Although Elon Musk’s exit from government service was the messiest breakup ever, the multibillionaire’s legacy will live on in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. It’s not just that DOGE personnel are now squirreled away in other agencies, though that is definitely the case. Sadly, DOGE’s real legacy is the mindset of cutting government to the bone with little regard for the consequences.
We’re still playing the “Who Runs DOGE?” game
This is the stupidest game. Remember that the Trump administration played coy about Musk’s role, saying with great fanfare that he was the head of DOGE, yet insisting to courts that Amy Gleason, a random official who seems to have learned of her new role while on vacation, was running things, although she also found time to work at an entirely different agency.
Gleason is still listed as the acting administrator, but just as was the case during the Musk era, she doesn’t appear to be doing anything at DOGE. Instead, Russell Vought, Project 2025 guru, Christian nationalist, and head of the Office of Management and Budget, will now run DOGE from the shadows.
Where Musk was a mercurial toddler who slashed and burned his way through the federal government, Vought is methodical, steadily advancing toward his twin goals of putting federal workers “in trauma” and making America a Christian nation controlled by a conservative Christian government. Put another way, Vought is just as committed as Musk was to destroying the administrative state—and he might be better at getting that done.
DOGE’s AI efforts still suck
Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Trump administration remains convinced that DOGE will somehow replace thousands of government workers with artificial intelligence. When they tried to let AI decide which Department of Veterans Affairs contracts to cancel, it was a predictable disaster. The AI tool hallucinated the value of contracts, deciding that over 1,000 contracts were worth $34 million each. The DOGE employee who developed the tool had no particular background in AI, but used AI to write some of his code nonetheless. Then DOGE let the thing loose in the VA, where it determined that 2,000 contracts were “MUNCHABLE” and therefore not essential.
This is only the latest pathetic effort by the administration to push shoddy AI tools on federal agencies. One federal employee described GSAi, an AI tool for the General Services Administration, as “about as good as an intern” that gave “generic and guessable answers.” Another chatbot at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health has difficulty uploading documents or allowing chatbot users to submit questions. Not a big help, particularly since humans are already pretty capable at uploading documents and answering questions. Despite these repeated failures, the administration remains convinced that AI is magical and ready for prime time.
Guess what? Another chatbot
You might think the above failures meant that the administration wouldn’t keep trying to shoehorn crappy AI tech into government agencies, but you’d be wrong. Indeed, they love chatbots so much that they are launching a whole website, AI.gov, on July 4, although right now that just redirects to the White House’s terrible front page.
The GSA is now helmed by Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer with no experience in government technology or services—but hey, he wrote software for Tesla’s vehicle and battery factories, which totally translates, right? The crappiness of the internal GSAi tool seems to be no obstacle to Shedd rolling out a website to “accelerate government innovation with AI,” featuring “three powerful AI tools [and] one integrated platform.”
Related | Elon Musk is gone, but ‘Big Balls’ remains—and we’re all paying for him
Set to launch on Independence Day, AI.gov will feature important information, including how much each government entity is using AI. Why on earth that particular metric is so important is unclear, save for as a way to complain that agencies aren’t using these half-baked AI tools enough. There’s also going to be an API, or Application Programming Interface, integrated with commercial AI products from places like OpenAI and Google. Just what the world needs: government data shoveled into the endless maw of for-profit AI companies. The third spectacular tool is perhaps a chatbot, although the site doesn’t specify what it would do.
You might wonder how we know about this, given it’s not supposed to launch for a few more weeks. Well, because early versions of the GSA’s code for the site leaked on the public code repository Github. Terrific. Very secure.
What’s more efficient than continually firing people and then having to hire them back?
Musk and his cartoonish DOGE bullies fired people without fear nor favor nor intelligence. This has led to repeated cycles of firing and rehiring. Sometimes that occurred because DOGE fired people and then realized they needed those employees. That’s what happened after the mass-firing of 180 probationary employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Just two weeks later, they were all asked to come back because “after further review and consideration,” the DOGE dolts realized those workers were needed. Most times, agencies engage in that review and consideration before firing hundreds of people, but DOGE is built different.
