Polymarket.com/doge

[ChumpDumper]

They can't, it's all they got

Actually it's all you've ever had.

[Thread]

Actually it's all you've ever had.

You lost last November and thought the 4 years would go by faster.

Uh, uh.

Let us proceed...

[velik_m]

A bigger hole: Trump has already spent $155bn more than Biden. Musk now claims DOGE only saved $150bn

The Trump administration has already spent $155 billion more than former President Joe Biden did over the same period of time after their inaugurations, according to Treasury Department data. And Elon Musk is now claiming that his Department of Government Efficiency has only managed to save $150 billion.

That means that despite tens of thousands of government workers being fired, agencies shuttered, contracts cut and federal services dramatically reduced, the current administration has already racked up an additional $5 billion of debt than the Biden administration in the same space of time.

And it’s not clear that DOGE has saved anywhere near $150 billion. Every time Musk posts “receipts” to show off DOGE’s savings, they’re riddled with errors.

...


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/musk-trump-bigger-debt-150-billion-b2733310.html

[TSA]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/musk-trump-bigger-debt-150-billion-b2733310.html


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:36n7wd7gg4tapamnog4zyyc6/bafkreidbe52deudw5jrknujl466om6nibpwywc4nomfyenwqi 6bxqytr3q@jpegSame disingenuous bullshit Winehole tried pushing. :lol



You should really stop running to ST and reposting everything you find on Bluesky :lol

https://x.com/juliaonjobs/status/1910319308632170895

https://x.com/juliaonjobs/status/1910319311924703631

[ChumpDumper]

:lol it's 7.5% of the savings he claimed would happen

Only TSA could possibly try hyping this.

Tell your Republicans to pass a fucking budget for once. I dare you.

Rubes like TSA will see the Republicans explode the debt once again and say that was the plan all along.

[velik_m]

User with Russian IP address tried to log into NLRB systems following DOGE access, whistleblower says

A user with a Russian IP address tried to log into National Labor Relations Board systems just minutes after the Department of Government Efficiency moved to access and extract troves of sensitive data from inside the agency, according to an extensive whistleblower disclosure released Tuesday.

The whistleblower, Daniel Berulis, provided forensic evidence and internal documentation to Congress and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, accusing DOGE of exfiltrating large volumes of confidential data and disabling various security monitoring systems used to scan for malicious behavior in NLRB’s networks, NPR first reported.

The user attempting to log in relied on a newly created DOGE email account and the attempts were “near real-time,” according to the Berulis disclosure. It’s not clear whether the user was actually in Russia because hackers often use techniques to remotely mask their true location.

The login attempts were blocked, but the person used a correct username and password, suggesting that adversaries may already be testing entry points potentially exposed by DOGE’s activities across the government.

The whistleblower’s disclosure was accompanied by a cover letter from his attorney, Andrew Bakaj of Whistleblower Aid, which said that, after he raised concerns internally about DOGE’s inroads into the agency, he received a physically taped threat on his door containing personal information and overhead photos of him walking his dog.

...



https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2025/04/user-russian-ip-address-tried-log-nlrb-systems-following-doge-access-whistleblower-says/404574/

[Thread]

https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2025/04/user-russian-ip-address-tried-log-nlrb-systems-following-doge-access-whistleblower-says/404574/

Russia! Russia!! Russia!!!

[Winehole23]

One former senior Pentagon official, who asked not to be named because of possible retaliation, described DOGE’s wider incursion into the Defense Department as damaging and unproductive

“They’re not really using AI, they’re not really driving efficiency. What they’re doing is smashing everything,” the former official said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/15/pentagons-digital-resignations-00290930

[Thread]

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/15/pentagons-digital-resignations-00290930

Commission a Poll, Winestein.

[Winehole23]

pretty effin weird


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:wufsdxzvzx36d7wppganbvpw/bafkreifeymqihf6dtzauamzxsrvpuuyfziqsuipsqsnvvo57w peokg7pru@jpeg


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:wufsdxzvzx36d7wppganbvpw/bafkreia73glverwff2bisn7tpoo4zhz466qzdedpyrdua7a7o lc535ktuu@jpeg
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:wufsdxzvzx36d7wppganbvpw/bafkreiaqtvwhnts4nyyowks3gzlzvfa7ofozzc56lyphlr7b7 yxdztpore@jpeghttps://www.wsj.com/politics/elon-musk-children-mothers-ashley-st-clair-grimes-dc7ba05c?st=rbiMzK&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

[Thread]

pretty effin weird



https://www.wsj.com/politics/elon-musk-children-mothers-ashley-st-clair-grimes-dc7ba05c?st=rbiMzK&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

It's alright, Winesteen, he's the richest man in the world.

[Blake]

https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2025/04/user-russian-ip-address-tried-log-nlrb-systems-following-doge-access-whistleblower-says/404574/

Jesus Christ

[Blake]

pretty effin weird



https://www.wsj.com/politics/elon-musk-children-mothers-ashley-st-clair-grimes-dc7ba05c?st=rbiMzK&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

"
Mark 5
New International Version
Jesus Restores a Demon-Possessed Man

5 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.[a] 2 When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. 3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. 4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7 He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” 8 For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!”

9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.”

10 And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.

11 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. 12 The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” 13 He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

[Thread]

Jesus Christ

& the richest man in the world.

[Thread]

"
Mark 5
New International Version
Jesus Restores a Demon-Possessed Man

5 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.[a] 2 When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. 3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. 4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7 He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” 8 For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!”

9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.”

10 And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.

11 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. 12 The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” 13 He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

God, in that Pennsylvania berry patch Summer last:::

"Get up, you. I've not set you free yet. You've miles to go, promises to keep. Finish it."

[velik_m]

Intuit, Owner of TurboTax, Wins Battle Against America’s Taxpayers

For nearly three decades, a cold war has raged through the halls of Congress and in high-end shellfish restaurants perched precariously on Washington, D.C.’s southern coast. The battle lines have shifted between successive administrations, sometimes tilting toward proletariat victory, and sometimes cutting fast toward total surrender to corporate America.

This month, thanks to the whims of the president and hefty sums of cash, Donald Trump has amended an old axiom to guarantee that nothing in life is certain but death, and paying money to file your taxes.

According to a report by the Associated Press this week, the IRS is moving to shut down its free tax filing program known as Direct File, with employees working on the program told to stall work on future iterations. The news comes after Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and the biggest player in tax preparation software, spent years tirelessly fighting any attempt by the government to bring the nightmarish American system of tax collection into line with European nations that have streamlined most citizens’ filing process down to the click of a button.
...



https://prospect.org/power/2025-04-17-intuit-turbotax-wins-battle-against-taxpayers-irs-direct-file/

[Winehole23]

the costs of DOGE's actions will nearly match the announced savings


DOGE's firings, and the ways they did it, will cost the federal government $135 billion this fiscal year, www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/u... (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/us/politics/musk-cuts.html)

[Thread]

the costs of DOGE's actions will nearly match the announced savings

The best part? He & the old man planned this and kept it secret until a fortnight before Election Day. That is amazing. No leakage whatsoever. You never had the chance to plant a shit load of spies. Here, there, sure there are some, but, no booby traps, no bombs planted. Those 2 caught ya's nappin & sleepin'.

Trump is bitter, murderous in many respects. He can handle it at this point. But, they'll be breaking point for him and he'll manically tear for it when the time is right. He'll know. Those sons are lit, especially the kid. He knew precisely what had happened, and he wants vengeance.

God's speed.

[Winehole23]

DOGE slowed down SSA phone claims significantly, but found very little fraud



After installing anti-fraud checks for benefit claims made over the phone early last month, the Social Security Administration is considering walking back the policy after finding only two cases that had a high probability of being fraudulent.

The anti-fraud tool set up last month after weeks of changes to the agency’s telephone policies has slowed retirement claim processing by 25% and led to a "degradation of public service,” according to an internal May document obtained by Nextgov/FCW that examined potentially cutting the anti-fraud tool for phone claims.

Under the new policy, the agency found that only two benefit claims out of over 110,000 had a high probability of being fraudulent — and they aren’t guaranteed to be so. Less than 1% of claims were flagged as even potentially fraudulent at all.

“No significant fraud has been detected from the flagged cases,” the internal document said.

The attention to fraud, however, did cause delays, as SSA changed its phone procedures to add the checks on the backend.

The lags stem from the three-day hold placed on telephone claims in order to run the antifraud claims, a move that “delays payments and benefits to customers, despite an extremely low risk of fraud,” as the document noted
https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/05/doge-went-looking-phone-fraud-ssa-and-found-almost-none/405346/

[Winehole23]

DOGE created government waste...up to 60,000 metric tons of it




Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation.

The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration's decision in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid organisationswww.reuters.com/world/us-aid...

[Winehole23]

Musk has saved money personally by stiffing canvassers

Somewhat aside, the Saving Austin PAC El0n propped up to defeat Travis County DA Jose Garza (they failed) has never filed public disclosure -- a Class A misdemeanor that can be punished by up to a year in jail


A second class-action lawsuit has been filed against Elon Musk’s (https://thehill.com/people/elon-musk/)America PAC alleging that the group hasn’t paid voters (https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5230807-elon-musk-accused-nonpayment-2024-election-canvasser/) what they were promised for signing a petition during President Trump’s (https://thehill.com/people/donald-trump/)2024 campaign.

Three plaintiffs from Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia filed the lawsuit last week on behalf of anyone who is in the same situation, accusing the super PAC of not paying them in full for their signatures or for referring other voters to sign. The petition declared support for the First and Second amendments to the Constitution.

Musk and the group originally offered signatories, and those who refer others to sign, $47 for their signature (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4919368-elon-musk-petition-swing-states/) and each person they refer before raising the amount to $100. The offer was just for those living in battleground states during the presidential election.

But the plaintiffs allege they weren’t paid the promised amount for signing or referring other registered voters to sign. The complaint states that one plaintiff, Steven Reid, worked as a canvasser for America PAC in Michigan and Georgia and referred “many voters” to sign but hasn’t received the reward despite “multiple attempts” to collect.

The complaint states that Reid estimates he is owed at least several thousand dollars for the referrals.

