Good god

 

Click the pic to find out you were right about the DOGE babies.

UPDATE 03/12/2026:

UPDATE 03/15/2026:

Here's another one...

These depositions were removed from YouTube, but they were backed up by people clever enough to know they would be.

DOGE will haunt us for decades

 

DOGE echoes

 

Government waste

 

FUBAR

 

Shocking

 

The DOGE boys

On the first Sunday in February, Wired magazine identified six of those who had responded to Musk’s call. Luke Farritor was among them. They were easy to mock, maybe to fear: They were young and inexperienced, all male, part of another army of nerds. One called himself Big Balls and, Bloomberg News revealed, had been fired from an internship for sharing information with a competitor. The Wall Street Journal reported that another had posted racist comments. None were as tech famous as Farritor. The White House’s executive order creating DOGE said it would modernize technology and maximize productivity. “It took a couple of weeks to realize that, despite the stated mission, their main focus would be destruction,” says a current government employee who, like others we interviewed, requested anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak with the media. “That it was less about evolving and improving than tearing down to the floorboards. I think part of what confused everybody was that you had these foot soldiers you were seeing and you assumed that they were there just to support the generals, but they weren’t. The generals had delegated everything to the foot soldiers.”

[...]

The great undoing, with its firings, humiliation, lacerating and gloating, received a lot of gleeful encouragement on X. But in the days to come, someone posted “traitor” under Farritor’s TikTok videos. Someone on Discord warned him that the internet “hates fascists.” Another that he would end up in prison.

[...]

Scott Henderson, who mentors young entrepreneurs and knows the Farritors, wrote an email to Farritor’s father [Shane]. He says he asked something like: Is this true? As a father of a son the same age, you can do something about this. If this is true, what are you going to do about this? He didn’t get a response. Charley Friedman checked in and didn’t hear back either. “Fascist” appeared in the comments to a LinkedIn post by Shane Farritor that had nothing to do with his son. A talk he was supposed to give at the Nebraska Innovation Studio a few days later—Lab to Launch—was canceled after online threats to disrupt it.

[...]

They were called the DOGE kids, the DOGE bros, Muskovites and Muskrats. They sometimes walked the halls of Washington with Musk, who moved around with his own security guards. They bragged about how hard they were working. At first they slept on the sixth floor of the General Services Administration building; one supporter sent biotracking covers for their mattresses. Some moved into an Airbnb known as DOGE Town, dined out together. “They come as a group,” says the former senior government official. “That’s the whole DOGE thing. It’s all DOGE all the time. Like they’re literally not given the mental space to go have an independent life experience and perhaps reflect on what they’re doing.”

  Bloomberg

Would they even if they had the space?

Musk promised transparency, but they operated in secrecy. For the first month no one would confirm who was overseeing their efforts. Media reports named Steve Davis, who’d helped Musk cut costs at X and SpaceX, as being effectively in charge. DOGE members didn’t identify themselves when they came into an agency, government employees told us, and demanded access to sensitive data but wouldn’t explain why. They communicated on Signal, where they could make their messages disappear. They shielded their work from public-records review. No one from DOGE, including Musk and Davis, replied to our emailed questions about their work or Farritor.

[...]

Farritor helped assess, slash or dismantle at least nine departments and agencies after USAID— the Offices of Personnel Management and of Management and Budget; the Departments of Education, Energy, Labor, and Health and Human Services; the National Science Foundation; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

[...]

Some of Farritor’s classmates wondered about the power he seemed to have been given. “Like the entirety of DOGE is scary. It’s very much like going into government and dismantling the core foundations. It’s scary from that perspective. And it’s scary that it’s 22- and 23-year-olds doing it. And I’m saying this as a 23-year-old,” one classmate says. “Normally I think experience shouldn’t matter all that much. But for the government I would like people to have experience.”

Wouldn't we all?

In a lawsuit filed in February, one former government employee calls the breadth of Farritor’s access to data at Health and Human Services “without precedent.” Another, Jeffrey Grant, who’d overseen consumer and insurance information at Medicare and Medicaid, calls it alarming. Farritor could get into systems used for payment management, grants, health-care accounting, acquisitions and human resources. He could get into the National Institutes of Health’s grant management and contract systems, as well as the Medicare and Medicaid acquisition system and its integrated data repository, which includes information on claims, beneficiaries and providers, according to the lawsuit’s records. He could access grants.gov and two contracting systems for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Signal chats, employees shared sightings of Farritor and his colleagues walking around Food and Drug Administration and NIH buildings, observing workers and asking what they did.