Over at the Department of Health and Human Services, secretary and whale juice enthusiast Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought a DOGE vibe to his slashing of 10,000 jobs, wiping out entire programs. Then Kennedy decided to hire some of those employees back. How many? Don’t know, but according to Kennedy, the firing and rehiring were always part of the plan. Again, most agencies do not mass fire people only to decide to bring them back in dribs and drabs. DOGE had to beg people to return to the State Department after gleefully firing them. The Department of Agriculture had to try to rehire bird flu experts whom DOGE had fired,
The administration has also been ordered by the courts to reinstate federal workers, but the government continues to fight those rulings, getting the Supreme Court to pause a lower court order requiring the rehiring of 16,000 probationary workers. This back-and-forth will continue long past when “Big Balls” is just a faded memory as the administration fights to make the DOGE cuts permanent, even when they are stupid.
Some of the worst DOGE cuts are about to become law
While DOGE was given free rein to hack its way through the federal government, the administration only sent a few of DOGE’s cuts to Congress for them to be passed into law. Out of the $160 billion ostensibly saved by DOGE—well short of the promised $2 trillion—the administration asked Congress to codify only $9.4 billion.
The budget’s passing would slash $1.1 billion from NPR and PBS, eliminating all their federal funding because Trump thinks they are radical leftists, a thing that anyone who listens to NPR or watches PBS knows is not true. Trump also wants to make permanent the $9 million slashed from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Modeling studies show that the PEPFAR cuts could result in up to 11 million new HIV infections and 3 million additional deaths by 2030. By one estimate, over 63,000 adults and 6,700 children have already died because of PEPFAR funding freezes. Those deaths are on Musk, DOGE, and Trump, but none of those ghouls care.
Feral DOGE kids remain in agencies
DOGE is now embedded at the General Services Administration, and new permanent government employees now include “Big Balls” Edward Coristine and Luke Farritor. It’s unclear how 19-year-old Coristine’s background as a hacker for hire and 23-year-old Farritor’s background as a SpaceX intern make them qualified to work in the GSA, but LOL nothing matters anymore.
Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum has basically ceded all his authority to former oil executive Tyler Hassen, who is now running that agency as a sort of shadow Cabinet minister after the DOGE takeover. Hassen is perfect for turning Interior from a department that protects public lands into one that exploits them by allowing oil and gas drilling instead.
Another DOGE denizen who got a sweet government job is Airbnb founder Joe Gebbia, who is embarking on a “digital design challenge” overhauling the Office of Personnel Management’s retirement system.
Over at the CDC, all grants must now be reviewed by unnamed DOGE employees before money can be released. This occurs after review and approval by agency personnel who are public health experts rather than tweens infatuated with Elon Musk. This mandatory secondary review gives DOGE personnel the ability to block any grants based on whatever the spiders in their brain are saying at the time, which is not exactly helpful for public health.
DOGE gets your Social Security data
Thanks to the Supreme Court, DOGE now gets your Social Security data to do … well, no one knows what, but it’s not going to be for anything good. DOGE has already used its access to this data to push Trump’s political agenda by canceling contracts in Maine after the state’s Democratic governor made Trump sad. But hey, at least a 21-year-old Palantir intern now knows everything about you.
You, in turn, do not get to know anything about DOGE. The Supreme Court blessed the administration’s refusal to provide any information about the nature of DOGE because it would violate the separation of powers if the executive branch had to explain itself to the court. It’s cool to live in a time where the courts are eagerly ceding their authority to Trump instead of acting as a check or balance.
DOGE kids bring new levels of tacky to the government
The angry toddlers who make up the core of DOGE are not exactly people who treat things with respect. The DOGE employees at the GSA took over parts of the office for their exclusive use, including the gym and the roof. Totally normal for green government employees to do, yes indeed.
DOGE personnel also trashed the headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace after a court allowed them to literally steal it. After the takeover, the DOGE goons became wholly disinterested in the building, abandoning it and letting it get overrun with rats and cockroaches. For good measure, there was extensive water damage as well. But although the DOGEkins seldomly used the building, they did manage to leave behind some really shitty weed.
These are truly the exact people you want running your government—and now they’re here to stay.
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