“Plaintiffs are in communication with numerous others who referred voters to sign the America PAC petition, who are likewise frustrated that they did not receive full payments for their referrals,” the suit reads.

This is the second lawsuit against America PAC over alleged nonpayment regarding the petition, after a man from Pennsylvania anonymously filed a complaint last month making similar allegations. That man alleged that Musk and the group owe him $20,000 for gathering signatures.

He said he made repeated attempts to contact the organization but “to no avail.”
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5302053-elon-musk-america-first-pac-second-lawsuit-petition/

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:oqr5mp25r7z3vfr3igeerxbw/bafkreibwkvatebll6yxxnueox6wzf5kvmau2oqnxukm25vgy3 tdavrefwm@jpeg

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kypbxp7rhw7q2dfa4fr7f6i6/bafkreicaxcvcoqu5rlhftufjnczfcankaxsc72prmnwl66ts2 wi5pswniq@jpeg

[Winehole23]

according to rumor, the Millers and Musk are a throuple


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:e6n7jxtu2qrhwvp3j6ib6sq6/bafkreicqpgypeyb7nwxv4gs4frme4s6oxa33y7p24xjehlndm brpkzga7y@jpeg

[hater]

:lmao

Melon Usk

He better go back and try to save his shitty car business


Thats gonna be a tough task ..
Some of the shittiest cars in existence imo

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:jb2q4yqmgpmefxd4xx66gepm/bafkreifrrczsz6fwky3dr3hj6j66f6nbxhasl6wmy4lf4sodm ghkdqf7v4@jpeg

[ChumpDumper]

I mean who could Stephen NOT be a willing cuck?

[Winehole23]

What's hilarious is that it's an upgrade for Katie Miller

[Winehole23]

https://static.toiimg.com/thumb/msid-113989904,imgsize-713676,width-400,resizemode-4/113989904.jpg

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:jizcwneibrts7bw7ly4jgnmh/bafkreifojc2oshnqf73uul3aeb5ao4mwyrqhotzmirtvlenrz 5wvihxneu@jpeg

[Winehole23]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/elon-musk-drugs-children-trump.html

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:oba6nioyur5gcxqny4s2usxd/bafkreieppgsunuxzzls42o236ebayxa7jqyqlue5o7sgzikgx 24hq2qq34@jpeg

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:mlmouohgzbjofidukcp4pxf2/bafkreif7vfv2alv7lkuaao6g73m47574zvbn4olawwxtvl7io bxmdkg2fe@jpeg

[Winehole23]

Musk is a killer


"Roughly 1,500 babies have been born HIV-positive every day since January 21, because Musk cut off their mothers’ medication." prospect.org/power/2025-0... (https://prospect.org/power/2025-05-30-go-elon-never-darken-our-doors-again/)

[Winehole23]

comparing Trump to Hitler is passé

Musk/Trump might even surpass Stallin and Mao when all the bodies are counted, putting them more or less in their own category


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2rrp7amblhg3xoly5n5huiqv/bafkreidcu636dnyi247ag4nzyadqsy3pb6w75cis5lxumke6p jwplddc7a@jpeghttps://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01191-z

[Winehole23]

i think it is fine to stigmatize being blitzed out of your mind on russian research chemicals originally invented to deice hovercraft skirts while single-handedly running the US government (which you purchased)

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:sefgphqp2xqwh2hawaixykwz/bafkreib22pwthxzyqzwf75dpxrmxtbgghkxr2rcjctvoqxxh4 veuge5lwm@jpeg

[Winehole23]

https://www.theheritagetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Elon-Musks-Drug-Use-Worries-Tesla-SpaceX-Leaders-Report.jpg

[Winehole23]

whaddya think, Cosmic Cowboy?

awesome tracker?

or shitposting?

:lol

[Winehole23]

shit our reps and senators voted for and we already paid for, Trump/DOGE has spoiled


the IGs Trump fired were able to find similar annual "savings" without slashing services and jobs, tbh

[Winehole23]

highway robbery tbh


A court hearing is ongoing over the attempted transfer of the $500M headquarters of the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent think tank, to the government at no cost.

USIP's counsel Andrew Goldfarb said that he learned about the transfer how the rest of the world did: through court papers.They got it back

https://www.wired.com/story/usip-doge-headquarters-building-ruling/

[Winehole23]

rendering US agencies unable to perform core functions does not necessarily save money


So many managers and lawyers have left the US federal government’s housing agency this year that there may not be sufficient staff to perform core government functions, according to an internal document seen by Bloomberg CityLab.


The confidential report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of General Counsel warns that the loss of lawyers due to staff cuts and early resignations is “significantly increasing litigation risk and the risk of fraud, waste and abuse” across housing programs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-05/hud-staff-cuts-leave-agency-vulnerable-to-fraud-report-warns

[Winehole23]

https://badfaithtimes.com/content/images/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-04-at-9.22.04---AM.png

https://badfaithtimes.com/content/images/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-04-at-9.22.17---AM.png

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:j53tav4pdcpfxyx2gcfr5fhb/bafkreiamrhsyu4mzbra4bvgio2vsdpb7slfi6batdsuzwlzw2 3pxyypm3m@jpeg

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:t4x2ruk2qmob2b2cx55h4v7r/bafkreig27jthqsy34nlpv52ov2ekbsz6w5yjqjoqevhfolh4c sggsm466e@jpeg

[Winehole23]

DOGE as an ideological purge

Democracy operates across time and institutions, but Trumplandia acts like only the most recent election winner represents the people's will

If winning the last election gave DJT the right to remake the whole of government in his image, whoever wins the next one can remake it again in theirs -- and should. Whoever swore loyalty to a man above the constitution and the country should be purged from government



https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:25cztqjrqfedqg22bpoqjljr/bafkreiebccdghtrhgzjq33b5dvkdjerpgpvvbhsuahforaba4 fo66uol5a@jpeg

[Winehole23]

DOGE wrecked public capacity

Trump 2.0 is scrambling to rehire fired workers

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/06/06/doge-staff-cuts-rehiring-federal-workers/

[Winehole23]

former DOGE-er spills the tea


A former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency says that he found that the federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were "relatively nonexistent" during his short time embedded within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was," Sahil Lavingia told NPR's Juana Summers.

Lavingia was a successful software developer and the founder of Gumroad, a platform for online sales, when he joined DOGE (https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5288988/doge-elon-musk-staff-trump) in March. Lavingia said he had previously sought to work for the U.S. Digital Service, the technology unit that was renamed and restructured by the Trump administration. He told NPR that he just wanted to make government websites easier for citizens to use and didn't really care which presidential administration he was working for, despite protests from his friends and family.

Lavingia said the overall message at DOGE was transparency and a vibe of "ask for forgiveness, not permission." So, when a blogger asked for an interview about Gumroad, he agreed. And when asked, he talked about his work at DOGE, including how little inefficiency he saw compared to what he was expecting.

"Elon [Musk] was pretty clear about how he wanted DOGE to be maximally transparent," Lavingia said. "That's something he said a lot in private. And publicly. And so I thought, OK, cool, I'll take him at his word. I will be transparent."

Shortly after the interview was published online, Lavingia got an email. Just 55 days into his work at DOGE, his access had been revoked.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/02/nx-s1-5417994/former-doge-engineer-shares-his-experience-working-for-the-cost-cutting-unit

[Winehole23]

TRUMP: DOES NOT KNOW IF MUSK HAD DRUGS AT WHITE HOUSE

[Winehole23]

DOGE has been running the GSA, which handles all the building leases

Earlier this year, DOGE illegally commandeered the USIP -- a private nonprofit -- and stole their building


“Anyone who manages large commercial buildings understands that maintenance is not something you can just stop doing for two months,” O’Brien told The Independent. “After DOGE took over, they canceled a lot of contracts and critical functions stopped happening.”

Rodents became a problem because DOGE (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-doge-trump-congress-gop-b2761627.html) employees neglected to clear out any of the food left on the premises after taking over, O’Brien explained. USIP had a cafe managed by a contractor, with food being stored onsite, he said. Additionally, O’Brien said, USIP personnel had food in refrigerators throughout the building, along with snack items they didn’t have a chance to remove from desks and cabinets before DOGE summarily booted them from the property.

Over the next eight weeks, DOGE wouldn't let any USIP (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-doge-institute-of-peace-headquarters-b2761367.html) staff in the building, and didn't do anything to prevent the moldering food from spoiling further, which quickly attracted vermin.

Roaches were also attracted to the abandoned perishables throughout the space, entering through wastewater and drainage pipes that had dried up from lack of use, O’Brien said.

“There were several water leaks, as well, that contributed to their ability to come into the building,” he added.


Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency managed only a fraction of its promised spending reductions, while crippling a raft of vital government programs.

Beyond the various infestations, O’Brien recalled that, among other things, ceiling tiles were mysteriously missing throughout the building, water damage was rampant, vehicle barriers had become non-operational, and weeds were growing in the cooling tower on the roof – a potential vector for Legionnaires’ disease (https://deltacooling.com/resources/faqs/preventing-legionnaires-disease-in-cooling-towers). Since the location was left without adequate security, graffiti also appeared on an exterior wall.

“These things can turn into major, $100,000-plus repairs for lack of maintenance,” O’Brien said. “Now we’re in a rush to play catchup.”
However, according to O’Brien, the issues “went beyond maintenance.”

“They ripped the main logo off the wall when you come into the lobby, and while we have most of the parts back, would you be surprised that we’re still missing four letters: U, S, I, and P?” O’Brien said. “That’s not coincidental.”

More than a dozen USIP flags were also removed from their flagpoles and remain unaccounted for, which O’Brien believes were taken, along with the USIP logo remnants, as “war trophies.”

He called the situation “uncharted,” and struggles to accurately put into words the mix of emotions he felt upon walking back into the USIP building.

