WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” came under legal attack within minutes of its official creation Monday, as various public interest groups filed multiple lawsuits accusing the advisory panel of violating federal rules on transparency and other practices.

Suits filed by groups such as the American Federation of Teachers, Public Citizen and National Security Counselors, call for Trump’s panel — nicknamed DOGE — to cease its operations until it complies with a 1972 law designed to ensure that advisory panels operate in a transparent and unbiased manner.

Another suit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, seeks to obtain all records from the Office of Management and Budget related to DOGE. The public should have access to those records particularly given “the threats to numerous environmental protections” through administrative rollbacks of Biden-era regulations, the group’s complaint argues.

The suits raise new questions about whether the group will be allowed to function as Trump initially conceived or whether changes must be made to its organizational structure. Despite its name, the DOGE is not actually a federal department and is operating outside of government as an advisory panel, although its members are working closely with GOP lawmakers in Congress as well as executive branch officials.

Trump announced his plans for DOGE during his election campaign last year, saying the panel would play an instrumental role in streamlining the federal bureaucracy and identifying cost savings. But the move became official Monday as he took office and the president plugged the effort in his inaugural address at the Capitol.

“The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before to restore competence and effectiveness to our federal government,” Trump said. “My administration will establish the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency.”

‘Unchecked secrecy’

But interest groups concerned about the DOGE operation were ready to pounce as soon as Trump took office. In legal briefs, they said DOGE violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act requiring a transparent process.

“DOGE’s unchecked secrecy, access, and private influence — bought by political loyalty — is anathema to efficient, effective government,” the groups said in a suit brought by the American Public Health Association, the American Federation of Teachers and others. “Indeed, any federally endorsed, but fundamentally private, advisory effort to shape how our government serves the American people must comply with federal transparency laws, including FACA. Defendants have not done so.”

They also said DOGE does not have a membership that is “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee,” as required in federal statute.

Trump appointed billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to co-chair the group, although Ramaswamy is expected to step down from his post to run for governor of Ohio. The co-chairs and a close circle of confidants have set up shop in Washington and have been meeting with top officials from various federal agencies.

Musk said during the campaign that he thought the group would find “at least $2 trillion” in cost savings, although he recently said a more realistic goal would be $1 trillion.

A complaint filed by Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, joined by the American Federation of Government Employees union and State Democracy Defenders Fund — which bills itself as a nonprofit “working to defeat election sabotage and vanquish the threat of autocracy in America” — cites “guardrails” imposed by the 1972 law governing advisory boards.

They wrote that such guardrails are designed to ensure that government advisory panels are held accountable to the public; require advisory committees to have a “fair balance in viewpoints represented”; and ensure that they don’t meet in secret and that their records and reports are made available to the public.

The goal, the suit says, is to ensure that advisory panels don’t become “vehicles for advancing private interests in the federal decision-making process and secretly influencing federal officials’ exercise of policymaking discretion.”

The federal statute also requires advisory commissions to file a charter specifying the nature of the panel’s work and the federal official to whom the group is accountable. DOGE has filed no such charter, the legal briefs say.

Without those guardrails in place, the DOGE effort amounts to “recommendations made by unaccountable outsiders without transparent deliberations which will reduce the size of the federal workforce by whatever means necessary,” according to the suit filed by National Security Counselors, which advocates for public access in legal matters.

In support of the DOGE effort, the House and Senate have formed DOGE caucuses that plan to submit their own recommendations for cost savings to the DOGE panel. And the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee created a new DOGE subcommittee headed by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to do similar work.

House caucus leaders said they plan to submit a report of their recommendations by April.

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