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The place where Elon's people draw the line doesn't have to be accepted by the woke activists, though. DOGE can just come up with a common-sense criterion that makes sense to them, and if someone tries to argue in obvious bad faith that their bullshit study is on the right side of the line, they can just say "no it isn't; you may not appeal this decision; goodbye, please don't email us again". This would undoubtedly still cause a ruckus, and it might even have a few false positives, but it would still be immeasurably better than not having common-sense exceptions at all, and I genuinely think it should be trivial for DOGE to implement if they really have the stuff.
Like, why are you acting as though trivial word-salad smoke-and-mirrors would leave them helpless and befuddled? Isn't cutting through the obfuscation and identifying the good government programs from the woke hustlers supposed to be what they're for? If they're not up to this then one wonders why an elite crack team led by one of the most successful men in the world is needed for this job. You could get the same effect if you told an AI to cut all government programs no matter what, gave it access to a government email, and let it loose.
The DOGE (and Trump more broadly) is fighting a bureaucracy hostile to them. The activists are the people carrying out the orders.
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Doing it before-the-fact rather than after-the-fact enables what is essentially a DDOS attack on the decision-makers. Doing it in this order makes a flood-the-zone-with-appeals strategy work in favor of DOGE instead of against it.
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