“The closest thing you can compare this to is McCarthyism, and even that pales in comparison to the total destruction that is occurring right now,” O’Brien said.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/musk-doge-institute-of-peace-vermin-infestation-b2762198.html

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:dnacsxh4tk6zqxhyt5i7hahh/bafkreie4icuec4wcfsuuwzp3626tdwa5llubkkfphgrmsrirs oztrcgpma@jpeg

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bbp2b224lro3bfnzcqwwnkfo/bafkreidi53law5vytr6qjyjsaljr6ke667bnxydhlmd6mwwk7 innpaxjmy@jpeghttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/us/politics/doge-social-security.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PU8._ycH.u2H z0TOdPxWv&smid=url-share

[Winehole23]

Elon Musk stood before a giant American flag at a Wisconsin political rally in March and rolled out an eye-popping allegation of rampant fraud at the Social Security Administration. Scammers, he said, were making 40 percent of all calls to the agency’s customer service line.


Social Security employees knew the billionaire’s claim had no basis in fact. After journalists followed up, staff members began drafting a response correcting the record.


That’s when Leland Dudek — plucked from a midlevel job only six weeks earlier to run Social Security because of his willingness to cooperate with Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — got an angry call from the White House, according to several people familiar with the exchange.


“The number is 40 percent,” insisted Katie Miller, a top administration aide who was working closely with Mr. Musk, according to one of the people familiar with the April 1 call. President Trump believed Mr. Musk, she said. “Do not contradict the president.”

[Winehole23]

The Times also reviewed previously unreported emails that showed how DOGE members used the agency for political aims, directing Mr. Dudek to cancel important contracts in Maine after the state’s governor, a Democrat, clashed with Mr. Trump.

[Winehole23]

The administration credits DOGE with identifying $1 billion in savings for this year, out of Social Security’s operating budget of $14 billion, citing canceled contracts, payroll cuts and other measures. The White House did not provide a detailed accounting of that figure and The Times could not verify it.

[Blake]

Of course not. They toss shit numbers against the wall and these tards make sure they stick.

[Winehole23]

wrecking dearly paid for government services, not really finding fraud

MAGA


The “anti-fraud” tools that DOGE installed for the Social Security Administration’s phone service slowed claim processing by 25% and ended up reporting a true fraud rate of less than 0.000018%

[Winehole23]

Trumplandia purges "Big Balls" Coristine 20 days after hiring him at top federal salary


Edward “Big Balls” Coristine resigned yesterday, Wired reports. He’d been a full-time government employee for a month. “I have heard since Elon [Musk] and Steve [Davis] have supposedly departed, they’ve terminated a lot of those that got hired,” Sahil Lavingia, a former DOGE member, told Wired. https://www.theverge.com/politics/692434/the-us-government-no-longer-has-big-balls

[Winehole23]

still spreading death, disease and suffering every day


This amounts to 1,471 new HIV infections among infants a day, with the most affected countries being South Africa, Mozambique and Uganda. Newsweek has contacted the South African foreign ministry, via email, for comment.


"These babies, however, are highly likely to also go undiagnosed because infant HIV testing services are also being suspended due to the stop work order," amfAR researchers said.


https://www.newsweek.com/hiv-foreign-aid-spending-africa-donald-trump-executive-order-2024125

[Winehole23]

tl;dr

Musk/Trump will have killed over 10 million people by 2030 by shitcanning USAID

This doesn't include cuts to PEPFAR and the Global Fund



Higher levels of USAID funding—primarily directed toward LMICs, particularly African countries—were associated with a 15% reduction in age-standardised all-cause mortality (risk ratio [RR] 0·85, 95% CI 0·78–0·93) and a 32% reduction in under-five mortality (RR 0·68, 0·57–0·80). This finding indicates that 91 839 663 (95% CI 85 690 135–98 291 626) all-age deaths, including 30 391 980 (26 023 132–35 482 636) in children younger than 5 years, were prevented by USAID funding over the 21-year study period. USAID funding was associated with a 65% reduction (RR 0·35, 0·29-0·42) in mortality from HIV/AIDS (representing 25·5 million deaths), 51% (RR 0·49, 0·39–0·61) from malaria (8·0 million deaths), and 50% (RR 0·50, 0·40–0·62) from neglected tropical diseases (8·9 million deaths). Significant decreases were also observed in mortality from tuberculosis, nutritional deficiencies, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, and maternal and perinatal conditions. Forecasting models predicted that the current steep funding cuts could result in more than 14 051 750 (uncertainty interval 8 475 990–19 662 191) additional all-age deaths, including 4 537 157 (3 124 796–5 910 791) in children younger than age 5 years, by 2030.https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext

[Winehole23]

comparing Trump to Hitler is passe

he's in his own category now

[Winehole23]

I'm personally so radicalized by this

I'm about to volunteer for the Democratic Party for the very first time

[Winehole23]

.

[Winehole23]

eh,

so quiet in here now

like people are afraid

[Winehole23]

mum's the word


1937579562998608322


A construction crane toppled over this week at SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations center, yet officials from the surrounding incorporated community refuse to disclose injury details or incident specifics. The equipment failure occurred on June 23 during debris removal operations following the latest Starship test vehicle detonation.

Lab Padre, among the independent documentarians who monitor the aerospace facility, recorded (https://x.com/LabPadre/status/1937579562998608322) the mechanical failure from a distant vantage point. The remote filming angle prevented determination of personnel endangerment or casualty status.

The aerospace manufacturer has maintained characteristic silence regarding the incident, declining to acknowledge TechCrunch’s information requests. This behavior aligns with the company’s standard communication protocols—while rocket test failures receive public documentation, other operational matters typically remain undisclosed.https://www.technology.org/2025/06/30/starbase-texas-officials-silent-following-construction-equipment-accident-at-spacex-facility/

[Winehole23]

sounds kinda unusual



Musk initially proposed the Starbase concept during 2021, but formal incorporation only materialized this past May. The voting population—predominantly SpaceX workforce members—endorsed incorporation by overwhelming margins. Bobby Peden, SpaceX’s vice president of “Texas Test and Launch,” assumed mayoral duties. Jordan Buss, the company’s senior director of environmental, health, and safety, secured a commissioner position. Fellow commissioner Jenna Petrzelka also brings extensive SpaceX employment history.

These officials have actively structured their new jurisdiction throughout recent weeks. Late May brought municipal notices to residents within a proposed “mixed use district” warning they might “lose the right to continue using” their property. The city has also begun installing access barriers at SpaceX’s behest, referencing safety justifications. Buss indicated during municipal proceedings that Starbase would authorize outsider entry “if there’s a need to be in the city” while providing “access codes” to ambulances, firefighters, and law enforcement, according to Valley Central.

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:otjswyhd4fgzid4la5p3a2vk/bafkreichqqyu37yszcid6h2asyap32vtjec4hzztm3alxuqse w4mrsjpxa@jpeg

[Winehole23]

incinerating 60,000 metric tons of expired food that we already paid for


Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency unleashed a barrage on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year, as part of the new government’s notorious cost-cutting initiative. In February, the agency’s website went offline, and, since then, massive staffing cuts (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/us/politics/usaid-trump-doge-cuts.html) have all but utterly destroyed the agency. The government is in the process of permanently shutting it down, and its operations are being subsumed into the State Department. As a result, populations all over the world that would have benefited from the U.S.’s aid operations are being threatened with starvation and death (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/13/afghanistan-usaid-cuts-trump-hospitals-hunger/).



The Atlantic now reports (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/07/usaid-emergency-food-incinerate-trump/683532/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK3zJJXeoRe3IYCW9n7SieVJ0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share) that about $800k worth of high-energy biscuits that were procured by USAID under the Biden administration will soon need to be destroyed. The biscuits, which would have been distributed by the World Food Programme, would have gone to hungry children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. USAID workers have been warning the Trump administration that they must distribute the food before it expires—and officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have promised to do so. However, as of today, it appears to be too late. The food expires tomorrow. Instead of sending the biscuits to those who need them, the government plans to spend an additional $130k burning them to ash.


Multiple USAID officials interviewed by The Atlantic said that the destruction of the biscuits represented one of the largest wastes of food that they had witnessed during their time with the agency:



One current USAID staffer told me he’d never seen anywhere near this many biscuits trashed over his decades working in American foreign aid. Sometimes food isn’t stored properly in warehouses, or a flood or a terrorist group complicates deliveries; that might result in, at most, a few dozen tons of fortified foods being lost in a given year. But several of the aid workers I spoke with reiterated that they have never before seen the U.S. government simply give up on food that could have been put to good use.


Even worse, The Atlantic reports that even more food could soon expire and may have to be destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of “boxes of emergency food pastes, also already purchased, are currently collecting dust in American warehouses,” the outlet notes. That includes some 60,000 metric tons of food that has already been procured by the government that is currently “sitting in warehouses across the world.” It’s unclear what will happen to most of that food. Gizmodo reached out to the State Department for comment.
https://gizmodo.com/the-white-house-has-a-plan-for-all-that-foreign-food-aid-that-doge-cut-burn-it-2000629489

[Winehole23]

DOGE is watse fraud and abuse writ large


Blumenthal and the members of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations allege that in just six months, DOGE generated at least $21.7 billion in waste across the government, because of costs associated with layoffs, lost interest, and wasted goods, despite its charter to reduce wasteful spending.


“The substantial majority of this sum could have been used to improve employee training, invest in upgraded technology and other infrastructure, or develop genuine forms of efficiency for an already lean civilian federal service engaged in the critical missions of their agencies,” the report reads.

The biggest waste of that $21.7 billion figure comes from costs associated with the Deferred Resignation Program (https://www.inc.com/chris-morris/doge-cuts-just-hit-the-sba-enter-the-deferred-resignation-offers/91171996), which the report says is resulting in $14.8 billion in charges to pay approximately 200,000 workers to not show up for as many as eight months.

Another $6.1 billion was spent for the 100,000-plus workers who were placed on administrative leave pending separation—and were paid for weeks or months to not do their job.
This resource drain could get increasingly more expensive, too. The report says “lost agency capacity will inevitably force a greater reliance on contractors, even though they often cost 1.8 times more in total compensation than the agency staff who once performed these functions.”

https://www.inc.com/chris-morris/doge-is-accused-of-wasting-21-7-billion-in-just-6-months/91221713

[Winehole23]

DOGE’s shutdown of several aid organizations and cutbacks at other governmental operations led to nearly $150 million in unrecoverable expenses, according to the report. Product spoilage and destruction at USAID cost just under $110 million as supplies rotted in warehouses, rather than reaching their intended recipients. Over 496 metric tons of food needed to be sent to landfills or destroyed. Also, over $12 million in HIV treatments and contraceptives were abandoned.




