I realized I’m treading in extremely hostile waters here, but the stories I hear from folks working in DOGE are closer to “I spend 8am to 2am with the leaders of department X going through all contracts and outflows and identifying what is important versus wasteful given a target of saving $X million per day, and there are some great people in this department who really know what’s been going on and it’s been great to make a difference”
This doesn't even line up with what Elon is saying publicly. Mike Flynn searches a public database for grants to organizations with the word "Lutheran" in them and then Elon tweets that they're all illegal and will be canceled. How is that a thoughtful process for identifying wasteful spending?
Or Elon saying he's "deleting" the IRS free file group. How is that wasteful? It's providing a service that actually solves a real problem for people - people have complained for years about having to pay TurboTax to file their taxes. What metric is being used to decide if it's wasteful? It seems entirely like government by whim.
And if they really think there are great people in these departments, why are they terrorizing them? Right now federal workers are facing daily emails telling them to quit, their bosses calling them unproductive, chaos and upheaval at work, and many of them are going to have to make these huge life changes to suddenly return to the office (long commutes, disruption to childcare and other schedules, maybe having to move on short notice). To my knowledge, all of the companies that did RTO gave much more notice.
Will the program advance into other states after the dissolution of the organization that created it? Will it be kept up to date? Or will it quietly disappear in the name of efficiency?
He was responding to a tweet that featured a screenshot from the IRS website about Direct File. The tweet said "18F, the far left government wide computer office that was recently taken over by allies of @elonmusk, is also the same agency that built Elizabeth Warren's "Direct File" tax program. Direct File puts the government in charge of preparing people's tax returns for them". To which Musk responded "That group has been deleted".
If you google "Elon musk free file" you'll see dozens of articles with headlines like "Elon Musk creates confusion about IRS' Direct File".
It's unclear to me what the impact of "deleting" the group that built that product is. It's unclear whether Elon wants to delete that product and not just the team that built it, and given that they are suddenly shutting down whole agencies without regard for the fallout, it's unclear whether he will get rid of it.
I don't see how this is remotely incompatible with the parent. What percentage of the 8am-2am grind, do you think said Elon-tweets take? 1%? Less? What the team is doing during the unpublicized 99% is of more interest to me.
The parent is presenting this as a thoughtful exercise by serious, experienced people. It is absolutely not that.
The sudden closure of USAID is probably the best example. You have an organization of thousands of people that operates worldwide. It does a lot of things that save lives - deliver food to starving people, provide HIV medications, etc. If all of a sudden you tell all the grantees that you're shutting everything down, they won't get any more money or support, they need to stop the work they're doing, maybe they can get an exception but nobody is going to be answering the phone when they call to ask how because the staff are all on administrative leave - that has huge consequences. For instance, it meant stopping clinical trials in the middle. So there were women with devices implanted in their bodies with no ability to get support.
There are all sorts of other effects. We provide aid to allies all over the world. All of a sudden, we pull out the rug from under them with no notice. What are the short term and long term consequences of doing that? What would be the consequences to the stability of Jordan of pulling aid - the King has been our ally but it's a tenuous situation. What about Lebanon? Now that Israel has beaten up Hezbollah, we want to use the opportunity to strengthen the Lebanese state. What happens when we suddenly pull funding? There are dozens of different countries that are affected and each of them is a very complicated situation. It's not something that people with no domain expertise are going to figure out in a few days.
The way these guys are acting - it's complete madness.
Uh... no. It's an abandonment of any kind of strategy at all. You can be completely opposed to realpolitik and still believe in what USAID is doing (or the other things the Trump administration is getting rid of, like funding the WHO or other international efforts). For instance, an idealist would support USAID work to promote democratic institutions and conflict resolution.
It's not like they're saying "in the past we've played chess using only king's pawn openings and now we're going to switch to using queen's pawns openings", it's "we don't like this game so we're going to kick over the table and stomp off".
Where? The lack of transparency from DOGE has been a pain point even for advocates. I haven’t seen anything more than generic “we’re doing good work, trust us” PR
The media is reporting the history of some of these people and their actual actions. Of course these people aren’t going to discuss their past membership in script kiddie DDoS groups or their highly racist Twitter rants.
Honestly it seems to me like a shock and awe PR campaign combien md with a daily grind. It’s been like 15 days, what thoughtful work do you think it’s being announced that happens that fast from a cold start (including hiring!)
