Elon and Vivek Want To Defund Planned Parenthood Through DOGE: The ACLJ Is Here for It

Elon Musk, who famously turned his jet around on Christmas Eve to pull the plug of an unneeded X (formerly Twitter) data center in Sacramento, is exactly the type of leader President Trump will need to reel in fiscal and power abuses of the federal government. President Trump will need Elon to bring a similar mentality to his Administration.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been tapped by President Trump to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut the federal government’s spending and the needless regulations that entangle Americans.

In selecting Musk and Ramaswamy, Trump explained that the goal of DOGE will be to “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform . . . .”

Elon and Vivek laid out their strategy for DOGE in their Wall Street Journal op-ed, and it’s a brilliant strategy that the ACLJ has promised to support in any way possible. Why? Because the ACLJ works tirelessly to defend the constitutional rights of all United States citizens. What we have now doesn’t come close to what our Founders intended for this great nation: laws interpreted and resources spent, not by those who sit in Congress or the White House, but by entrenched bureaucrats who can’t be fired due to federal protections.

Elon and Vivek will initiate their reforms with three tools: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings.

They will concentrate on driving change through Executive action grounded in existing legislation rather than relying on new laws. Their guiding principle for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with particular emphasis on two pivotal Supreme Court rulings made during the Biden Administration.

Let’s briefly dive into these cases.

In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), a case we closely observed at the time, the Court concluded that the EPA did not have the authority to adopt the Clean Power Plan’s sweeping measures because it involved a major question of economic and political significance. Such regulatory actions should be explicitly authorized by Congress, not inferred by an agency.

In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), a case in which we filed an amicus brief, the Court overruled the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies. So, courts will now have to exercise their own independent judgment in determining the legality and constitutionality of Executive branch actions.

All of the above is fantastic, but for pro-family conservatives, the golden nugget from the piece is that Planned Parenthood appears to be on the chopping block – a goal we have long fought for at the ACLJ. Elon and Vivek explain:

DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood. (Emphasis added.)

At the ACLJ, we are aggressively engaged in numerous ongoing cases against the abortion industry. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, the legal fight for the lives of unborn babies returned to the states. It has truly become a state-by-state battle to defeat abortion and save the lives of the unborn. The ACLJ legal team has been vigorously defending life-affirming laws in states that protect the unborn. Likewise, we are hard at work challenging radical abortion laws and legislation.

We welcome Elon and Vivek’s dive into the defunding of Planned Parenthood through DOGE. Regardless of how it’s achieved, either through the courts in a state-by-state strategy or defunding Planned Parenthood at the federal level, it all must be done.

The ACLJ stands ready to help defund Planned Parenthood all the way to the Supreme Court after Planned Parenthood inevitably challenges DOGE’s actions.