Additionally, unrecoverable expenditures from three grants at the National Institutes of Health resulted in $4.5 million in wasteful spending. And the shutdown of the IRS Direct File program cost $33.5 million in wasted expenditures.

[Winehole23]

While Musk vowed “maximum transparency” for DOGE, the report says the department’s legacy will be one of “ambiguous authority, transitory mission, unverifiable claims, and devastating impacts.” While DOGE claims to have saved $199 billion to date, the report notes that “one comprehensive review of the website found that nearly 90 percent of its claimed savings were unverifiable.”

[Winehole23]

red tape and inefficiency


While the numbers don’t compare with what was spent to pay for government layoffs, the report takes DOGE to task for adding layers of red tape, which impacted the productivity of government workers. Requirements such as the weekly “Five things (https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/doges-ongoing-five-things-emails-are-alarming-and-a-lesson-in-micromanagement/91157905)” emails (which it says the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, “has no intention of reviewing”) cost millions of hours and $155 million in wasted time. And relocation costs associated with a directive for all federal agencies to terminate remote work added another $42 million in costs at the OPM alone.

[Spurs Homer]

Man, that $5,000 dollar DOGE check is gonna reeeeely help!

any day now!

[Winehole23]

Man, that $5,000 dollar DOGE check is gonna reeeeely help!

any day now!how will that save money when DOGE didn't?

[Winehole23]

moar efficiency

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/08/05/national-weather-service-will-reportedly-hire-hundreds-after-backlash-over-staffing-cuts/

[Winehole23]

Big Balls Coriston got "approached" by unarmed Romeo and Juliet "carjackers," El0n Musk and Trump called for Congressional rule of DC

lol street deal gone wrong


Musk: who did this?

Big Balls: a gang of Armenian street toughs but don't tell anyone

Musk <while he's posting>: sure thing

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:kjjhbsc3pp3vkqjsivk6z2yd/bafkreigeupuxa2lkqp6d63tn7t4qufvmtam736torhjlnbwxe 62vapwyn4@jpeg
hhttps://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:kjjhbsc3pp3vkqjsivk6z2yd/bafkreihsndgibacbk7q3xwzjs2cec72mw5kp5e4btoic63ddt im6bvltki@jpeg

[Winehole23]

somewhat anomalously relative to the current narrative

violent crime has been trending down in DC for 30 years and is near the historic low

[Winehole23]

a certain demographic committing crimes on regular people thread - Page 21 (https://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=301184&page=21&p=11261163&viewfull=1#post11261163)

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:m7w6mfn35d53chutrzjzgkng/bafkreietizmjl4u43ookepgvrspmuh27rq7g6ak72ds3xkfsw laehadssi@jpeg

[Winehole23]

"But SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to pay any, according to internal company documents reviewed by The New York Times."https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/technology/spacex-musk-government-contracts-taxes.html

[Winehole23]

post #5 in this thread had never been answered by anybody itt to my knowledge


What authority does the Musk/Trump junta rely on to nullify appropriations and mass fire civil servants?

[Winehole23]

revenge porn bot


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/bafkreiepgafaerri7o4rp26x35dibv3csmazlcc7bo6d6ilfi 5chnpkqrq@jpeg

[Winehole23]

DOGE accused a US intelligence asset who the Taliban tried to assassinate three times -- of being in the Taliban

DOGE should have known better, and they put his family's life in danger


The Taliban had attempted to assassinate Halimi as a traitor at least three times during the U.S. occupation. And the U.S. government knew he had faced real danger in the past. He narrowly managed to flee Afghanistan in the final days before the U.S.-backed government fell to the Taliban, with the help of the second-highest-ranking CIA officer in the country. Since then, he had tried to live a mostly quiet life, partly to keep the relatives he’d left behind safe from retribution.

The work he was pursuing with USIP had nothing to do with supporting the Taliban. It was the opposite.

ProPublica has obtained records making clear that Musk and his team at the newly formed DOGE should have known this too. Halimi’s work at USIP was spelled out in precise detail in the agency’s records, down to the tasks he performed on specific days. His role at the institute was far from top secret, but it had been treated as highly sensitive and confidential. Among other tasks, it involved a program gathering information on the ground about living conditions for Afghan women, who are largely barred from education past primary school or from having a role in public life.

Partly because of Halimi’s contentious history with the Taliban, the militants might equate his work at USIP to espionage and severely punish anyone involved with it. By exposing him, Musk and his team endangered those working with Halimi, as well his relatives who were still in Afghanistan. The White House and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-musk-mohammad-halimi-institute-peace-taliban

[Winehole23]

straight up spreading lies they knew were lies


Cavanaugh told Watters that DOGE was unable to find any justification for those payments. But ProPublica’s reporting showed that four weeks earlier, Cavanaugh had been sent dozens of pages of internal records from USIP outlining Halimi’s work in detail, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. There were invoices, project descriptions, and dates and times showing what Halimi was supposed to be doing on specific days. Cavanaugh did not respond to questions about his access to these records or how they appeared to conflict with his statements on Fox News.

[Winehole23]

did DOGE elimnate waste, fraud and abuse when they mass fired/offered early retirement to thousands of IRS agents the agency is trying to get back now?

are the costs of this reversal tallied on the big board?

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bhg5fzu5fgj57tqsgsxc2ki2/bafkreifcllhe5iopn6wnc5ra4ndea5pgtlow3hpo4gf7667u3 q3akorbtq@jpeg

[Winehole23]

Shrewd observation

Republicans have already wasted their credibility as negotiators


Something that stood out to me (https://bsky.app/profile/ericmgarcia.bsky.social/post/3m23td3tihk2e): the constant DOGE cuts to the federal workforce kind of inoculated Democrats to Trump’s threats of laying off the federal workforce. “I mean, they got rid of Department of Education,” Ruben Gallego said. “Whether we pass this or not, he's gonna fire whoever he wants.”

[Winehole23]

lol you disappeared from your own thread in a hurry


whaddya think, Cosmic Cowboy?

awesome tracker?

or shitposting?

:lol

[Winehole23]

the IGs Trump fired were able to find similar annual "savings" without slashing services and jobs, tbh

[Winehole23]

Tell us more about the excellence of DOGE, CC

I'm all ears

[Winehole23]

Despite DOGE's promise that canceling contracts and terminating leases would help reverse the trend of the government spending more money than it brings in, the most recent Treasury data (https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/) shows an increase in expenditures by hundreds of billions of dollars more than the year before.The bulk of that spending (https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/) goes to debt service, national defense, and entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.


When it first launched this year (https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates-savings-federal-contracts), NPR found DOGE's savings and efficiency tracker (https://doge.gov/savings) to be riddled with factual errors, overstatements and unverifiable claims. As a new fiscal year begins, that remains true today.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/01/nx-s1-5558298/doge-fiscal-year-savings-budget-rehired-government-shutdown

[Winehole23]

At some agencies, workers were never officially laid off, but haven't been working, either. Many Department of Agriculture employees, including high-ranking officials, have been on administrative leave, with pay, for months "with no plan for them in sight," according to one USDA employee. They haven't received severance notices or further information about whether they'll be asked to return.


"This was all a giant waste of money," the employee said.

[Winehole23]

Jessica Riedl of the center-right Manhattan Institute previously told NPR (https://www.npr.org/2025/03/06/nx-s1-5318072/how-much-money-has-doge-saved-budget-deficit-congress) that any meaningful changes to how the federal government spends taxpayer money would have to come from Congressional action.

"DOGE has created this false perception that the entire budget deficit can be eliminated by going after waste, fraud and abuse and without making the difficult decisions elsewhere in the budget," Riedl said. "And this exaggeration is making it even harder to do the real hard things that are going to be needed to fix the deficit beyond waste."

Still, billionaire and on-and-off Trump ally Elon Musk, who oversaw DOGE until the end of May (https://www.npr.org/2025/05/30/nx-s1-5415641/musk-leaves-doge-what-comes-next), set an ever-shifting goal that eventually landed on $1 trillion in cuts (https://www.npr.org/2025/03/06/nx-s1-5318072/how-much-money-has-doge-saved-budget-deficit-congress) to federal spending from Jan. 20 to the end of September.

Even taking DOGE's savings claims at face value, U.S. Treasury Department data (https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/) shows the federal deficit has grown by nearly $2 trillion from Oct. 1, 2024 to the end of August 2025 — an increase of $76 billion from the same period the year before.

[Winehole23]

The most recent contract termination on DOGE's website purports to show $4.3 million in savings from canceling a $4.4 million consulting contract for the Federal Aviation Administration. The linked contract (https://www.fpds.gov/common/jsp/LaunchWebPage.jsp?command=execute&requestid=326858981&version=1.5) is not terminated, is worth about $150,000 (https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_693KA922F00215_6920_693KA922D00015_6920) and almost all of the money has been spent already.

The largest claim is $4 billion in savings from a decade-long multiple-vendor contract (https://govtribe.com/award/federal-vehicle/base-infrastructure-modernization-1?clickedFeature=true&r1=e2&omrie417nwb=1)worth up to $12.5 billion for the Air Force's Base Infrastructure Modernization (BIM) project. There's no public evidence to support that claim. A review of federal contracting data shows the nearly two dozen companies involved have been awarded about $12,000 so far to kick off the project.

It's not just contracts: some of the leases touted on the DOGE tracker as terminated still appear as active on the GSA's Inventory of Owned and Leased Properties.

[Winehole23]

Millions will die because of Trump/Musk, just from defunding USAID. Cuts to PEPFAR and the World Fund will kill millions more.

World-historical bad guys


“I lost my son because of the funding cuts,” he says. “And it is not only me — many more children in other camps have also died helplessly from hunger, malnutrition and no medical treatment.”


Taher’s grief is echoed in families across conflict-ravaged Myanmar, where the United Nations estimates 40% of the population needs humanitarian assistance and which once counted the U.S. as its largest humanitarian donor. Now, in Asia, it has become the epicenter of the suffering unleashed upon the world’s most vulnerable by President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.