[...]

“The DOGE team wasn’t what I expected,” says a current government employee who’s interacted with Farritor and other core members of DOGE. “Marketed as tech geniuses, yet they could barely keep up with basic tasks. In reality, they were overconfident, drunk on power and utterly clueless. They giggled and asked me how my day was going—right as they hit the keys to obliterate nearly a decade of my work. There wasn’t even a flicker of understanding or care. It wasn’t just the loss that gutted me. It was the audacity of their casual cruelty.”

[...]

What was lost or disrupted this spring: A study of agricultural methods to help the poorest farmers around the world. A project to help Indigenous communities adopt traditional and sustainable farming to mitigate food insecurity. A project to “cultivate a diverse engineering workforce.” [...] A new program to recruit, pay for and otherwise support students from rural areas to return as teachers.

[...]

[The day after Musk left the White House and DOGE], as senior staff like Davis followed Musk out of Washington, Farritor became a permanent government employee. He’s a senior adviser at the General Services Administration, designated a GS-15, the highest salary rank for civilians, earning $167,603. He was living in a historic neighborhood in the District of Columbia, being driven around in a black SUV.

[...]

Jan English-Lueck, an anthropologist who’s been studying Silicon Valley engineers since the 1990s, says Farritor and others made a wager that will be “intellectually and emotionally celebrated,” no matter DOGE’s success or failure. “To gamble like that shows you understand the theater of Silicon Valley.” On July 23, Trump spoke at an AI summit in Washington. Afterward, there was a private party at a new members-only club. Farritor was among those invited.

This whole picture is reminiscent of the young, arrogant assholes who blew up the economy in 2008.

Dick Blumenthal report on DOGE waste

Blumenthal and the members of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations allege that in just six months, DOGE generated at least $21.7 billion in waste across the government, because of costs associated with layoffs, lost interest, and wasted goods.

[...]

The biggest waste of that $21.7 billion figure comes from costs associated with the Deferred Resignation Program, which the report says is resulting in $14.8 billion in charges to pay approximately 200,000 workers to not show up for as many as eight months.

Another $6.1 billion was spent for the 100,000-plus workers who were placed on administrative leave pending separation—and were paid for weeks or months to not do their job.

[...]

The report says “lost agency capacity will inevitably force a greater reliance on contractors, even though they often cost 1.8 times more in total compensation than the agency staff who once performed these functions.”

DOGE’s shutdown of several aid organizations and cutbacks at other governmental operations led to nearly $150 million in unrecoverable expenses, according to the report. Product spoilage and destruction at USAID cost just under $110 million as supplies rotted in warehouses, rather than reaching their intended recipients. Over 496 metric tons of food needed to be sent to landfills or destroyed. Also, over $12 million in HIV treatments and contraceptives were abandoned.

  Inc.

Continue reading.

Mistakes were made

When an AI script written by a Department of Government Efficiency employee came across a contract for internet service, it flagged it as cancelable. Not because it was waste, fraud or abuse — the Department of Veterans Affairs needs internet connectivity after all — but because the model was given unclear and conflicting instructions.

Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.

“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”

  Propublica

Not that HE made them, of course.

[T]he code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.

Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools.

Continue reading if you're interested in what was wrong with Lavingia's code.

Burn it all down

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration two victories Friday in cases involving the Department of Government Efficiency, including giving it access to Social Security systems containing personal data on millions of Americans.

The justices also separately reined in orders seeking transparency at DOGE.

The court's conservative majority sided with the Trump administration in the first Supreme Court appeals involving DOGE. The three liberal justices dissented in both cases.

  MSN

I think we've seen enough DOGE efficiency to know this could be disastrous.

MAGA regret

Many of Trump’s own MAGA supporters are outraged about the recent report in the NYT about his plans to develop a massive database of private data on Americans. The Trump admin is using the tech firm Palantir, which was co-founded by Musk’s former mentor Peter Thiel. WH spokesman Taylor Rogers to Newsweek: "President Trump signed an executive order to eliminate information silos and streamline data collection across all agencies to increase govt efficiency and save hard-earned taxpayer dollars."

