Whilst you’ve been distracted by Trump bringing the WWF to the world stage through tariff physique slams resulting in market knockouts, the tip of due course of due to doubling down on the unlawful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Harvard resisting Trump’s plan to dictate lots of the college’s operations, and Witkoff enjoying at being a diplomat in high-stakes negotiations, DOGE has continued burrowing away on the foundations of Federal companies like hungry termites.

Understand that DOGE’s intention is to not cut back inefficiency. It’s to cut back authorities operations in a really huge manner in order to:

Immiserate the poor and others DOGE deems to be burdensome…like Social Safety beneficiaries who paid into the system, usually over a long time

Remove or wreck authorities features in order that the non-public sector can take over. However as we all know, the federal government has been on an outsourcing kick for many years, so the concept features now operated on the Federal stage might be accomplished higher by outsiders is suspect. This marketing campaign is all concerning the alternative for looting, and the hurt to the operation of commerce and society be damned.

DOGE as a fraud: Claiming financial savings whereas growing prices. We highlighted an earlier DOGE spreadsheet that claimed to point out the supply and quantity of DOGE’s asserted value discount and confirmed that lots of the largest objects have been false. As an illustration, DOGE took credit score for contacts that had already been terminated, and on high of that, cited the utmost approved quantity, when the precise expenditures have been decrease, usually vastly so. DOGE then vastly lowered the knowledge it presents in order to protect its capacity to lie.

DOGE as destruction: Tearing down the extremely environment friendly Social Safety Administration, versus taking up the pork machine of protection spending. On April 14, the Social Safety Administration lower its telephone staffing and likewise modified its coverage in order that “delicate” data like financial institution particulars will now not be taken over the telephone. That implies that in the event you can’t join Social Safety efficiently on-line, you’ll have to go to an workplace…the place getting somebody to see you is Kafkaesque….and DOGE has promised to shutter places of work.

And even earlier than that, the Social Safety web site was already crashing, due to IT cuts. So even in the event you have been to handle to get to see a reside individual at an workplace, if the system was down, they’d not be capable to deal with your challenge.

And DOGE workers are nonetheless making an attempt to defy a courtroom order and entry Social Safety information…even with not simply outdated fingers however even some Trump officers in opposition. From the Washington Submit:

Representatives of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have looked for weeks to get round a courtroom order barring their entry to delicate information and inside programs on the Social Safety Administration, prompting profession workers to repeatedly resist their efforts, in line with a half dozen individuals aware of the DOGE staff’s actions and data obtained by The Washington Submit.

The battle contained in the company led the Justice Division to intervene to disclaim DOGE entry to the information, even because the Trump administration put in and promoted DOGE-friendly leaders to dramatically reduce providers at Social Safety.

Please learn the piece in full. The reporting is spectacular and revealing.

DOGE as fraud: Taking credit score for locating abuses so well-known they’ve been the topic of Congressional hearings, and resulted from Trump 1.0 expanded unemployment advantages. From Related Press:

The most recent authorities waste touted by billionaire Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Division of Authorities Effectivity is a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in fraudulent unemployment claims it purportedly uncovered.

One downside: Federal investigators already discovered what seems to be the identical fraud, years earlier and on a far higher scale…

“They’re making an attempt to spin this narrative of, ‘Oh, authorities is inefficient and authorities is silly and so they’re catching these items that the federal government didn’t catch,’” says Michele Evermore, who labored on unemployment points on the U.S. Division of Labor in the course of the administration of former President Joe Biden. “They’re discovering fraud that was marked as fraud and saying they discovered it was fraud….

Although states have virtually full management over their very own unemployment programs, particular reduction applications — most notably broadly expanded advantages enacted by the primary Trump administration on the outset of the COVID pandemic — inject extra direct federal involvement and a flood of latest beneficiaries into the system….