And like Taher’s son, Mohammed Hashim, it is Myanmar’s children who have borne the brunt of the fallout. A study published in The Lancet (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext) journal in June said the U.S. funding cuts could result in more than 14 million deaths, including more than 4.5 million children under age 5, by 2030.
https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-usaid-thailand-trump-rubio-aid-7f6919a1863ceea2ddf6708e47bb88f0

[Winehole23]

Judge orders the government to provide a list of ElOn's security clearances


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:euynv325eix7glyek377orak/bafkreiglnxw7tk2pmkqn6jvb6rka3s5wpue3n7jpgknsvf2oi esdnmnvza@jpeghttps://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.639038/gov.uscourts.nysd.639038.21.0.pdf

[Winehole23]

FOIAd

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:z6rujpf4u56jfie7aqic2nfg/bafkreictqdrn7dkof3mu3eeeiw244x2akuxxxstw42kstvgg6 dvp7k627y@jpeghttps://www.wsj.com/economy/tariffs-are-way-up-interest-on-debt-tops-1-trillion-and-doge-didnt-do-much-e8d21595

[Winehole23]

it's a shite savings tracker

IG's used to save this much and even more on an annual basis without cutting public services and mass firing government employees


Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, says it has saved $160 billion (https://doge.gov/savings) through its push to root out wasteful or fraudulent government spending. But that effort may also have come at a cost for taxpayers, with a new estimate from a nonpartisan research and advocacy group estimating that DOGE's actions will cost $135 billion this fiscal year.

The analysis seeks to tally the costs associated with putting tens of thousands of federal employees on paid leave, re-hiring mistakenly fired workers and lost productivity, according to the Partnership for Public Service (PSP), a nonpartisan nonprofit that focuses on the federal workforce.


PSP's estimate is based on the $270 billion in annual compensation costs for the federal workforce, calculating the impact of DOGE's actions, from paid leave to productivity hits. The $135 billion cost to taxpayers doesn't include the expense of defending multiple lawsuits (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/watchdog-group-sues-for-doge-records/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab4i) challenging DOGE's actions, nor the impact of estimated lost tax collections due to staff cuts at the IRS.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/doge-cuts-cost-135-billion-analysis-elon-musk-department-of-government-efficiency/

[Winehole23]

the rapid deprofessionalization and ideological streamlining of the civil service is striking under Trump 2.0

very Bolshevik in method and effect, tbh

[Winehole23]

Bannon compares the current US Congress to the Duma


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:5o6k7jvowuyaquloafzn3cfw/bafkreigexazpqf6lqtsnd2bgtt4yc2jadfdd3dpytpka66ldf wd3fuqaiu@jpeg

[Winehole23]

"Bannonist-Leninism (https://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=287509&page=132&p=10789320)"

[Winehole23]

DOGE accused a US intelligence asset who the Taliban tried to assassinate three times -- of being in the Taliban

DOGE should have known better, and they put his family's life in danger

https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-musk-mohammad-halimi-institute-peace-talibanMohammed Halimi is about to be deported to the Taliban, by Trump. Victim of DOGE's false accusations and Trump's total immorality.

Trump ended the Afghan War by surrendering to the Taliban in 2020, right?

[Blake]

lol you disappeared from your own thread in a hurry

He knows

[Winehole23]

He knowsit's so easy to say, i was wrong

I do it not infrequently

[Winehole23]

1. DOGE practices violate statutory requirements, creating unprecedented privacy and cybersecurity risks. During the SSA and OPM site visits, staff were provided information on the security practices of the DOGE employees that directly contradicted whistleblower disclosures, public reporting, and court filings. At GSA, senior agency officials could not inform staff on DOGE employee adherence to privacy and cybersecurity policy, guidance, and existing statute. DOGE employees’ reported actions appear to violate several provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002 pertaining to the protection of Americans’ personal data and combination of data across agencies. Particularly at SSA, DOGE personnel are reportedly putting the sensitive personal information of all Americans at extraordinary and potentially catastrophic risk – and, given the lack of agency visibility into the cloud environment, we may never know the full extent of any damage done. One risk is that DOGE employees at SSA could potentially provide access to sensitive data to private companies.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:hzm4j2lo6gxsiixgxnptia3j/bafkreibhkzodcpqqg6z7r2lr6qc2jziqiakupufbnoruze7tq f5rj5i3ai@jpeg

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/DOGE_REPORT_FINAL_7.pdf

[Blake]

it's so easy to say, i was wrong

I do it not infrequently

Not for Trump and any and all of his followers, down to the rando message board poster

[Blake]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:hzm4j2lo6gxsiixgxnptia3j/bafkreibhkzodcpqqg6z7r2lr6qc2jziqiakupufbnoruze7tq f5rj5i3ai@jpeg

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/DOGE_REPORT_FINAL_7.pdf

So who will be held accountable for all the DOGE fuck ups?

[Winehole23]

quien sabe?

[Blake]

Definitely not anyone that should be held accountable.

[Winehole23]

Mohammed Halimi is about to be deported to the Taliban, by Trump. Victim of DOGE's false accusations and Trump's total immorality.

Trump ended the Afghan War by surrendering to the Taliban in 2020, right?What, now y'all don't want to talk about Trump the peacemaker?

That was one of the wars Trump ended. Trump paroled the Taliban and agreed to hand over power to them in 2021.

[BadMotorscooter]

What, now y'all don't want to talk about Trump the peacemaker?

That was one of the wars Trump ended. Trump paroled the Taliban and agreed to hand over power to them in 2021.

winehole with no facts and talking out of his ass again....dont want to talk about the backdoor deal that Obama did with the #1 sponsor of terrorism Iran?

[Winehole23]

winehole with no facts and talking out of his ass again....dont want to talk about the backdoor deal that Obama did with the #1 sponsor of terrorism Iran?Trump 100% did a deal with the Taliban in 2020

Not sure what you're talking about, can you be more specific? Sounds like whataboutism.

[ChumpDumper]

winehole with no facts and talking out of his ass again....dont want to talk about the backdoor deal that Obama did with the #1 sponsor of terrorism Iran?

Why do you have to try to change the subject every single time?

[Winehole23]

Nobody wants the topic. It's always something else.

[Winehole23]

Trump/Musk have a lot of blood on their hands

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:w3e2v674b3rqmm2qudws5yjb/bafkreic63b5mfcolremxlqqvpardzbdaa4nudkbqoa7ppsvmw liwgigsuu@jpeg

https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=title&order=asc

[Winehole23]

The British medical journal Lancet (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext) found that in the absence of USAID’s funds and works, 14 million more people would die in the next five years, a third of those children under 5.https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/humanitarian-system-struggles-fill-us-void-sudan-worlds/story?id=123483196

[Winehole23]

sidebar: from the Yale Human Rights Lab


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qiknc4t5rq7yngvz7g4aezq7/bafkreiccg2r3pzrr453bmgj45sxmq5ah4o2mb4ia52f7xkj53 z6rodw6ma@jpeg

[Winehole23]

if I'm not very much mistaken, DOGE lives on in some fashion at OPM


For months, the young engineers who had descended on the capital to shrink the federal bureaucracy had lived with the ever-present threat of backlash — public scrutiny, upset Cabinet officials, even the prospect that someone might assert criminal charges against them. But on the morning of June 5 something changed: Their figurehead, Elon Musk, had a falling-out with his patron, Donald Trump, that played out very publicly across the two men’s social media platforms.

The fate of their shared endeavor was now in deep jeopardy, and for the youngest members of the DOGE operation the risk seemed personal. Musk had not been just their visionary leader. For them, he was their protector: the man who had a direct line to Trump, who they believed could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon if the worst came. Without his presence in Washington, they were suddenly exposed.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/21/doge-elon-musk-succession-00641110

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:d6wtextmdf4jzr4oouyapzmm/bafkreielnzuamb7ego7nodpucvhe6aydqb7firtufqwmvbehm dsbf6lnru@jpeg


Unless 2nd amendment


judicially things seem to be jamming up for Trumplandia, perhaps it's too soon to completely write off the old USA


but the administrative coup is devastating

El0n hacked the US system of payment, now Trump is using control of US payments to directly coerce US states, institutions and legislators


Federal auditors: DOGE is a data heist

https://www.wired.com/story/federal-auditors-doge-elon-musk/

[Winehole23]

the US Congress is supine to Trump's depredations, the House of Representatives has been on vacay since the summer, and SCOTUS awards Trump all the emergency equities while postponing the merits

while the law and the people get trampled

[Winehole23]

Trump is getting propped up in the home stretch by auctioning off the West Bank to Miriam Adelson and a government post to Elon Musk, but bagging $1 billion in a few months is impressive.October 2024

Turned out to be a good call

[Winehole23]

(El0n gave Trump ~$290M)

[Winehole23]

Over the subsequent days and weeks, rival factions would compete for control of what Musk had built. Some sought to burrow deep inside the federal government and continue business as usual; others wanted to collaborate openly with the parts of government they previously eschewed. One of Musk’s chief lieutenants would openly defy White House orders to step down. At the same time, Musk was angling to lure remaining staffers to jobs at one of his private companies.



https://www.politico.com/dims4/default/resize/630/quality/90/format/webp?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F1e%2F 03%2F1de4b3c3404ca085b8095c87733e%2Fmag-cai-lastdaysofdoge-secondary2.jpgAt a gathering in June, Donald Park, a senior DOGE figure, tried to reassure his colleagues that they were still “brothers in arms” and that Musk would continue to protect them. | Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for An American Fantasy



This account of the DOGE supernova, which left behind nebulous remnants throughout the government, is based on contemporaneous notes, photographs, correspondence and screenshots of Signal chats provided by participants in them. We interviewed nine former and current DOGE employees, along with four other administration and White House officials, many of whom were granted anonymity to candidly discuss internal deliberations without fear of retribution.

