from the where-are-the-legal-consequences dept
First, let’s dispense with the theater: the query of whether or not DOGE “nonetheless exists” as a proper entity utterly misses the purpose. The always-misleadingly-named “Division of Authorities Effectivity” was by no means actually about effectivity. It was Elon Musk’s excuse to achieve entry to the federal authorities’s elementary programs and wreak havoc, Twitter-style—smashing something that acquired in his manner, enriching his allies, and dismissing any penalties with a wave of his hand.
The “headline” from a current Reuters piece is the declare that DOGE has been disbanded eight months earlier than its scheduled demise. Besides that seems to not be true. The White Home later disputed this story:
The spokesperson, in response to written questions, confirmed DOGE nonetheless exists as a brief group inside the U.S. DOGE Service, and that Amy Gleason stays the appearing administrator of USDS.
However, in fact, most of that is simply semantics, simply because the “DOGE” title has all the time been semantics as effectively. The thought was, from the very starting, a smash-and-grab job, during which Elon would get entry to the elemental (historically extremely guarded) programs of the US authorities and wreak havoc, Twitter-style, during which something he and his suck-up compatriots didn’t perceive could be deemed “dangerous” and something that helped enrich him and his mates could be deemed “good,” and any penalties (together with destroying life-saving programs across the globe) could be dismissed with the wave of a hand, and no culpability.
“DOGE” took over a non-temporary group: the beforehand extremely efficient US Digital Companies group, and like a parasite, took over its host by expelling all of those that did good work. It should stay.
And, as Wired rightly notes, the DOGE bros at the moment are totally embedded throughout the federal government.
“That’s completely false,” one USDA supply says of reporting that DOGE has disbanded. “They’re actually burrowed into the companies like ticks.”
Wired’s report has particulars on a bunch of DOGE bros with little-to-no related expertise who’re persevering with the DOGE grift whereas employed all through the federal authorities, detailing the brand new (and continually altering) set of job titles of a bunch of the DOGE crew, nearly all of which they appear wholly unqualified for.
However the larger story could also be now that they’re scattered throughout the forms with out Elon as their defend, a few of these DOGE operatives are beginning to understand they could truly face authorized penalties for the very actual and really critical harm they brought on. A current Politico report famous that the youthful members of the crew are getting genuinely worried about how this ends:
The destiny of their shared endeavor was now in deep jeopardy, and for the youngest members of the DOGE operation the danger appeared private. Musk had not been simply their visionary chief. For them, he was their protector: the person who had a direct line to Trump, who they believed might choose up the cellphone and safe a presidential pardon if the worst got here. With out his presence in Washington, they had been abruptly uncovered.
Because the solar fell on downtown Washington, the displaced dozen joined up with fellow DOGE staffers atop the nine-story GSA constructing, armed with beer, pretzels and La Croix, and ready for one thing akin to a wake. Phrase unfold in group chats on Sign, and by 9 p.m. the rooftop space was stuffed with dozens of staffers, a few of whom had already left DOGE.
Amid the group pictures and toasts, a senior DOGE determine named Donald Park tried to reassure his colleagues that they had been nonetheless “brothers in arms” and that Musk would proceed to guard them, in accordance with three individuals who attended the gathering. Different DOGE leaders had been much less sanguine. “Guys, significantly,” one warned, “get your personal lawyer if you happen to want it. Elon’s nice, however you have to watch your personal again.”
The query of whether or not or not DOGE nonetheless exists utterly misses the purpose. This group of overconfident know-nothings created actual harm not simply to the establishment of the federal authorities, however to many important initiatives across the globe. And they’ll by no means, ever, attempt to take accountability for his or her ignorant smashing of the system.
Elon Musk, least of all. In recent interviews, he’s nonetheless rejecting the claims that the initiatives he gleefully lower resulted in any actual world hurt:
In an interview with entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath on his WTF Is podcast, Musk denied that DOGE’s sweeping cost-cutting efforts and its mandate to target federal “waste” included “stopping important funds to needy folks” in Africa.