"It hasn't been enough time to produce thoughtful communication" cannot possible coexist with "it has been enough time to justify shuttering entire organizations, firing shitloads of workers, calling people back from overseas, and telling the entire government to take voluntary layoffs."
I'd say that writing up some clear communication is considerably easier than distinguishing useful and efficient government organizations from overstaffed organizations or organizations that are operating outside of their mission.
Unfortunately, from what we know of the people they've hired, they have little to no experience in doing that. They're not being transparent, we have no idea what metrics they're using, etc.
If the team was meant to actually do what you claim, it would look very different in terms of its hiring, and there's no reason it would have to be operating so secretively.
I’m just telling you what I know from personal friends doing individual work in specific departments. The mandate is “find $X million per day” and they do, and it’s a lot of work, and it doesn’t happen overnight like big PR things
But what you're saying is totally incompatible with closing USAID and the indiscriminate buyout package offered to employees that are of critical importance.
You're not providing any actual evidence, meanwhile the actions we know are actually taking place are totally contrary to the kind of careful thoughtfulness you're describing.
Where are you getting these stories from? Are you claiming to know people and to have received firsthand accounts, or is this stuff written down somewhere where the rest of us can see it and read it?
Suppose they are indeed working 18 hour days. So they've done six weeks of work in two weeks.
Do we believe that six weeks of ordinary work is sufficient to make the claims that Musk is making and take the actions that Musk is taking? "We are working really hard" doesn't give me any more confidence in the speed that things are happening.
Heck, being absolutely exhausted sounds like a great way of making mistakes. If I heard that the team designing and building a bridge I use to commute was work 18 hour days in order to move fast I'd be quite a bit more concerned about that bridge.
There are some real problems with this way of doing this.
First, if you go to any department and find N different leaders/managers/etc. and ask them to pick what projects to cut...you'll get a whole range of different answers. There's a lot of bias involved, and a lot of internal politics going on. There's always internal fights for the resources.
Second, if these kids are actually executing orders - meaning that they'll have the authority to do recommendations (based on their interviews with the people mentioned above), how would they even know if the recommendations are sound? It can take years for managers to become knowledgeable enough with the ongoing project and products.
If you were DOGE, and wanted to "game" this process, you could really just: Identify the most critical voices in some organization, preferably those on the way out, and ignore the rest. Then you give these 18-year olds the mandate to recommend cuts based on those talks. And tell them that the ones that can cut most "fat" wins.
Regardless of what the media is reporting, the head of DOGE is gleefully gloating about all the departments he’s “deleting” on Twitter. No hint of collaboration, just attack after attack. And he keeps framing federal workers as the enemy.
Getting a security clearance, particularly a high-level clearance takes a long time. They send investigators to interview people you've worked with, check records, etc. It can take over a year for a normal person. The only way I see these people getting clearances this quickly is if they just skipped the background investigation, on orders from senior people in the Trump administration.
And there's just no way they would have given Big Balls a clearance through the regular process.
If you are mad at your AWS bill, do you slide to your 10th line item? That is effectively what going after USAID is.
To give you an idea of how poorly this has been handled, my wife's friend is an attorney working in non-profit immigration.
She got told on Monday that her company is going to lay off 50% of their staff because they have no more money from USAID. Her boss found her a job at another firm a week later thankfully. Then Friday she got called by the CEO to come back since it turns out they were not going to get cut. Obviously, she declined.
They are messing with real peoples lives and destroying businesses that help people.
Is the goal to save money? Balance the budget? If so, fixing tax loop holes and going after waste in the military will yield more than 10x what cutting USAID does.
FWIW I'm all for fixing government spending, but treating it like a CI/CD pipeline where you will just "rollback" is idiotic.
Marco Rubio said that USAID wasn’t listening to orders. They were a rogue agency.
From other things I’ve read it has been an issue for multiple administrations.
Orders can be given that are unconstitutional or unlawful. Congress appropriates and designates funds, it is illegal for the executive to impound funds Congress appropriate. Unfortunately the GOP is happy to hand over their power in Congress and walk right into a dictatorship.
Foreign policy is under the control of the executive branch. The President can order a pause on foreign aid to allow the new administration to review all foreign aid.
Once those orders were ignored, the administration had to take more drastic steps (as SOS Rubio pointed out).
No, the President cannot just unilaterally ignore Congressional spending requirements just because "the executive controls foreign policy". That's what got him impeached the first time.