Jason Bassler, co-founder of The Free Thought Project: “This Palantir database isn't like the others. It will combine: Tax filings, Student debt, Social Security, Bank accounts, Medical claims, Immigration status. No previous database system has ever centralized this much personal info across various federal agencies."

Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), a staunch Trump supporter, doesn’t like it: “Tolkien was a genius. Lord of the Rings conveys inevitable truths. We cannot allow one ring to rule them all to be built - or, having been built, it must be defeated and destroyed. No digital ID. No CBDC. No surveillance state.”

  Meidas Touch

Bad for the citizenry, but actually, it's the only thing I've read so far that DOGE is doing that is arguably efficient.

Warren publishes DOGE report

 

Donald Trump’s presidency has been profitable for Elon Musk. Since Election Day, Musk’s staggering net worth has increased by over $100 billion.

While serving as a “Special Government Employee” in the White House and leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has maintained extensive financial conflicts of interest through his ownership or stake in several private and publicly traded companies: Tesla, SpaceX, X and xAI, the Boring Company, and Neuralink.

Before Trump took office, Musk’s companies faced at least $2.37 billion in potential liability from pending agency enforcement actions. Now many of those enforcement actions have stalled or been dismissed.

Musk’s companies have received or are being considered for large contracts with the federal government, with foreign governments, and with other private sector companies.

Musk and individuals acting on his behalf have been involved in dozens of questionable actions that raise questions about corruption, ethics, and conflicts of interest.

  Warren.Senate

Continue reading.

Even if his favored relationship with Trump should come to an end, Musk has already secured enormous, unwarranted benefits.  Whatever price he pays for his association with Trump, business-wise, it was well worth it. 

Trump 2.0 in the courts

 From Democracy Docket newsletter 5/29:

Last week, the Supreme Court brazenly rewarded Trump for breaking the law by firing independent federal board members without cause. The ruling indicates that the justices are set to overturn or weaken a precedent that protected independent agencies from presidential control for almost a century. [Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S., which prevents presidents from arbitrarily firing members of multi-member commissions or boards like the NLRB and MSPB.]

[...]

A federal judge in D.C. greenlit lawsuits against Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), finding that plaintiffs plausibly argued that Musk’s position violates the Appointments Clause and that Trump’s creation of DOGE was done without statutory or constitutional basis.

Closing the barn door after the horse has gone.*

NPR and three public radio stations in Colorado sued Trump over an executive order that attempts to bar the use of congressionally appropriated funds for NPR and PBS, calling the order “textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination.”

Also, as the impeachment over refusing to release money appropriated by Congress to Ukraine, seems like the same thing.

From All Rise newsletter:

The U.S. Court of International Trade found Trump's tariffs to be unlawful.

Donald Trump’s tariffs were always illegal.

That was the unanimous determination from a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday afternoon.

“The challenged tariff orders will be vacated and their operation permanently enjoined,” declared Judges Gary S. Katzmann, Timothy M. Reif, and Jane A. Restani, writing in a single voice.

The judges were appointed by presidents across the political spectrum: Trump appointed Reif, one of the members of the panel. Restani is a Ronald Reagan appointee, and Katzmann is a Barack Obama appointee.

[...]

Trump was the first and only president to have claimed the unilateral power to impose tariffs, asserting that power under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977.

The legislation does not contain the word “tariff,” and the three-judge panel determined the law never intended to grant him such “unbounded” authority.

[...]

Trump claimed that international gangs and cartels justified his tariffs, but the court noted that the “mere incantation of ‘national emergency’ cannot, of course, sound the death-knell of the Constitution.”

[...]

The Trump administration quickly filed a notice of appeal of the ruling, which is set to take effect in 10 days under the terms of the judgment. The full opinion can be read here.

Wall Street reportedly had become so primed to expect Trump to back down from his tariffs that traders coined a mocking acronym to describe the retreat: “TACO,” short for Trump Always Chickens Out.

[...]

Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil’s detention was likely unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled today, but for now, Khalil will remain in immigration detention pending further information about the government’s claims that there were omissions in his green card applications.

* 

UPDATE 05:46 pm:  For the love of Pete.

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.  I never even heard of that.