[Winehole23]

At the center of it all was Davis, who, as DOGE’s operational lead, acted as connective tissue for staffers embedded across agencies and their backchannel to the White House. Davis served as a special government employee, a status that enables individuals to cycle through federal posts for a 130-day period without fully abandoning their private-sector careers. (Hollander, who did not respond to a request for comment, joined DOGE (https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook-remaking-government/2025/03/12/whos-in-elons-ear-and-dms-00227426) to shrink the government’s real estate footprint.) Davis called up agencies, demanding they grant engineers unfettered access to their data and systems. Once engineers were embedded in those agencies, often their only point of contact to DOGE was instructions or meeting invitations from Davis delivered through Signal, the team’s primary method of communication.




Musk, too, was a special government employee but had the trappings of a Cabinet official, claiming a 10-room suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building as his own, along with a fleet of black SUVs to ferry him and top lieutenant Antonio Gracias around the capital. (Gracias did not respond to a request for comment.) Musk became a fixture at the White House, meeting weekly with chief of staff Susie Wiles and growing seemingly inseparable from Trump.

Davis was never far away and invariably at Musk’s side during Fox News interviews that were the only official media appearances for DOGE’s leaders. He was also part of a small group that briefed Vice President JD Vance in early February on DOGE’s progress, according to internal records shared with POLITICO. (Vance’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting.)

DOGE’s rise and fall can be best measured through the impact of two blast emails to the federal workforce. The first, on Jan. 28 with the subject line “Fork in the Road (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/28/trump-offers-buyouts-for-federal-workers-00201106),” prompted more than 77,000 (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/02/federal-agencies-launch-second-offer-to-leave-00264397) to accept deferred resignation offers, with a total of 154,000 workers taking that and subsequent offers this year. (The deferred resignation arrangement took effect in September.) Then, nearly a month later, Musk sent out emails (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/22/musk-federal-employees-explanation-dismissal-00205613) to every federal worker asking them to respond with a bullet-pointed list of five things that he or she did that week.

Cabinet officials, caught off guard by the mandate and implicit threat, scrambled to provide guidance to their staff. A number of national security agencies issued orders (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/5-things-email-national-security-00002746) to ignore the request, out of concern employees would have to divulge confidential information by participating. Other agencies said they would respond on workers’ behalf.

“The height of our power was the five-bullets email,” said a DOGE official, calling it a “mistake” that pitted DOGE against departments and agencies (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/24/trump-back-off-musk-five-things-threat-00205743) who were increasingly frustrated by Musk’s lack of communication and heavyhandedness. “Then it turned into fear and revulsion and hatred.”

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:k4jssy3jlqrtbk43agng4zgu/bafkreidaqgl6cuwfxaa2ovtzoskb4vuv7fsgsa53zrj2uif2r llkqwi5qq@jpeg


In a March Cabinet meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy both confronted Musk over his chainsaw approach (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/07/trump-musk-cabinet-doge-cuts-00219011) to cutting parts of their departments. He had a physical altercation outside the Oval Office the following month with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, after Bessent called Musk a fraud and Musk responded with a bodycheck, according to an account that former Trump strategist Steve Bannon provided to the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/07/trump-elon-musk-fight-behind-scenes/).

[Winehole23]

DON'T CUT

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:w3e2v674b3rqmm2qudws5yjb/bafkreic63b5mfcolremxlqqvpardzbdaa4nudkbqoa7ppsvmw liwgigsuu@jpeg


The best way to keep the peace with the White House, Katie Miller advised DOGE leaders, was to collaborate with Cabinet secretaries and stop presenting them with cuts or efficiency projects they didn’t want to do. (She declined to comment on the call.)

[Winehole23]

palace intrigue around DOGE zombie chieftain, Steve Davis




On June 3, Davis strode into DOGE’s weekly Thursday evening meeting at GSA, assigning tasks as though he held the reins of the leaderless organization, according to photos and accounts of the meetings.

Even as the White House had announced his departure the previous week, Davis had steadfastly refused to acknowledge anything had changed, unwilling to give up any of the far-reaching authority he had amassed over the past six months — backed by well-placed allies.

“Steve Davis remains in charge until he says he’s not,” acting GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian insisted to DOGE employees that week, according to notes taken by someone who heard the comment.




That did not sit well with another group of DOGE staffers with senior roles in the agencies who thought it was inappropriate for someone no longer working for the government to direct federal work.

“It wasn’t just a couple, it was like a lot of people asking what do we do about this?” a second administration official explained.

In the fraught days that followed, DOGE fractured. Senior figures embedded in the agencies convened a series of ad hoc meetings without Davis.

They gamed out legislative proposals, speculated on how to engage with the White House and OMB, and quietly sought advice from DOGE general counsel Austin Raynor, who had moved to the White House Counsel’s Office, on whether they should engage with Davis. (Raynor didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

[Winehole23]

When Davis learned that a breakaway faction was gathering on a Saturday afternoon at the offices of venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to plot a strategy for DOGE’s future, he began calling likely attendees and told them not to attend what he called the “coup” meeting. (The firm did not respond to a request for comment on its role in DOGE’s work.) Those at the meeting who looked at their phones would have seen their fortunes change in real time, as they were removed from Signal group chats — DOGE’s primary status marker of who belonged.


“Steve Davis conducted an internal purge against anyone not completely loyal directly to him,” said a former DOGE official with direct knowledge of the events.



https://www.politico.com/dims4/default/resize/630/quality/90/format/webp?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F5f%2F d6%2F3ef0f4c64ead821b61c424f6f523%2Fmag-cai-lastdaysofdoge-secondary7.jpgSteve Davis, as DOGE’s operational lead, acted as connective tissue for staffers embedded across agencies and their backchannel to the White House. | George Walker IV/AP



Between May and June, dozens of DOGE employees left their posts (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/11/doge-staff-departures-00448233). Some were pushed out by Davis’ allies after expressing concern about his authority. Some left because they had come to Washington only for Musk, and saw no point in staying once he was gone. Others told colleagues they were quitting out of exhaustion, drained by the drama at the top and disillusioned by the collapse of the political cover that once made their work possible.


And the trappings of DOGE’s once-privileged place in the federal government — the black SUVs, the dedicated parking spaces at GSA, the armed guard checking off names of those allowed entry to the 6th floor — vanished along with them.

[Winehole23]

influence network rooted out



As the White House became aware of Davis’ attempts to continue wielding power, the Presidential Personnel Office set to work rooting out Davis’ influence throughout the government. Trump’s appointees, under the direction of then-personnel chief Sergio Gor, quietly contacted DOGE staffers, sometimes through the White House liaisons in the agencies, with instructions to cease all communication with Davis. (Gor didn’t respond to a request for comment on his role.) Personnel office staffers also began to conduct 15-minute interviews with DOGE staffers to determine what exactly each did. At least one Cabinet member was informed that he was free to fire any name he found from lists of DOGE employees.

[Winehole23]

On July 21, the White House attempted to blunt the influence of DOGE staff over the General Services Administration by installing Mike Rigas (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/21/trump-installs-new-gsa-acting-administrator-sidelines-doge-leaders-00465468), a former OMB and GSA official with ties to Trump and Vought, as acting administrator. Rigas brought with him a group of institutionalists who served during Trump’s first term, adding a new layer of management atop the two prominent DOGE officials who had been effectively leading GSA at the time.

[Winehole23]

to some extent, DOGE burrowed



A quieter, more dispersed version of DOGE began to emerge, its members plugging away at fairly specific policy areas with whatever authority and resources they had left. Forty-five DOGE employees remain as of October, a White House shutdown plan revealed (https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/02/white-house-shutdown-furlough-doge-00592532), plus dozens more who have transitioned to working for an agency full-time.

[velik_m]

DOGE disbanded: Elon Musk’s Cost-Cutting Project Quietly Ended Ahead of Schedule

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been quietly disbanded with eight months left in its charter, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director.

Director Scott Kupor told Reuters that DOGE—the sweeping cost-cutting effort led by billionaire Elon Musk that dominated the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term—“doesn't exist,” adding that most of the office's functions have been absorbed by OPM, the federal government’s human resources agency.

Kuper said that DOGE is no longer the “centralized entity” it once was when Trump appointed Musk to lead the agency in January, the news agency reported on Sunday.
...


https://time.com/7336327/doge-disbanded-elon-musk/

[Winehole23]

Noting that the DOGE staffers have “lived with the ever-present threat of backlash — public scrutiny, upset Cabinet officials, even the prospect that someone might assert criminal charges against them,” (https://www.rawstory.com/doge-2673797223/) the report notes there is a growing sense of dread that Musk will no longer champion them if they are subject to investigations.


"Musk had not been just their visionary leader. For them, he was their protector: the man who had a direct line to Trump, who they believed could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon if the worst came. Without his presence in Washington, they were suddenly exposed,” Politico is reporting before adding that a recent gathering, “a senior DOGE figure named Donald Park tried to reassure his colleagues that they were still ‘brothers in arms’ and that Musk would continue to protect them. That led to another protesting and advising, “Guys, seriously get your own lawyer if you need it. Elon’s great, but you need to watch your own back.”

[Blake]

https://time.com/7336327/doge-disbanded-elon-musk/

Lol this clown circus that these Trump tards all were rooting for as a genius idea.

[velik_m]

If democrats were smart they would start a conspiracy theory that all the trillions that DOGE saved were stolen by Musk and that's why the deficit has still increased. MAGAts are stupid enough to believe it and it would be hilarious seeing Musk and friends defend themselves with "No we really were that incompetent and useless".

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:z6rujpf4u56jfie7aqic2nfg/bafkreifxzrq7aweg4axtytnnbklromwem6q33r4kzslmrg4ld wsxpazczm@jpeg

[Winehole23]

If democrats were smart they would start a conspiracy theory that all the trillions that DOGE saved were stolen by Musk and that's why the deficit has still increased. MAGAts are stupid enough to believe it and it would be hilarious seeing Musk and friends defend themselves with "No we really were that incompetent and useless".you should check out "Glonzo (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Glonzo)" theory

[Winehole23]

(politics (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/politics#English), humorous (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary#humorous), Internet (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Internet#English) slang (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary#slang)) An incorrect (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/incorrect#English) belief (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/belief#English) or conspiracy theory (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conspiracy_theory#English) held by voters (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/voter#English) that can be exploited (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/exploit#English) by politicians (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/politician#English) to achieve their goals.