They're also not "pausing" shit, they're cancelling contracts effective immediately & locking up the buildings. Elon tweeted a picture of the sign being removed from the front of the building. You're being dishonest about what is going on.
>Rubio assessed the agency, decided to keep 300 people and let go of the rest.
With all due respect this is a complete joke. Rubio has been basically cut out of the process and is along for the ride.
And no, the President can't unilaterally do that, and if they want to argue that they can, they need to have that proven out by the courts, instead of proclaiming that the executive branch is the arbiter of what is and isn't constitutional.
Do you have any facts to support your assertion?
The executive order named Rubio as the interim admin. Rubio did a press interview stating that the agency went rogue and he fired all but 300 of them.
Absolutely the POTUS cannot just cancel contracts he thinks are a waste of taxpayer money. Some, not all. The President cannot ignore laws passed by Congress unless he gets agreement, by way of a court ruling, that the law is unconstitutional. Now if you are saying he can ignore all that without consequences because people bend over and let him, yes that can happen if we are all very stupid.
Are we really going to do this? You going to grind people down making them demonstrate the sky is blue to your satisfaction? We can all point to multiple EOs in the last weeks that are clearly, or at least arguably, not under the authority of the POTUS. That is what the fuss is all about, no? If you can't agree to that then there is no point in going on because you are being dishonest. In any case, once a court is involved (case clear or not) you follow court procedures to conclusion. You know, the whole reason our POTUS isn't in jail right now.
Your statements are correct and I generally agree. Let the courts sort it out.
I was replying to this statement "USAID funding is controlled by Congress. Trump cannot just order them to redirect funds on a whim." which is clearly false.
> Do you really believe that the POTUS cannot cancel contracts he feels are a waste of taxpayer money (and that position will stand up in court)?
Let's assume you're right.
There's a video of a farmer going around who had invested some money in an IRA project (passed under Biden) and he's complaining that the money he is contractually obliged is being held up by Trump.
So assuming Trump had the right to cancel this contract and it will hold up in court, what does that do for the government's ability to stimulate economic activity by passing legislation? How can people trust a law if it can become null and void upon the next admin coming in?
The farmer in question says the only reason he engaged in this activity was because he determined in the contract that the money was guaranteed. Meaning that although he made sure he wouldn't be in this situation, he's nonetheless in it because of POTUS, making the contract he signed with the federal government basically worthless.
So in the future, if the government needs to stimulate production of a certain crop through economic incentives, are farmers going to listen, knowing that the money they will need to depend on in 4 years may or may not exist depending who wins the next election? How can we make long term plans as a country this way? What method will the government turn to if can't use statutory incentives to stimulate economic activity?
> How can people trust a law if it can become null and void upon the next admin coming in?
The law is not null and void with the next admin. The law specifies the exec branch can determine who gets the grants and how much. So everyone is aware that a new admin may not give grants the same as the old admin.
> he determined in the contract that the money was guaranteed.
Then he was misled. There is no contract between the US and the grantee making a guarantee over a time period. Would you complain if a new Congress passed a new budget cutting this fund? Is that breaking a guarantee??
> making the contract he signed with the federal government basically worthless.
You are not signing a contract with the federal government! You are getting a grant. very big difference
> depend on in 4 years may or may not exist depending who wins the next election?
It's even worse than that! Congressional elections are every 2 years. Everyone who gets federal money knows that money is dependent on their patronage, which could change every 2 years. That is why there is so much money and power in politics! $4T is a lot of money to allocate, so of course a lot of money is going to spent determining who controls the purse.
These kinds of arrangements happen all the time with the government. For example NSF gives me a grant, I get that money over a period of maybe 5-8 years, and I make hiring and equipment purchase decisions based on the availability of that money. This provides stability and allows for long-term planning. It's been the case over many revolving administrations over the course of decades.
What we are talking about now is a fundamental shift from that, and you're acting like it's business as usual. No. You mention congressional budgets, I would be fine with that because that's how things are done. The budgets are set by representatives who advance our local agendas, and then everyone agrees on a budget that works. Generally speaking this is a stable way of advancing the country.
Now you are talking about a system where the executive can come in and just upend everything because he doesn't like it personally. There's no accounting for local needs in a population of 300 million spanning 4+ time zones. My question to you was: how do we as country plan long-term when the guy in charge can just shut down all scientific research in the country if he doesn't like the topics people are researching? Or he can cancel all contracts laid out by the last administration? Or cancel all contracts just in blue states? That's the country you're advocating for, so now keep going with this concept, what do we do if in 4 years a Democrat comes in and decides to cancel all contracts in Red states?