Wikipedia:

Specifically, it has exclusive appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal cases involving patents, trademark registrations, government contracts, veterans' benefits, public safety officers' benefits, federal employees' benefits, and various other types of cases. The Federal Circuit has no jurisdiction over any criminal, bankruptcy, immigration, or U.S. state law cases. It is headquartered at the Howard T. Markey National Courts Building in Washington, D.C.

 

No, they didn't

 

They maybe removed names, but they didn't remove anyone who was actually alive and receiving benefits, so the amount of money they saved is $0.

[A]ll of the people listed in the national system do not receive monthly benefits.

[...]

The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner clarified claims promoted by Elon Musk and President Trump about centenarians receiving monthly payouts.

“I also want to acknowledge recent reporting about the number of people older than age 100 who may be receiving benefits from Social Security,” Lee Dudek said in a statement Wednesday.

“The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”

[...]

“If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old,” Trump stated in support of a probe by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk doubled down on the argument after gaining read access to the administration’s portal.

[...]

“Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem. Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country,” Musk wrote on X with a screenshot of an alleged internal database showcasing citizens who are at least 100 years old.

  The Hill

So where does he think "tens of millions" of people are receiving their mail?

And, if we now "have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old," maybe we can leave Social Security alone?

Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which has a lack of date type. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago. The news organization WIRED first reported on the use of COBOL programming language at the Social Security Administration.

Additionally, a series of reports from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general in March 2023 and July 2024 state that the agency has not established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but were not marked as deceased. This does not mean, however, that these individuals were receiving benefits.

The agency decided not to update the database because of the cost to do so, which would run upward of $9 million.

[...]

Musk posted a slew of posts on his social media platform X, including: “Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security.”

[...]

Trump said at a press briefing in Florida that “we have millions and millions of people over 100 years old” receiving Social Security benefits. “They’re obviously fraudulent or incompetent,” Trump said.

  AP

Incompetent? How would they be incompetent? Who's incompetent here is DOGE; also Musk and Trump.

It is true that improper payments have been made, including some to dead people. But the numbers thrown out by Musk and the White House are overstated and misrepresent Social Security data.

[...]

“I am confident that with DOGE’s help and the commitment of our executive team and workforce, that Social Security will continue to deliver for the American people,” [Social Security’s new acting commissioner, Lee] Dudek said.

I'm not.

[T]he agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old.

[...]

A July 2024 report from Social Security’s inspector general states that from fiscal years 2015 through 2022, the agency paid out almost $8.6 trillion in benefits, including $71.8 billion — or less than 1% — in improper payments. Most of the erroneous payments were overpayments to living people.

In addition, in early January, the U.S. Treasury clawed back more than $31 million in a variety of federal payments— not just Social Security payments— that improperly went to dead people, a recovery that former Treasury official David Lebryk said was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

The money was reclaimed as part of a five-month pilot program after Congress gave the Department of Treasury temporary access to the Social Security Administration’s “Full Death Master File” for three years as part of the omnibus appropriations bill in 2021. The SSA maintains the most complete federal database of individuals who have died, and the file contains more than 142 million records, which go back to 1899, according to the Treasury.

Treasury estimated in January that it would recover more than $215 million during its three-year access period, which runs from December 2023 through 2026.

So the issue was already being taken care of without DOGE.

Who wants to die of radiation poisoning?

 

Yikes.  We'll be praying for a direct hit from a missile strike when we're dying of radiation poisoning.

SCOTUS is busy, will be busy for the next four years at least

 

DOGE kills 27 in Kentucky and Missouri

 

But will anyone tell them that's why?

Believe them when they tell you who they are

 

Musk  chose the logo.  Which explains why it's both childish and Nazi.

Why businesses are starting to worry

 

Trump 2.0 - Hobble civil rights

The voting section of the U.S. Department of Justice has only three attorneys left on staff, according to an estimate provided by a group working to support the department’s remaining staff.

It’s a severe reduction in the voting section since the start of the Trump administration in January, when it had an estimated 30 attorneys assigned to enforce voting rights laws.

According to the group, Justice Connection, staff attorneys in the voting section either resigned as part of the deferred resignation program, or were reassigned to another department in the DOJ. Justice Connection said it obtained its estimate from employees within the civil rights division, of which the voting section is a part.

  Democracy Docket