__  __      _        _____ _ _ _
|  \/  | ___| |_ __ _|  ___(_) | |_ ___ _ __
| |\/| |/ _ \ __/ _` | |_  | | | __/ _ \ '__|
| |  | |  __/ || (_| |  _| | | | ||  __/ |
|_|  |_|\___|\__\__,_|_|   |_|_|\__\___|_|
community weblog

Into the Wood Chipper

We're getting more confirmation of the careless and criminal way DOGE operated... in no particular order, here's a collection: 1) Whistleblower says Trump officials thought USAID did 'just abortions,' asked for 'Barney-style' slides before gutting agency, per new book. Enrich's new book "Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID" will be published on Tuesday, and The Handbasket is proud to share an exclusive excerpt.
2) DOGE's secret voter data deal was 'alarming,' court finds. A federal appeals court Friday raised serious concerns about a secret voter data agreement involving the Trump administration and ordered a lower court to take another look at a case challenging its access to Social Security data. The decision comes after new evidence emerged in January showing that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) personnel worked with an outside political group seeking to challenge election results — something that was not disclosed during earlier court proceedings. 3) Management of Agency Reforms and Workforce Planning Needed to Address Severe Risks to Future IRS Operations and DOGE cuts threaten the agency's "core operations," a recent Treasury watchdog report warns (via The Lever). Within the first seven months of the Trump administration, officials canceled more than 75 percent of taxpayer-facing contracts held by the IRS. That threatens the agency's "core operations," a recent Treasury watchdog report warns, including return processing, customer service, compliance enforcement, and telephone interpreter services. The IRS also lost 17 percent of its staff in 2025, creating work backlogs and skill gaps that could lead to headaches for filers this season. 4) I Watched 6 Hours of DOGE Bro Testimony. Here's What They Had to Say For Themselves and DOGE Bros Had More Fun Burning Down Government Than Testifying About It. Over the course of a six hour long or so deposition, Justin Fox, a former investment banker turned DOGE bro, refused to define what he believes counts as DEI; admitted he used ChatGPT to scan government contracts for terms such as "Black" and "homosexual" but not "white" or "caucasian;" and said that one of the grants he helped slash was "not for the benefit of humankind" before walking that claim back. 5) When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities and New disclosures reveal how DOGE actually worked. Depositions offer insight into what Elon Musk's group was up to. Members describe a club-like atmosphere in which they pushed for grant and contract cancellations across the government with little oversight. BONUS: 6) The broken database that could upend the 2026 election. President Trump and the election conspiracy theorists he surrounds himself with are determined to exclude people from voting in the 2026 election based on one database: the Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE). Why? SAVE is an incomplete and flawed database that has been shown to produce a massive number of false positives, incorrectly identifying American citizens as aliens. Thus, using SAVE to exclude voters buttresses the lie that a significant number of undocumented immigrants vote in elections. *** DOGE on metafilter previously: https://www.metafilter.com/tags/doge
posted by subdee on Apr 14, 2026 at 6:38 PM

---------------------------

Thanks for this post. I started the day by infuriating myself reading the excerpt from Enrich's book at The Handbasket; it's really horrific. The Trump/DOGE folks really had no idea what they were destroying at USAID, and they should go to jail for their ignorant murderous violence.
posted by mediareport at 6:55 PM

---------------------------

Oh I think *someone* knew exactly what they were destroying. Just not the dummies running the operation on the ground.

I think they picked USAID as a target because so much of the budget went to supporting the Ukranian government in their war against Russia. Personally.
posted by subdee at 7:58 PM

---------------------------

they should go to jail hell for their ignorant murderous violence
Fixed that for you...
posted by UhOhChongo! at 8:09 PM

---------------------------

From "Doge bros had more fun burning down the government than testifying about it":

A 26-year-old commerce major used ChatGPT to upturn thousands of people's lives, and he says it was all worthwhile because he proved that the dollars spent "aren't just numbers on a page." The mind boggles.

Of course, the money has to be spent on something, and so NEH went looking for recipients who aren't "DEI." Current projects focus on George Washington, Mark Twain, and Flannery O'Connor — great Americans, but hardly ones who lack for scholarly investigation.

And, in its largest single grant ever, NEH recently awarded $10.4 million to the Tikvah Fund, a conservative Jewish organization with ties to the agency's current leadership, "to combat the normalization of anti-semitism in American society by focusing on the study of Jewish civilization." The outside scholarly council voted not to recommend it, but Michael McDonald, NEH's acting head who cooperated with Cavanaugh and Fox, overruled them.

Clearly the Tikvah Fund grant wouldn't have passed the ChatGPT "DEI" test, but intellectual consistency was never the point of this exercise.
posted by subdee at 8:15 PM

---------------------------

USAID was never pure or perfect, but good work was being done and progress was being made on doing better work. More and more staff both at missions and DC bureau offices were headed in a positive direction, increasingly focusing on local systems approaches (giving more money to local orgs and less to international consultancies), building capacity for actual (and not just performative) monitoring, evaluation, and learning, and listening to *local* experts, both academes and civil-society leaders.

It could have used MASSIVE reform, money could have been saved**, and there were plenty of savior-complex crypto-racist pieces of shit in its ranks, but changes could have been made - even drastic ones! - without burning the whole motherfucker down.