> What we are talking about now is a fundamental shift from that
Agreed. And you arguing that a democracy (or constitutional republic) cannot make a fundamental shift in policy via elections. That administrations have to be bound to decisions based on prior administrations, even if that is directly against the will of the electorate. Did I state your position correctly?
No. I'm saying as our Constitution is the foundation of our government, any changes must be made within the framework provided by the Constitution. The "will of the electorate" comprises hundreds of millions of voters; it's varied, complex, multifaceted, and cannot be distilled into the agenda of one man or even the platform of an entire party. For this reason the Constitution puts most of the decision making power in the Congress, who represent the will of the electorate at a much more granular level than POTUS.
If the next administration want to make changes, they can go through Congress. They can pass legislation. They can amend the Constitution. They can express their budget priorities. But they cannot do an end-run around the Constitutional order just to get things done faster because it avoids the pain of debate and finding consensus. The whole point of the Constitution is to prevent that.
For all the talk of legacy media, I assume anything posted on X is misinformation. And Rubio only cares about possibly being POTUS one day. Please post an article of any other administration that has ever complained about USAID being 'rogue'?
... and please stay within the site guidelines, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. I realize this material is provocative and super activating but that's what this principle, for example, is intended to cover:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
You need to understand when he says "irrespective of whether its in national interests" he means helping immigrants and asylum seekers, who are here legally even.
They listen to orders from many parts of the government, some of those are even conflicting orders. It's not like they are just doing whatever they want 90% of the time. Their money comes from who again?
I worked for a USAID funded company once. On the surface they were doing satellite imagery analysis for agriculture. Want to know what they were really doing? Identifying prime agricultural land in Kenya to help the Kenyan government seize it from poor farmers.
They didn't call it stealing, but yes. Google "Kenyan land seizure" for plenty of articles about it. The Kenyan government was particularly interested in Ogiek land, but it wasn't limited to them. It isn't much of a secret at this point. Kenya is by no means unique, USAID funds many such programs around the world. Or at least did.
What the media is reporting isn't relevant. We have Elons own word where he is saying he shut downtown various departments, intends to or canceling payments, having people arrested. Others are trying to cause a scene on social media by sharing cut out spreadsheets.
The people working in DOGE are the absolutely last people on earth I would trust to tell me what was going on. Just assume they have copies of all sensitive data they've encountered and that data has already been spread via them getting hacked, bribed, just posting it to brag...
I have a few questions regarding your story versus what the public understands. I see you have been positively harangued for your comment, please view my questions as honest dialectic.
1. What is the metric these folks are using to identify fraud, waste, and abuse?
2. Given that we have had independent OIGs for ages, why was fraud, waste, and abuse not previously reported?
3. Given that Congress folks are running every 2-6 years and shine like a shiny button (and get a lot of political cred) when championing substantive removal of fraud, waste, and abuse, why have no Congress people similarly exercised their Constitutional role of oversight for any of these agencies for decades?
4. Why do the agencies targeted tend to have overlap with investigations into or run-ins with Elon Musk's companies?
5. Why do forensic accountants take a long time to flag and identify fraud, waste, and abuse, even when working with compliant insiders, versus Musk's DOGE taking minutes to hours to identify fraud, waste, and abuse?
6. How is labeling groups with different ideas, such as Lutheran Family Services in the service of immigrants and refugees as terrorists, conducive to the identification of fraud, waste, and abuse? Which law enforcement office led the review of this group in particular to make this designation, which Mr. Musk and others decided to (potentially libelously) use to inflame public opinion against them?
I have no doubt that DOGE folks probably feel pretty proud of the work they are doing. That doesn't mean they are actually having the outcomes they are commissioned for -- improving efficiency. Having worked some within government support, process bottlenecks are regulatory or otherwise required by statute. People spend time really considering the decisions and improving them incrementally.
I'm sorry, but why should we believe you? Do you have any evidence of your claim at all?
Without evidence, yoh are normalizing what has been a shocking and unconstitutional approach to auditing that has very little resemblance to how actual auditing is done.
Perhaps the hostility comes from the combination of unconstitutionality, unaccountability, unelected nature of Mr. Musk, and your "trust me, i know a guy" claims.
Versus whatever the media is reporting