE announced it was moving to eliminate virtually all jobs within the agency, placing a majority of employees on leave.
JUST IN: Gov. Newsom announces California will sue the Trump admin/DOGE for cuts to AmeriCorps, saying it’s a “middle finger to volunteers”
CA’s service corps is largest in the nation.
This is CA’s 16th lawsuit since the President took office in January.
Newsom’s statement: pic.twitter.com/xcfdJHE4v9
— Ashley Zavala (@ZavalaA) April 18, 2025
Here’s the thing: People can volunteer to help their communities. However, the country cannot endure the scale of waste, fraud and abuse of the system at this scale for much longer. AmeriCorps was not fixable, and needs to be tossed into the ash-heap of history as another progressive policy failure.
According to a Harvard CAPS / Harris poll, 76% of Americans support DOGE-led efforts for a full-scale investigation to root out fraud and waste in government expenditures. DOGE is doing the will of the people.
And, as my colleague Elizabeth Stauffer noted, Californians are tired of Trump-Resistance-Theater.
Therefore, Newsom is giving the “middle finger” to Americans…many of whom live in California.
(Fun Fact: California filed 123 lawsuits against the Trump administration from 2017 to 2020.)
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Comments
How can someone sue to collect something that they are not entitled to receive?
1 billion each year over 500 workers but staffed by volunteers??? Where is all the money going?
The staff members aren’t the volunteers. They organize the recruitment of volunteers for various projects, ostensibly meant to improve the lives of people who live in the communities in which the volunteers do their work.
Yeah I get that but 1B is a lot of money for this many staffers. How much are they paid. It’s grift of another kind but I’m thinking you’d get a bigger and better bang for your buck distributing the money to local groups, Like I wrote that would be a different kind of grift.
The office may support the volunteers in whatever work they’re doing. This may involve leasing properties, purchasing office equipment and supplies, purchasing tools and paying for transportation to field projects, etc.
It’s simple if you look at it properly. This is exactly the same as the “college administrators” grift, except for the part where any of the money at all comes from the students themselves.
Prior reports claimed each ‘volunteer’ had a cost to the Federal government of roughly $30K for each 10 month term of ‘volunteer service’. I suspect this program has become a patronage grift with ‘volunteers’ selected on criteria other than ability/skill sets and their project efforts directed to the benefit of donors and the politically connected.
Or tasks like helping self-described refugees with asylum applications, building infrastructure for free refugee housing, or other projects with a political dimension far more palatable to the left than to the right.
Most of those tasks were accomplished by sending huge amounts of Taxpayer dollars to NGOs/charities. The Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church, among others, raked in tens of millions for it. The cuts by Trump Admin caused the Catholic US Conference of Bishops to terminate their efforts. Apparently that organization is only willing to be ‘charitable’ with taxpayer money and unwilling to.expand their own funds to keep up their efforts. Strange how often that seems to be the case with ‘charities’ and ‘volunteer’ efforts, usually turns out to be ‘All about the Benjamins’.
I believe the “volunteers” are accorded certain benefits due to their service.
Indeed they are which seems to invalidate claims of ‘volunteer’ status for victimization PR purposes. ‘Oh, the poor volunteers, they won’t be allowed to do volunteer work anymore and communities will suffer’. It is.a BS argument. People in every community remain absolutely free to volunteer their time, money, skills, labor and efforts to help their communities.
I’m confused. Is California suing on behalf of the laid-off americorp ‘volunteers’? Or is California suing as a sovereign state for federal money withheld? If the latter, I would say California has not been injured, or damaged, and would have no standing. This case should be thrown out: no standing.
Because the funding of federal agencies and offices is a matter for Congress to determine, and their operation is a matter for the POTUS, the continued operation of Americorps is a political question. The courts (or at least SCOTUS) have traditionally been reluctant to entertain such complaints. The reply to the complaint has already been provided in the last election cycle and a response to the reply will be given in the next. This is called “democracy” and it’s how a “representative government” works. The judiciary controls neither the purse strings to fund federal programs nor the executive authority to direct their operations. Our system literally does not allow the judiciary a role in these matters.
Newscum is flailing. Its what he does.
So the volunteers are being let go. Depending on what they’re doing, this could be good or bad.
But the administrative staff is on paid leave? Why not unpaid leave? That really is giving the middle finger to the volunteers who may have been doing good work under bad auspices they did not create.
Oh, and Gavin, some of us didn’t like the Great Society.
Or the New Deal.
Or even the New Frontier. Yeah, it accomplished some stuff, but as has been recently proven, with much less efficiency and competence than a similarly tasked commercial enterprise would have… had those enterprises not been deliberately banned from the effort by laws granting an absolute monopoly on space travel to the government. And when it did end up achieving something, those same laws prevented any exploitation that would have resulted in any actual benefit to the American people, instead of meaningless monuments to political glory, which feed nobody but politicians’ egos.
So 500 FTEs account for about $50M, where is the other $1.25B going?
Gov newscum losing his federal funding for the california Homeless Industrial Complex. That means higher state taxes for california residents, or more homeless junkies dumping on the sidewalks. Enjoy the decline under leftists policies CA.
“another progressive policy failure”
Does history record _any_ progressive policy that wasn’t a failure, or even outright fraud?
The divide in America could not be clearer — between the people who kneejerk believe that the three programs chosen for mention by Newsom were great positive steps forward… and the people who actually understand how all three actually sabotaged the constitution and the entire American ethos.
Just to underscore: The agency, established in 1993 and receiving over $1 billion in taxpayer funds each year,
Is built around volunteers. We pay over a billion dollars a year for a volunteer organization.