Judd Legum & Paul Krugman Are Watching DOGE— Is Congress?
When another one of Musk’s disastrous, failed rockets blew up last month, he described it as having “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.” Yesterday Paul Krugman celebrated President’s Day— or co-president’s day— by noting that “If a rocket blows up, you can build a new rocket and try again. “Move fast and break things” is sometimes an OK approach if the things in question are just hardware, which can be replaced. But what if the object that experiences “rapid unscheduled disassembly” is something whose continued functioning is crucial to people’s lives — say, something like the U.S. government? This isn’t a hypothetical question: Musk, with backing from Donald Trump, is blowing up significant parts of the U.S. government as you read this. And we can already see the shape of multiple potential disasters.”
He described 3 shared characteristic he’s observed in the DOGE incels, or Muskrats, which he calls, ungenerously “the Muskenjugend… First, they all seem to be extreme right-wing ideologues: whenever journalists investigate the social media trail of one of Musk’s operatives, what they find is horrifying. For example, Marko Elez, who had access to the Treasury Department’s central payments system, had in the recent past advocated racism and eugenics. Second, they don’t know anything about the government agencies they’re supposedly going to make more efficient. That’s understandable. The federal government has around 2 million workers, many— I would say the vast majority— performing important public services, in a huge variety of fields. You can’t parachute into a government agency and expect to know in a matter of days which if any programs and employees are dispensable. But the third characteristic of the Muskenjugend is that, like Musk himself, they’re arrogant. They believe that they can parachute into agencies and quickly identify what should be cut.”
So what would be your worst nightmare about large, hastily announced job cuts? Maybe firing the people responsible for keeping our nuclear weapons secure? Sure enough, on Thursday night, according to CNN’s reporting, Trump officials fired more than 300 staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, apparently unaware that this agency oversees America’s nukes. (Maybe the name should have been a giveaway?)
The next day, realizing the enormity of the error, the agency tried to reinstate those workers— but was having trouble getting in touch, because the terminated workers had already been locked out of their government email accounts.
Trump officials also summarily fired 3400 workers at the National Forest Service, which plays a critical role in fighting forest fires. The administration said that no firefighters were laid off, but right now— before fire season begins— is when the service should be trying to prevent fires by, among other things, clearing vegetation that can feed those fires. That work has now been hobbled, in some cases brought to a complete halt. (Remember when Trump blamed California for devastating fires, claiming that the state hadn’t raked enough leaves?)
There have been large layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just as America is experiencing a serious spike in ordinary flu cases and alarm bells are ringing about a potential bird flu pandemic. Under political pressure, the CDC has been withholding reports. So we might not even know about the next pandemic until it’s well underway.
Large layoffs have struck at the Department of Health and Human Services, including, according to CBS, half the officers of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, sometimes called the “disease detectives,” who play a crucial role in identifying public health threats. There have been layoffs at the FDA, which monitors the safety of food additives and medical devices.
And according to the union, several hundred workers have been fired at the Federal Aviation Administration.
The list goes on. But peering through the details, the overall strategy is clear: Musk and his minions decided to summarily fire as many federal workers as they could without making any effort to find out what these workers do and whether it’s important.
Despite Musk’s escalating claims, these firings won’t save tens of billions of dollars. Moreover, DOGE has mandated large layoffs at the IRS— creating an open season for wealthy tax evaders which will eventually increase the budget deficit.
So what is this about? Think of it as austerity theater: suddenly getting rid of thousands of federal workers looks strong and decisive to people who don’t understand what it will do. Remember, just a few weeks ago workers all across the federal government received a mass email urging them to take a buyout offer and “move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.” The new wave of layoffs probably reflects the fact that not many workers took the offer, realizing, correctly, that it was almost surely a scam.
Well, it seems all too likely that Americans are about to learn the real costs of austerity theater. Many of the suddenly laid off workers were providing essential services. Nor should we underestimate the demoralization the vindictive layoffs have created even among those workers who still have their jobs (so far.)
So when we experience our next wave of devastating forest fires, when significant numbers of Americans begin dying from preventable diseases and faulty medical devices, remember: These disasters will be partly the fault of arrogant, ignorant men who decided to smash up a reasonably functional government.
Around the same time Krugman’s post went live, Judd Legum published another disastrous DOGE fuckup, this one in regard to OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which was ordered to destroy the 18 publications on workplace safety practices, telling staff to dispose and recycle physical copies. “The purge,” he and Rebecca Crosby wrote, “appears to be part of the Trump administration's effort to terminate any activities associated with ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.’ Popular Information has obtained archived versions of most of the deleted publications. Almost all of them are not associated with DEIA topics but appear to have been targeted because they include a DEIA-related keyword used in a completely different context... The bungled purge of OSHA publications is part of a larger effort to eliminate "DEIA" from the federal government. The Washington Post obtained a document produced by Elon Musk's DOGE, which outlines the game plan. Phase 1 of the plan involves forcing agencies to ‘[t]ake down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts)’ related to DEIA… As part of the broader anti-DEIA plan, many federal employees that DOGE linked to DEIA activities have been fired or placed on administrative leave. According to the plan obtained by the Washington Post, in the next phase, which starts February 19, an even broader group of federal employees will be targeted.”
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