“Fraudsters essentially will provide you with a really sympathetic argument. They’re not going to say, ‘Give us the cash for fraud,’” Musk stated. “They’re going to attempt to make these sympathetic-sounding arguments which might be false.
“It’s going to be just like the Save the Child Pandas NGO, which is like, who doesn’t wish to save the newborn pandas? They’re lovely. However then it seems no pandas are being saved on this factor, it’s simply corruption, primarily.
“And also you’re like, ‘Effectively, are you able to ship us an image of the panda?’ They’re like, ‘No.’ OK. Effectively, how do we all know it’s going to the pandas?”
This reply deserves calling out particularly what Musk is doing right here: he’s dismissing packages that distribute HIV medicines, stop malaria deaths, and supply tuberculosis therapy as in the event that they had been all hypothetical panda scams. These aren’t summary NGOs of questionable provenance. These are well-established US authorities packages, that had been run by means of USAID, with many years of documented outcomes, rigorous monitoring, and sure, these Inspectors Normal that Trump systematically fired to clear the best way for DOGE’s rampage.
Musk’s condescending little fable about demanding pictures of pandas could be merely unbearable if he had been truly speaking about pandas. However he’s not. He’s speaking about packages the place we don’t must guess whether or not they work—now we have the info. We all know how many individuals acquired antiretroviral remedy. We all know what number of youngsters had been vaccinated. We all know the mortality charges earlier than and after these interventions. The “image of the panda,” on this case, is 600 thousand extra deaths since these packages had been gutted. There’s your fucking image, Elon.
What’s fairly clear now could be that DOGE did nothing to reduce government inefficiency. If something, it created much greater inefficiency by forcing the federal authorities to attempt to reestablish important packages (and rehire haphazardly fired consultants) in a mad sprint to maintain sure points of the federal government from utterly falling over. And that’s to not point out all the deaths. As Atul Gawande famous within the New Yorker:
We at the moment are witnessing what the historian Richard Rhodes termed “public man-made dying,” which, he noticed, has been maybe essentially the most ignored reason for mortality within the final century. Brooke Nichols, the Boston College epidemiologist and mathematical modeller, has maintained a revered tracker of current impact. The mannequin is conservative, assuming, for instance, that the State Division will totally maintain the programs that remain. As of November fifth, it estimated that U.S.A.I.D.’s dismantling has already brought on the deaths of 600 thousand folks, two-thirds of them youngsters.
The toll is appalling and can proceed to develop. However these losses shall be tougher to see than these of struggle. For one, they unfold slowly. When H.I.V. or tuberculosis goes untested, unprevented, or inadequately handled, months or years can go earlier than an individual dies. The identical is true for deaths from vaccine-preventable sicknesses. One other issue is that the deaths are scattered. Suppose the sudden withdrawal of help raises a rustic’s under-five dying price from three per cent to 4 per cent. That will be a one-third enhance in deaths, however exhausting to understand just by trying round.
The true tragedy right here is that Elon Musk will get to sit down in a podcast studio and spin cute parables about imaginary panda fraud whereas precise youngsters die from illnesses we all know methods to stop. The obscenity of evaluating tuberculosis packages and HIV therapy to a hypothetical panda rip-off is breathtaking, even whether it is completely predictable. That is what occurs whenever you let tech billionaires play authorities effectivity skilled: they’re completely snug with mass dying so long as they will body it as combating “waste.” 600 thousand folks—two-thirds of them youngsters—aren’t hypothetical. They’re not pandas. They’re useless.
So no, the query isn’t whether or not DOGE “nonetheless exists” as an organizational chart entry. The query is whether or not anybody shall be held accountable for 600 thousand deaths and the systematic dismantling of packages that took many years to construct. These DOGE members nervously telling one another to “get your personal lawyer”? They need to be.
Filed Underneath: consequences, death, doge, elon musk, usaid
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