Trump signed the COVID unemployment reduction into legislation on March 27, 2020, and from the very begin it turned a magnet for fraud. In a memo to state officers about two weeks later, the Division of Labor warned that the expanded advantages had made unemployment applications “a goal for fraud with important numbers of imposter claims being filed with stolen or artificial identities.”…

A Labor Division spokeswoman didn’t reply to questions on Musk’s findings and DOGE gave no particulars on the way it got here to seek out the supposed fraud or whether or not it duplicates what was already discovered.

Although DOGE ostensibly checked out longer timeframe than federal investigators beforehand had, it tallied simply $382 million in faux unemployment claims, a tiny fraction of what investigators have been already conscious.

DOGE as fraud: After loudly promising transparency, DOGE is something however. From Politico:

DOGE KEEPS IT UNDER WRAPS: The battle to pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding DOGE and its operations is coming to a head in a number of lawsuits…

Lots of the anti-DOGE….attorneys are attempting to reply questions like: What’s the fundamental construction of DOGE? Which officers have been concerned in cutting-and-slashing efforts? And what kind of entry does DOGE should delicate company programs?…

However the Justice Division is preventing vigorously to defend DOGE from having to reveal that data, regardless of Trump and ELON MUSK’s repeated assurances about transparency. The administration has refused to offer testimony from nearly each official that plaintiffs have tried to depose — and particularly from individuals who work for DOGE.

The whole Politico piece, which works by a number of instances of persistent evasiveness and misdirection, is value studying.

DOGE as a fraud: Endangering nationwide safety, stealing information apparently to focus on opponents like organized labor. This can be a a lot greater caper than the Watergate break-in, however hacking is so widespread that even when insiders do it to abuse their energy, the outrage is muted. From NPR which broke the story:

Within the first days of March, a staff of advisers from President Trump’s new Division of Authorities Effectivity initiative arrived on the Southeast Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Nationwide Labor Relations Board.

The small, unbiased federal company investigates and adjudicates complaints about unfair labor practices. It shops reams of doubtless delicate information, from confidential details about workers who wish to type unions to proprietary enterprise data.

The DOGE workers, who’re successfully led by White Home adviser and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, appeared to have their sights set on accessing the NLRB’s inside programs….

However in line with an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and different federal overseers that was obtained by NPR, subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and data of inside communications, technical workers members have been alarmed about what DOGE engineers did once they have been granted entry, significantly when these staffers seen a spike in information leaving the company. It’s doable that the information included delicate data on unions, ongoing authorized instances and company secrets and techniques — information that 4 labor legislation specialists inform NPR ought to virtually by no means go away the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the federal government extra environment friendly or chopping spending.

In the meantime, in line with the disclosure and data of inside communications, members of the DOGE staff requested that their actions not be logged on the system after which appeared to attempt to cowl their tracks behind them, turning off monitoring instruments and manually deleting data of their entry — evasive habits that a number of cybersecurity specialists interviewed by NPR in comparison with what prison or state-sponsored hackers would possibly do.

Threats in opposition to the whistleblower have a responsible look:

DOGE as incompetent: exposing logins. Leaving tech doorways unlocked is both extremely amateurish or accomplished intentionally to get one thing in return. Russians after all are one in every of our default unhealthy guys. Readers can opine as to how arduous it’s to create the looks of a “Russian IP deal with”. A VPM may obtain that, FFS.

DOGE as fraud: Forcing resignation of tech specialists, thus risking cyber assaults. Individuals who truly know one thing concerning the related entity and have some tech chops would possibly present up DOGE, and worse, rat out to exterior events how DOGE is doing a piss poor job. One recent case is the resignation of DoD ‘SWAT staff of nerds.’ From Politico:

Below strain from the Elon Musk-led Division of Authorities Effectivity, practically all of the workers of the Protection Digital Service — the Pentagon’s fast-track tech growth arm — are resigning over the approaching month….

The Protection Digital Service was created in 2015 to assist the Pentagon undertake quick tech fixes throughout nationwide safety crises and push Silicon Valley-style innovation contained in the Pentagon. It constructed fast response instruments for the navy in the course of the Afghanistan withdrawal, databases to switch Ukrainian navy and humanitarian help, drone detection applied sciences and extra.

