The rapid government changes, made without congressional approval to funds Congress already appropriated, have come from executive orders by President Donald Trump and at the direction of billionaire ally Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The actions of DOGE, which has claimed to have so far saved taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, have left many GOP senators with a burning question: Who do I contact about impacts to my state and restoring funds? Republicans are finding many of their inquiries going unanswered.

“I can send a text to [Cabinet] secretaries that have been confirmed, and I get prompt replies back saying that they’re going to be looking at it,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said. “When my staff is working through the congressional channels that we usually go to, we’re not getting a lot in return. I think part of it is there’s not a lot of people that are there.”

Under Trump’s Day One executive order establishing Musk’s department, each federal agency must have a “DOGE team of at least four employees” to implement Trump’s cost-cutting agenda. The trouble for senators is they don’t have direct access to Musk’s team.

The mysteriousness of DOGE has spilled over into the courtroom in legal challenges to bar Musk’s team from slashing the federal government. The White House claimed in a court filing this week that Musk is not even an employee of DOGE, raising questions about who is really in charge.

The concern extends far beyond centrists like Murkowski and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) to include more conservative lawmakers like Sens. Katie Britt (R-AL), Jerry Moran (R-KS), James Lankford (R-OK), and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY).

“I’m sure everybody has an example,” Lummis told the Washington Examiner and detailed unsuccessful efforts to find out whether a Wyoming airport will still receive a previously awarded grant from the Department of Transportation. “[Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy] has got so many huge issues that he’s dealing with at his level that I kind of want to wait until [he has] a deputy that I can go to with these specific, smaller issues.”

DOGE has taken far-reaching actions that critics say require the approval of Congress, including steps to dismantle and shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It’s also made thousands of layoffs across various agencies that include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Energy, and the National Nuclear Safety Administration. The administration has reportedly scrambled to rehire critical workers it fired who handled nuclear energy and security.

Lankford’s Oklahoma is home to an FAA training facility that is the Transportation Department’s second largest facility in the country with 3,300 employees. He remained unaware of how many positions could be lost from DOGE cuts.

Britt said she’s not received a commitment to unfreeze research funds from the National Institutes of Health to medical centers and universities in her state of Alabama. And Collins laid into DOGE for what she characterized as sloppy decisions, such as trying to rehire Department of Agriculture officials studying the ongoing bird flu who were fired.

“Some of the actions that are being taken violate restrictions that are in current law,” Collins told reporters.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday during a closed-door lunch with Republican senators that the administration should package the cuts into a recission package for Congress to approve amid concerns that the unilateral spending cuts may not stand up to legal scrutiny. The measure could be passed with a simple majority and would not be subject to a 60-vote filibuster.

“There’s a certain amount of wish and hope that these things become real cuts, and they have to, ultimately, be voted on by Congress to be real cuts,” Paul told the Washington Examiner. “I’m glad DOGE is doing everything they’re doing. I think Elon Musk is doing a great job. But what they should do is collect together all the things they’re doing, put it in a package, send it back.”

There was minimal discussion of DOGE during the session beyond Paul’s remarks, according to other senators in the room.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) restated his general support of DOGE following the meeting with Vance but cautioned it was “important in doing that, that you don’t undermine important services.” Farmers, including in Thune’s South Dakota, warn the funding freezes to USDA means lost revenue promised by the federal government.

“There are some that affect my state, there are some that affect all of my colleagues’ states around the country, and we will work with the administration as they move forward to ensure that important services that have to do with health and safety, for example, are protected and preserved,” Thune told reporters.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) accused the administration of subverting Congress’ power of the purse and taking a “meat ax” to the federal workforce and spending. Other Democrats see the increased anxiety among Republicans as the key to eventually sway Trump or Musk to adopt a more targeted approach.

“I think we will have the most leverage when those kinds of cuts and those kinds of decisions impact my colleagues, like in Alabama or in Kansas,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said.

TRACKING WHAT DOGE IS DOING ACROSS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Fetterman was referencing grievances aired by Alabama’s Britt and Kansas’s Moran.

Moran made a public plea this month for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose State Department absorbed the dismantled USAID, to distribute some $340 million in food grown by farmers in Kansas and elsewhere that was stalled in U.S. ports. Days later, the food aid was unfrozen.