[2024 November 9, William B. Fuckley [username], Bluesky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky)‎[1] (https://web.archive.org/web/20241216175038/https://bsky.app/profile/opinionhaver.bsky.social/post/3lahydhz6yp2j), archived from the original (https://bsky.app/profile/opinionhaver.bsky.social/post/3lahydhz6yp2j) on 16 December 2024:If 25% of the population believed that a creature called ‘Glonzo’ caused high power prices by chewing through transmission lines, any competent politician would be negligent in not trying to find a way to exploit this. This doesn’t mean that these people wouldn’t be fucking morons.]


2025 July 14, “You Live By the Glonzo, You Die By the Glonzo”, in Mike the Mad Biologist‎[2] (https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2025/07/14/you-live-by-the-glonzo-you-die-by-the-glonzo/):I will admit that I underestimated how important The Storm, Trust the Plan, and so on are to MAGA (including the ‘softer’ versions). It’s glonzo, but it’s also, in a bizarre way, one of the few positive, non-trolling things they care about.


2025 July 17, James, “The Glonzo Strategy”, in War By Other Means‎[3] (https://othermeans.io/p/the-glonzo-strategy):In this instance Glonzo happens to be files related to Jeffrey Epstein. The GOP made sweeping promises to their base that once they assumed power they would release all the information related to Epstein to the public.

[Winehole23]

(Glonzo in the latter case being political power seized by elite pedos)

[Winehole23]

WHERE ARE THE FILES?

[Blake]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:z6rujpf4u56jfie7aqic2nfg/bafkreifxzrq7aweg4axtytnnbklromwem6q33r4kzslmrg4ld wsxpazczm@jpeg

Those are just for starters. There's more

[Winehole23]

Those are just for starters. There's morethat's just the warmup

[Winehole23]

weird thing, DOGE was so wantonly destructive that in the end, Susie Wiles was begging El0n to stop

[Winehole23]

"an excellent savings tracker"


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:z6rujpf4u56jfie7aqic2nfg/bafkreiedpuhbenrms5aauktghfagntcooylbrzxdmjccoplin 4sfxs64km@jpeg

[Winehole23]

burrowing confirmed -- DOGE lives



It’s not just Choi. Many of the original young and inexperienced DOGE technologists (https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engineers/) whose identities were first reported by WIRED appear to still be enmeshed in federal agencies. Edward “Big Balls” Coristine (https://www.wired.com/story/edward-coristine-tesla-sexy-path-networks-doge/), Gavin Kliger (https://www.wired.com/story/doge-access-consumer-financial-protection-bureau-data/), Marko Elez (https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-associate-bfs-federal-payment-system/), Akash Bobba (https://www.wired.com/story/doge-operatives-access-social-security-administration/), and Ethan Shaotran (https://www.wired.com/story/gsa-staff-all-hands-meeting-ai/) all still claim to be affiliated with DOGE or the US government. So do other tech workers from Silicon Valley and Musk companies like xAI and SpaceX. Coristine, Kliger, Elez, Bobba, and Shaotran did not respond to requests for comment.

The DOGE ethos—characterized by cutting contracts (https://www.wired.com/story/rights-con-taipei-doge-foreign-aid-cuts/) and government workers (https://www.wired.com/story/cdc-gutted-rif/), consolidating data across agencies (https://www.wired.com/story/doge-collecting-immigrant-data-surveil-track/), and importing private sector practices (https://www.wired.com/story/gsai-chatbot-1500-federal-workers/)—remains fully in force. While several media reports (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/doge-doesnt-exist-with-eight-months-left-its-charter-2025-11-23/) have suggested that DOGE has all but fizzled out, DOGE affiliates are scattered across the federal government working as developers, designers, and even leading agencies in powerful roles.

“That’s absolutely false,” one USDA source says of reporting that DOGE has disbanded. “They are in fact burrowed into the agencies like ticks.”

DOGE has “just transformed,” an IRS employee tells WIRED.

While DOGE is no longer moving across the government in a move-fast-and-break-things blitz, DOGE affiliates appear to be digging in for the long haul—and Silicon Valley–shaped fingerprints remain all over the way agencies continue to be run.

Over the last few weeks, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has rolled out coding tests to its hundreds of technical staff, quizzing them over their “technical proficiency.” The decision to roll out these tests came from Sam Corcos, a DOGE operative and chief information officer of the Treasury, according to a source familiar with the situation. Corcos is seeking to overhaul the IRS’s 8,500-person IT department, the source says. This is part of a larger ongoing “modernization” (https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0260?utm_source=chatgpt.com) process at the US Treasury (https://www.wired.com/story/treasury-bfs-doge-insider-threat/).

The tests, administered through a tool called HackerRank, have been used by private-sector tech companies like Airbnb, LinkedIn, and PayPal to quiz a potential hire’s technical skill. One source at X, the social media company owned by Musk, tells WIRED that X uses “HackerRank’s tool to do coding screen-sharing for tech screens and remote interviews,” but confirmed that existing employees are not assessed with the tool.

“They want to see IRS as like a tech company, that’s the feeling I get,” says an IRS employee who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak to the press.

While coding tests are expected for candidates applying for technical roles, testing existing agency employees is highly unusual, four IRS sources tell WIRED. Early in DOGE’s tenure, staffers at the Technology Transformation Services (TTS) (https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-tech-workers-gsa-tts/) were forced to defend their projects on video calls with DOGE members.

Government employees were also asked to send weekly emails detailing their work and achievements, which were later reviewed by artificial intelligence (https://www.wired.com/story/doge-used-meta-ai-model-review-fork-emails-from-federal-workers/). (These emails and project reviews closely resemble the playbook Musk used (https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-twitter-playbook-federal-government/) when he took over X, formerly Twitter, in 2022.)

Despite an all-hands meeting two weeks ago, employees say they still don’t feel like they have answers. “They’re keeping us in the dark,” says the IRS employee. “They won’t tell managers why [they’re issuing the tests] or how the results will be used.”

Corcos and the IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-doge-doing-now/

[Winehole23]

"an excellent savings tracker"


The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — formerly run by Elon Musk — ends 2025 with strikingly divergent results around its two primary goals.

On one front, government payroll numbers are down this year by about 9% (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001?utm_source=chatgpt.com), from 3.015 million federal workers in January to 2.744 million in November.

At the same time, government spending hasn't slowed, despite Musk's promises there. A tool from the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project (https://www.hamiltonproject.org/data/tracking-federal-expenditures-in-real-time/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) tracks government money headed out the door in real time and shows outlays as of Dec. 19 have risen from $7.135 to 7.558 trillion.

That's a nearly 6% increase.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musks-doge-tally-the-federal-workforce-is-down-while-government-spending-is-up-192850019.html

[Winehole23]

"DOGE had no noticeable effect on the trajectory of spending," the Cato Institute offered (https://www.cato.org/blog/doge-produced-largest-peacetime-workforce-cut-record-spending-kept-rising-0) in its analysis of the agency's 2025 results. "But it did help engineer the largest peacetime workforce reduction on record."

[Winehole23]

not with a bang but a whimper

DOGE was a sh!t savings tracker

same old spend and borrow Republicans


Inside the White House, the cost-cutting crusade marked by mass firings and blanket funding eliminations is largely seen as over, two people familiar with the discussions said, as Trump turns his attention to other priorities. On Capitol Hill, Republicans have passed just a single bill enacting $9 billion in DOGE cuts – far short of Elon Musk’s aim of cutting as much as $2 trillion from the nation’s budget. (https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-department-of-government-efficiency-trump/index.html)


And now, Trump officials are signaling they likely will not try to pass another package clawing back more funds, with White House budget director Russell Vought telling one GOP lawmaker last month that it amounted to a long-shot given the razor-thin Republican majority in the House and a lack of appetite in the Senate.


Instead, congressional Republicans signed off on a government funding package that included money the Trump administration had advocated eliminating. A White House attempt to lay off thousands of federal workers during last year’s shutdown was halted by the courts. And Trump said Tuesday that he did not like the haphazard way DOGE downsized the federal workforce, saying he “didn’t want a general cut.”


Even Rep. Tim Burchett, who is taking over as the leader of the congressional subcommittee focused on DOGE, knows he is facing an uphill battle that is unlikely to be successful as a result of resistance on both sides of the aisle.
“They put me on there to die,” Burchett told CNN of why he thinks House GOP leadership gave him this assignment. “They don’t like that I call them out.”
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/12/politics/they-put-me-on-there-to-die-conservatives-unleash-on-gops-failures-to-carry-out-doge-cost-cutting

[Winehole23]

not with a bang but a whimper

DOGE was a sh!t savings tracker

same old spend and borrow Republicans


Inside the White House, the cost-cutting crusade marked by mass firings and blanket funding eliminations is largely seen as over, two people familiar with the discussions said, as Trump turns his attention to other priorities. On Capitol Hill, Republicans have passed just a single bill enacting $9 billion in DOGE cuts – far short of Elon Musk’s aim of cutting as much as $2 trillion from the nation’s budget. (https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-department-of-government-efficiency-trump/index.html)


And now, Trump officials are signaling they likely will not try to pass another package clawing back more funds, with White House budget director Russell Vought telling one GOP lawmaker last month that it amounted to a long-shot given the razor-thin Republican majority in the House and a lack of appetite in the Senate.


Instead, congressional Republicans signed off on a government funding package that included money the Trump administration had advocated eliminating. A White House attempt to lay off thousands of federal workers during last year’s shutdown was halted by the courts. And Trump said Tuesday that he did not like the haphazard way DOGE downsized the federal workforce, saying he “didn’t want a general cut.”


