100 Days of DOGE
What happens when DOGE comes for your job and a team of twenty-something tech workers with extraordinary authority set about dismantling entire agencies?
In this episode of The Weekend Intelligence Daniel Knowles, our Midwest correspondent, documents the fever dream of 100 days of DOGE.
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The Independent
11 hours ago
- The Independent
DOGE loses control of US federal grants website
The US DOGE Service, responsible for Elon Musk 's federal spending cut initiative, has reportedly lost access to a key government website. is a critical platform distributing approximately $500 billion in annual federal awards, making the loss a significant setback for the DOGE initiative. Earlier, DOGE had assumed control of the website, leading to a backlog of grant proposals and risking unspent funds by the fiscal year-end. Federal officials were recently instructed to cease routing grant proposals through DOGE following Musk's split from the Trump administration. The initiative has reportedly fallen significantly short of its $1 trillion savings target, achieving only about $180 billion, although the administration says DOGE's work will continue in a decentralized manner without Musk.
The Independent
a day ago
- The Independent
Fresh blow for Musk's DOGE as it loses power to award $500B in federal funds
The US DOGE Service, the repurposed government agency tasked with carrying out Elon Musk 's Department of Government Efficiency agenda to cut a trillion dollars in federal spending, has reportedly lost access to a key government website responsible for distributing roughly $500 billion in annual awards, the latest blow to the initiative after Musk's acrimonious split from the Trump administration earlier this month. Earlier this year, DOGE reportedly assumed effective control of a clearinghouse for federal funding opportunities, requiring new proposals to be sent to a DOGE-controlled mailbox for review before being posted. In the ensuing months since the April policy change, grant opportunities reportedly piled up inside the mailbox, leaving funds at risk of going unspent before the end of the government fiscal year at the end of September. On Thursday, federal officials were instructed to stop running grant proposals through DOGE, The Washington Post reports. 'Robust controls remain in place, with DOGE personnel embedded at each agency, assisting secretaries' offices in reviewing grants daily,' the White House said in a statement about the report. 'Agency secretaries and senior advisors will continue to implement and leverage the controls initially established by DOGE to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, retaining full agency discretion to determine the appropriate flow of funds at the project level.' The reported process change is the latest hurdle for DOGE. The effort, whose figures have repeatedly been shown to be filled with errors and omissions, appears to have fallen short of Musk's bold promises to rapidly cut major portions of federal spending, with some estimates pegging the true figure of savings achieved at about $180 billion, compared to Musk's goal of some $1 trillion. Numerous DOGE efforts have been paused or shot down in court, and federal agencies are scrambling to hire back many of the employees laid off in Musk's slash-and-burn revamp of federal spending. Still, even with Musk out, the administration remains committed to achieving some major reductions, including a DOGE-style clawback of $9.4 billion in cuts to foreign aid and pubic media spending that's already passed the House. Russell Vought, a major force behind the arch-conservative Project 2025 police blueprint and current director of the Office of Management and Budget, has said DOGE's work will continue apace even without Musk. "Many DOGE employees and [full-time employees] are at the agencies, working almost as in-house consultants as a part of the agency's leadership," he testified this month. "And I think, you know, the leadership of DOGE is now much more decentralized."
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
Ex-Doge employee ‘Big Balls' gets new Trump administration position
Edward Coristine – the 19-year-old who quit Elon Musk's controversial, so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) earlier this week, where he gained notoriety in part for having used the online moniker 'Big Balls' – has in fact been given a new government job, this time at the Social Security Administration (SSA). Coristine, whose lack of experience and super-loyalty to Musk saw him become a flashpoint for outrage at Doge's ruthless but haphazard efforts to slash government spending and fire thousands of workers, resigned from Doge earlier this week. However a spokesperson for SSA, Stephen McGraw, told Wired magazine that he was now working for that department. 'His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people,' McGraw told Wired. Coristine may have previously worked for the SSA, but reporting on his employment history is conflicted. Doge caused chaos early on in the new Trump administration by muscling into dozens of departments and forcing access to computer systems, in a blaze of publicity and combative announcements. A high school graduate, Coristine's experience before Doge was largely limited to a few months working for Neuralink – which Musk owns – and as an intern for a cybersecurity company, which Bloomberg reported fired him for leaking company secrets. Reuters also reported that Coristine had provided tech support to a cybercrime gang that had bragged about trafficking in stolen data and harassing an FBI agent. At Doge, Coristine was dropped into several major government agencies as they went about slashing services and terminating thousands of workers. Last month, Reuters reported that Coristine was one of two Doge associates promoting the use of artificial intelligence AI across the federal bureaucracy. Musk also left Doge in May after months working by Donald Trump's side then falling out with him. Doge, however, continued to operate until Trump's budget chief, hard right nationalist Russell Vought, who says he wants government employees 'in trauma'. On Friday the Washington Post reported, citing anonymous sources, that Doge's latest target was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), attempting to slash gun restrictions. Nick Robins-Early and Reuters contributed reporting