**As a counterpoint to the typical narrative of predatory consultancies sucking at the government teat, consider how much more efficient would be an administration that actually fucking hires enough federal workers to do the work, instead of cutting the footprint of direct hires to crow to their conservative base about how they're draining the swamp while federal agencies then needs must hire consultants at 2x or more the cost of their salaries and benefits because there aren't enough government workers to do the damn work. One where, indeed, people would actually feel the impact of a government shutdown or federal worker strikes with more force, because right now it's contractors who keep the lights on when Congress can't pass a budget or a continuing resolution. GRAH
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 9:14 PM

---------------------------

Thank you for posting this, subdee. International development was my career, and grief is a long, long day. The *avoidable*, the PATENTLY, EASILY AVOIDABLE suffering caused by this administration is sickening, and I hope history sees the burning of medicines and snatching back funding already promised that would have saved lives as much as a crime against humanity as we do the gas chambers.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 9:21 PM

---------------------------

rrrrrrrrrt, my condolences and I hope you're able to land on your feet. My own spouse worked in a support role for USAID and her job (you might as well say "career", given her age she's never getting hired anywhere ever again) was a direct casualty. And I personally have worked with a few USAID FSOs, they are amazing people.

consider how much more efficient would be an administration that actually fucking hires enough federal workers to do the work

As a federal employee myself (who has barely avoided the RIF axe so far), this x1000. Of course it would also require a populace that actually wants a functional government and supports federal workers having stable, reasonably well-paying jobs. Given the hate I saw on display in last year's DOGE thread, even a lot of MeFites don't truly believe this. American distrust and hate run very, very deep unfortunately.
posted by photo guy at 10:36 PM

---------------------------

Always be posting this whenever his name is invoked: Opinion: Elon Musk's legacy is disease, starvation and death

posted by lalochezia at 6:01 AM

---------------------------

> I started the day by infuriating myself reading the excerpt from Enrich's book at The Handbasket; it's really horrific.

I made the mistake of reading it at last night and kept myself up late with fury. How do these people live with themselves?
posted by postcommunism at 6:08 AM

---------------------------

God it's so good that these guys exist and we didn't have to put up with having a woman president!!
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 7:08 AM

---------------------------

a populace that actually wants a functional government and supports federal workers having stable, reasonably well-paying jobs

It's so funny (not ha-ha funny) how all the bros think that computers will replace people. Because you know what? Computers are suddenly a lot worse than they used to be, thanks to enshittification. My Outlook forgets to send me scheduled reminders on a regular basis.
posted by Melismata at 7:32 AM

---------------------------

I want another Nuremberg, but I'll settle for The Hague.
posted by MengerSponge at 8:20 AM

---------------------------

The IRS also lost 17 percent of its staff in 2025, creating work backlogs and skill gaps that could lead to headaches for filers this season.

This season? Shit, I'm still trying to get the IRS to address the errors they made last season!
posted by nickmark at 10:12 AM

---------------------------

For some highlights from the DOGE tapes, Legal Eagle explores how DOGE staff couldn't even define "DEI" before canceling contracts for supposed DEI reasons, let alone who was in charge to authorize their thuggery
posted by lock robster at 11:42 AM

---------------------------

Re: the idea that the public service would be more effective and efficient if they were allowed to hire the number of people actually needed (with which I wholeheartedly agree).

I think Canada may be marginally better disposed toward the public service, but it's a razor-thin margin, especially where I live in Alberta. But even here in a nation where the biggest chunks of public sector employment—health care and education—are considered to be the proper purview of government service, railing, deprecating, and insulting the public sector has almost the same broad appeal as hockey. If you work in the public sector, regardless of your position or department, there's a sneaking suspicion that if you can pay your rent and take a sick day here and there, you're defrauding honest, hard-working taxpayers and robbing the private sector of their God-given right to make a decent profit (subsidized by government in various ways). Seeing that this is the case in Canada, is it the same everywhere? Do all global populations complain about the profligacy of the public sector and its workers?

If there is ever a Nuremberg-style accounting for the disasters of the Trump administration and I'm asked to be part of its judiciary, I would mete out milder punishment to the ignorant and callow youth employed by DOGE and save the harshest penalty allowed by the state and my conscience for Elon Musk.
posted by angiep at 2:39 PM

---------------------------

I have tried several times to write a response, and I just can't find the words to adequately describe how I feel about these fucking savages. :(
posted by Pouteria at 9:36 PM

---------------------------

How much did DOGE staff rely on the promise of pardons? It feels like that has been an enabling factor for misdeeds in other areas.

Fixes: Pardons only possible after a conviction, only authorized by a board that reviews the justification, perhaps only a pardon of jail time and not wage repayment or other financial restitution.
posted by puffinaria at 9:37 PM

---------------------------

perhaps only a pardon of jail time and not wage repayment or other financial restitution.

Or, in the case of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were convicted of seditious conspiracy on Jan 6 by a unanimous jury, they had their sentences commuted but the convictions are still on the books.

Although, Jeannine Pirro has a crazy scheme to undo that.
posted by subdee at 8:52 AM

---------------------------

As far as the money goes, though:

DOJ Agrees To Let Michael Flynn Loot Treasury To The Tune Of $1.25M

This is just the first of many, Senators who were investigated by the Jan 6 committee or had their phone records subpoenad by Jack Smith, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys, and of course Trump himself are all lining up to take their turns looting the treasury.
posted by subdee at 8:57 AM

---------------------------