GRIEVANCE XXIV ◆ CHECKS ON POWER
He has entrusted the restructuring of public institutions to a private billionaire’s project whose savings claims resisted scrutiny.
THE RECORD SHOWS
Elon Musk’s DOGE operation gained exceptional access across federal agencies, accelerated workforce reductions, and published savings figures Reuters found riddled with errors.
The White House presented DOGE as an efficiency initiative to reduce waste and spending. Reuters found inflated, duplicate, or nonexistent savings on its public website, while the initiative helped dismiss workers and cancel contracts. The federal civilian workforce subsequently shrank substantially, though reductions reflected a combination of firings, retirements, resignations, and buyouts, not DOGE firings alone.
A DOCUMENTED SEQUENCE
3 MILESTONES- February–March 2025DOGE published lists of claimed contract savings; Reuters identified major errors, deletions, and double-counting.
- November 2025The personnel office predicted that more than 300,000 workers would leave the federal workforce that year.
- March 2026Reuters calculated a roughly 386,826-worker decline over the first year, encompassing several kinds of departure.