Even Rep. Tim Burchett, who is taking over as the leader of the congressional subcommittee focused on DOGE, knows he is facing an uphill battle that is unlikely to be successful as a result of resistance on both sides of the aisle.
“They put me on there to die,” Burchett told CNN of why he thinks House GOP leadership gave him this assignment. “They don’t like that I call them out.”
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/12/politics/they-put-me-on-there-to-die-conservatives-unleash-on-gops-failures-to-carry-out-doge-cost-cutting

[Winehole23]

100% reliance on ChatGPT to determine "DEI"

lazy student strategies making governmental determinations



https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:2vtbmhmrwzbqcfv4we4uxzzt/bafkreidbp7lg3drkoap5zlpybt3abn3lrcppx7vilaqxwfcnz mwn5gv7nu@jpeghttps://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook-remaking-government/2026/02/13/doge-used-chatgpt-to-identify-cuts-to-neh-grants-00781563

[Winehole23]

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/68185/68185-h/68185-h.htm

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ccrabc6xdnjx4l7btvynnng4/bafkreictojpjiifqdhsvvpdwsigpn445igiopsvi7hzrqg7nk x5psftkw4@jpeg

[velik_m]

DOGE bites taxman: IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup

Job cuts at the IRS's tech arm have gone faster and farther than expected, with 40 percent of IT staff and four-fifths of tech leaders gone, the agency's CIO revealed yesterday.

Kaschit Pandya detailed the extent of the tech reorganization during a panel at the Association of Government Accountants yesterday, describing it as the biggest in two decades.

This happened as the Trump administration reshaped the federal bureaucracy last year with Elon Musk's DOGE wielding the chainsaw.

The IRS lost a quarter of its workforce overall in 2025. But the tech team was clearly affected more deeply. At the start of the year, the team encompassed around 8,500 employees.

As reported by Federal News Network (FNN), Pandya said: "Last year, we lost approximately 40 percent of the IT staff and nearly 80 percent of the execs."

...



https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/19/irs_job_cuts/

[Winehole23]

wrecking the revenue collection isn't deficit neutral, it's just a bad idea

[Winehole23]

They got it back

https://www.wired.com/story/usip-doge-headquarters-building-ruling/crazy wildness

the video of the DOGE takeover of USIP got FOIA's by Marisa Kabas and was released by a judge


The people representing the Trump administration knew they were entering a privately-owned building, and the DC MPD allowed them to enter despite that fact.
https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/body-cam-footage-usip-doge-raid-mpd-lawsuit

[Winehole23]

here's the ChatGPT spreadsheet DOGE used to nuke NEH grants for being too DEI

https://www.historians.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/248-11.pdf

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:37m5h6wl2dh2wqiyncbpzpmo/bafkreifkqdqy7bbmmmijtyea2sc25pchrwjwli4io4sb62bry 5dixqklsm@jpeg

[Winehole23]

"NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction furtherance of the President's agenda"


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:37m5h6wl2dh2wqiyncbpzpmo/bafkreiatgkurbhitwnj67mxyrvglw5n3j6abu67tv4w53lnmk qqil6cq2y@jpeg

[Winehole23]

Federal grants that had been approved after a full application and review process were terminated by some random inexperienced DOGE bros based on whether ChatGPT could explain—in under 120 characters—that they were “related to DEI.”https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/19/doge-bros-grant-review-process-was-literally-just-asking-chatgpt-is-this-dei/

[diego]

:lol cosmic cowboy abandoned his excellent savings tracker the day after posting about it, the rest of the small government crowd did the same 2 months later...

Surely after a year yall have huge savings to tout?? how's the deficit going ? Military spending up or down? How much money did you save removing DEI and changing from "defense" to "war"? Fucking retards

[Winehole23]

tax economist bets against DOGE, wins $128,000 from suckers who believed in it



The right-leaning tax economist Alan Cole, whom you’ll frequently see quoted in news articles about the federal budget, recently won over $128,000 gambling. Not against poker players, or the house in Vegas, or in any game of chance. Instead, Cole put his entire liquid savings on the line—almost $350,000—betting that Elon Musk was full of shit, and that Musk’s legions of fans were suckers.


This is surely not how Cole would put it, at least publicly, but it’s the truth. Last year, Musk promised to chainsaw trillions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal budget, easy peasy, as the temporary head of a temporary White House initiative called DOGE. Sums that large would accomplish something pretty much unthinkable: reducing government outlays in nominal terms, year over year, such that the Treasury would spend less money in calendar year 2025 than it did in calendar year 2024.


Because he is not a complete moron, Cole understood this was not going to happen. That even if Musk were committed in an above-board way to reducing federal spending—and even if he were to findmore in savings than experts believe we lose to waste, fraud, and abuse each year—it couldn’t counteract the tidal forces of an aging population, or the federal government’s fairly steady, year-by-year obligations to the defense and welfare of the country.


So he took the other side of the bet: that outlays would go up. That DOGE would fail on the terms Musk set. And he won (https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/the-tax-nerd-who-bet-his-life-savings-against-doge-6b59eda2).
I don’t gamble in prediction markets, so it would have never occurred to me to search for or try to create this market, and place the same bet. But Cole’s success is enough to make any half-way competent wonk want to develop that reflex: Look for opportunities to fleece suckers. Identify false promises from Donald Trump and his loyalists, then bet against their marks.
What’s impressive about Cole’s haul is the creativity of the method. It takes nothing away from his skills as a tax economist to note that his underlying insight was banal—something any competent, mid-career budget reporter could have told you, with complete certainty.


The revealing thing isn’t that Cole got this right, but how many suckers made the opposite bet without bothering to learn anything about the ways and means of the U.S. government.
https://www.offmessage.net/p/elites-maga-trump-iran

[Winehole23]

do you think people are mad about the DOGE-bro who couldn't define DEI taking SSA personal information on 500 million living and dead Americans on a thumb drive to his new private sector job?

this is after he nuked a bunch of already approved NEH grants for being "too DEI." Justin Fox used ChatGPT as a pony.


https://www.404media.co/doge-deposition-videos-taken-down-after-judge-order-and-widespread-mockery/

[Winehole23]

objection your honor, my client is being brutally owned online

[Winehole23]

Oh no, these videos might ruin the reputation of the guys who stole our social security numbers

[Winehole23]

Afghan scholar Mohammad Halimi, who fled the Taliban in 2021, had worked to help U.S. diplomats understand his homeland. Then DOGE put his family’s lives at risk by exposing his sensitive work for a U.S.-funded nonprofit.


Errors: DOGE staffers exposed a sensitive U.S.-funded Afghanistan program and falsely suggested a contractor was involved in an off-books mission.
Consequences: DOGE’s public outing led to a Taliban intelligence service crackdown in Kabul.
Fight: The Afghan scholar whom DOGE exposed is fighting to clear his name after his family was forced to flee the country.

https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-musk-mohammad-halimi-institute-peace-taliban

[Winehole23]

lol Streisand effect


The Removed DOGE Deposition Videos Have Already Been Backed Up Across the Internet

https://www.404media.co/the-removed-doge-deposition-videos-have-already-been-backed-up-across-the-internet/

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:eivqo2tskdfn4dbrm3dv2mku/bafkreicxjuqhyacklgo6tfio3v6hoyfegfo4k3joptwle6pie vlayabyke

[Winehole23]

tl:dr

DOGE lives on as the National Design Studio and scrapes your information on official looking websites like passport.gov and vote.gov

The National Design Studio reports directly to Susie Wiles and has no IG or oversight


The National Design Studio was created by executive order in August 2025. Its job, officially, is to redesign how Americans experience their government. Its leader is Joe Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb, which is to say he is a man who looked at the American home and saw an untapped revenue stream. If anyone understands how to improve public spaces, it is the company that took residential ones and made sure the public could never afford them again. He reports directly to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, which is a strange place to house a website design agency. A technology office that builds federal websites should answer to the General Services Administration, or at minimum to the agencies whose websites it is building. Instead it answers to the person who controls access to the President. His position requires no Senate confirmation, which means he files no financial disclosures, which means the office he runs does not appear in any federal procurement database, which means as far as the official record is concerned, it barely exists.

Which, as I was about to find out, was entirely the point.

The structure of the National Design Studio will be familiar to anyone who has been paying attention. Staff are hired under a federal authority called Section 3161, written for temporary advisory bodies, which means most of them are part-time advisors or volunteers. They do not appear on the White House salary report. They answer to no inspector general, because the Executive Office of the President does not have one. If that sounds familiar, it should, because it is exactly how DOGE was run.

Gebbia spent six months at DOGE before taking his current role. The senior staff at the National Design Studio, when you pull the bylines from their blog posts and run the names against court filings, come back from the same place, DOGE, the same DOGE currently named as defendant in multiple federal lawsuits for letting engineers without proper security clearance access Social Security data and Department of Homeland Security data, and for sharing sensitive federal information with outside parties. The National Design Studio is not a successor to DOGE. It is DOGE with a better logo and a design philosophy.
https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/i-found-a-second-votegov-and-its

[Winehole23]

"a galaxy of phishing sites run by the White house"


https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5mzcdrx7k6kh5yzqf4344auz/bafkreicksgfwqa6qs3fgekznfeffwdhxf2mmlnhgkk7i6sspz tzwvfqh7a

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:5mzcdrx7k6kh5yzqf4344auz/bafkreif7n4yc2mntkf4dftyunurjlw63wyjn3yjbzsjshy3nw zxwpaqeii

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:5mzcdrx7k6kh5yzqf4344auz/bafkreihececotzl3vxp7non52n3ozr35apnuqyizlidgkg2br dz4ezmwde

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:5mzcdrx7k6kh5yzqf4344auz/bafkreibvylxspqbor5tgx4vi2d4k5fjqks5ipcbjycf6yiu6w xk3bpkhte

[Winehole23]

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!a7qJ!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pro gressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F11db6ef 4-8910-49e1-9da2-89f790d5e253_1712x1756.png

[Winehole23]

:lol cosmic cowboy abandoned his excellent savings tracker the day after posting about it, the rest of the small government crowd did the same 2 months later...

Surely after a year yall have huge savings to tout?? how's the deficit going ? Military spending up or down? How much money did you save removing DEI and changing from "defense" to "war"? Fucking retardsoverall spending did not go down

[Winehole23]

Freedom 250 isn't on the list I just posted, but it's a National Design Studio website too

[Winehole23]

and now we have screwworm in Texas



https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kdphmaoqeaouax2kis27556e/bafkreih35e27bliejzygp4yv3n3nkmi6nbppk4vkovzvpb75t 6bawrn3ye

[Winehole23]

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zo4loyx2rtmfw5az6aigi65o/bafkreigbigkythghxrbkfwaehtt65cojs2iyrfhvxgukdlgmz eaxvougvu