Doge staff member Nate Cavanaugh emailed the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice reform non-profit that is independent from the government, on 11 April to demand the meeting [to discuss embedding a team within their organization], according to a copy of the email. Vera’s staff was confused by the request, as its government funding had been canceled a week prior, but agreed to a call which they said took place on Tuesday.
The demand to meet with an independent non-profit organization and potentially embed its staffers there represents an expansion of Doge’s already sprawling reach and coincides with Musk issuing public attacks against non-governmental organizations. Doge has previously gutted government institutions such as USAID and congressionally funded non-profit USIP, but its meeting with Vera marks a new targeting of a wholly independent organization.
…
When Vera’s legal counsel then held a 20-minute phone call with two members of Doge this week, Rahman says they informed the Doge staffers that the organization had already stopped receiving government funding. The Department of Justice had abruptly canceled $5m in contracts for the non-profit earlier that month. The Doge staffers did not know Vera’s funding had been canceled, according to Rahman, and took back their request for information on Vera’s contracts while refusing to answer questions on what gave them the authority to investigate Vera in the first place.