With out this system, some key efforts to streamline the DOD’s tech expertise pipeline and counter adversarial drones shall be sundown…

A number of different digital modernization efforts throughout the authorities have met comparable fates. The U.S. Digital Service, which helped the federal government modernize its expertise and appeal to tech expertise, has now been subsumed by DOGE, amid mass layoffs and firings. A program known as 18F, a expertise unit throughout the GSA, was eradicated by DOGE as nicely….

One former senior Pentagon official, who requested to not be named due to doable retaliation, described DOGE’s wider incursion into the Protection Division as damaging and unproductive

“They’re probably not utilizing AI, they’re probably not driving effectivity. What they’re doing is smashing all the things,” the previous official stated.

DOGE as harmful: Infighting as company chiefs appropriately level to DOGE doing injury, right here killing individuals:

Recall that the New York Instances had earlier reported on a Cupboard assembly row the place Elon Musk pressed Secretary of State Mario Rubio over allegedly not having gotten rid of sufficient State staffers, which Rubio vigorously contested. Trump considerably backed Rubio by calling for cuts to be surgical. However regardless, this was a behind-closed-doors dispute that was made public, and never one taken straight to the press.

After which we have now ideological enforcement. Covid was supposedly an enormous Democratic occasion invention to permit for an influence seize, ergo Covid was faux, ergo no want for Covid testing:

And even the 250th Fourth of July celebration can be being jeopardized, though in mild of the obvious “wreck the US as we all know it” train, that is becoming. From Axios:

The large image: State humanities councils planning 250th anniversary celebrations everywhere in the nation have had their funding slashed, and people organizations inform Axios they probably gained’t be capable to execute the massive, patriotic plans that they had been making.

  • Trump has known as for an “extraordinary celebration” subsequent summer season….
  • The chair of the Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities is a part of that job drive, and state humanities councils throughout the nation had a number one position in planning public occasions to mark the event.

However 80% of the NEH’s workers was positioned on administrative go away earlier this month…

  • These layoffs got here simply days after the 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils have been alerted that their funding grants have been being terminated.
  • “These have been funds that have been already appropriated, that had already been distributed by a aggressive course of, and so they had already been below contract to be offered,” stated Julie Ziegler, the CEO and government director of Humanities Washington.

The most recent: The Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities on Monday opened functions for 250 problem grants, value as much as $25,000 every, for initiatives associated to the “founding of the American nation, key historic figures, and milestones that replicate the distinctive achievements of the US” in honor of the anniversary.

  • However state officers say the cuts have already prompted them to shed workers and droop new programming, so even the potential for new anniversary-specific funding wouldn’t fill the large hole.

DOGE survivors, for now. Regardless of being an early and excessive profile DOGE goal, the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau, although a bit bloodied, remains to be standing. From Fortune:

On Tuesday night, Sen. [Elizabeth] Warren and fellow Democratic Sen. Andy Kim, who each sit on the Committee of Banking, Housing, and City Affairs, demanded investigations right into a push to slash the CFPB’s workforce and cancel its contracts….

A federal choose has quickly reversed a few of the preliminary cuts on the company. As a part of a lawsuit between a union representing CFPB workers and Vought, a choose ordered the CFPB to reinstate all its probationary and time period workers. The order additionally blocked the company from terminating workers with out trigger, issuing a reduction-in-force, or directing workers to cease work or take administrative go away whereas the case strikes ahead—although an appeals courtroom stated final week that the CFPB may permit work stoppages that didn’t intrude with its statutory duties.

Notice that authorized specialists have repeatedly opined that DOGE can’t cancel contracts, but when DOGE breaches them by withholding fee, they will nonetheless kill the contractors since many want the cash. That in lots of instances could have the impact of the victims getting a restoration if they’ve the means to place up a battle, whereas the federal government gained’t get the work they are going to wind up (to not less than a level) paying for. After all, DOGE desires to destroy corporations that may assist with enforcement of regulation, so value is actually not an goal, regardless of that serving because the pretext.





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