It's a DOGE eat dog world

The old bromide goes: If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog. In today's Washington, the joke would be to buy a DOGE. Although more accurately, it would say, "If you want to buy a DOGE in DC, you must first buy a president.”

What’s the going price for a DOGE in Washington these days? Around $288 million, the amount Elon Musk gave to Trump's presidential campaign.

Like any new pet owner, Musk can’t stop talking about it and his training it to sniff out waste, fraud, and abuse within the executive branch of government. Listening to Musk, you'd think his pet had a discerning sniffer – able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Although an out-for-bloodhound born in the kennels of Mar-a-Lago, Musk’s DOGE isn't bred for discernment but deceit. Like its masters, it barks out lies and propaganda. DOGE claims it’s already saved taxpayers $55 billion. Yet, a review of the examples of savings posted on its online wall of receipts by New York Time reporters found the records riddled with accounting errors and little understanding of government contracting.

According to their review: “Some contracts the group claims credit for were double- or triple-counted. Another initially contained an error that inflated the totals by billions of dollars. In at least one instance, the group claimed an entire contract had been canceled when only part of the work had been halted.”

Other errors identified by Politico include contracts that haven’t been awarded, instances of listing the same contract multiple times, and agreements that seemingly haven’t been canceled, only stripped of offending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) language. In one case, the claim of $8 billion in savings was for an $8 million contract. As with many things Trump and Musk, errors and discrepancies were denied, and accusers vilified.

Government contracting isn’t the only thing DOGE has gotten wrong. As reported: “Three U.S. officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off.” According to the AP, the job of some of those workers involved “reassembling warheads, one of the most sensitive jobs across the nuclear weapons enterprise, with the highest levels of clearance.”

Although all but 28 of the 350 layoffs were ultimately rescinded, the point is that Musk and his DOGE-team mushers don't understand what they're doing and are too willing to lie about it.

Even in the case of the 350, the “official” Department of Energy position was that only “50 National Nuclear Security Administration staffers were let go, calling them ‘probationary employees’ who ‘held primarily administrative and clerical roles.’” It was demonstratively false.

A deputy division director at NNSA posted to LinkedIn that:

“Cutting the federal workforce responsible for these functions may be seen as reckless at best and adversarily opportunistic at worst.”

I doubt there’s anyone in Washington who could honestly say there aren’t problems with federal programming and a less-than-efficient bureaucracy. The problem with DOGE (and much of the intended actions of Trump’s newly elected agency leaders) is their lack of knowledge and discrimination in how they’re going about “reform.”

A perfect “tossing out babies with the bathwater” example is the wholesale firing of 220,000 government employees who haven’t finished their mandatory year (or two) probationary period – whether or not their work reviews were excellent or abysmal. Indiscriminate actions end up firing nuclear inspectors and will eventually be seen as massive government inefficiency. More to the point it will cost a lot in the long run to make things right.

The extra-government group headed by Musk does things by algorithm and keywords. It follows in the footsteps of Senate Republicans like Ted Cruz (R-TX). Cruz — the chair of the influential Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation – one of several Senate committees with power over energy and environmental programs.

The Texas senator, like the president, has a massive problem with DEI, arguing that many recent federal projects have been driven by “neo-Marxist class-warfare propaganda” and far-left ideologies.” To root out such programs, Republican Senate committee staff sought to identify National Science Foundation (NSF) projects that fit the senator's description. It surveyed 32,000 projects. (The committee report is titled “Division. Extremism. Ideology: How the Biden-Harris NSF Politicized Science”)

The staff used a method similar to what I use when initially reviewing massive pages of legislation for their impact on energy and environment programs – a keyword search. As reported by NOTUS, flag words included “gender,” “ethnicity” and “sexuality,” along with scores of associated terms — “female,” “women,” “interracial,” “heterosexual,” “LGBTQ,” as well as “Black,” “white,” “Hispanic,” or “Indigenous.”

Other key terms and phrases of the 699 used included diversity, equity, and inclusion. In the case of energy and the environment, justice, climate change, climate research, and clean energy made the list. Without offering a long list of problematic findings, here’s an example of what could happen.

As reported by NOTUS: “The largest grant on the list awarded more than $29 million to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which contributes to the vast computing resources needed for artificial intelligence research.” It’s a key support to the AI work being done nationally by a lot of parties.

No one seems to know for sure why the project was flagged. According to the project director, a possible reason is: "One of the project's aims is to provide computing power to states that have historically received less funding for research and development — including many Republican-leaning states — as well as minority-serving institutions. The proposal also states that a lack of diversity contributes to ‘embedded biases and other systemic inequalities found in AI systems today.’” 

Take these words out of context; the project appears to be driven by Cruz’ definition of a Woke-Marxist ideology. Having used keywords myself, I know they don't always catch things or the right things, and when you take words out of context, what you portray isn't always the truth – whether the mistake is honest or not. Critical research on biodiversity could easily be tainted by the charge of woke – whether the work is vital to the environment or not.

It’s not just projects using words like science and justice that are troubled by such sweeps. A children’s book by actress Julianne Moore about a little girl who hates her freckles has been targeted by the Trump administration for banning in 160 Pentagon schools. Why on the list? The review was ordered to root out books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics." (Note: no final decision has been made.)

The Musk-Trump putsch of the federal agencies – including ones like the NSF and USAID, which are supposed to be independent – includes that many of these reviews and firings are being announced on X, Musk’s platform, rather than government channels. Couple what DOGE is doing with murmurings from the president and others about ignoring the courts if they disagree and members of Congress who see no evil, and independence within government is gone.

The US constitutional system of checks and balances depends upon the collective actions of independent actors. Gather all the power into the office of the presidency, and you will have a constitutional crisis. It's no more complicated than that.

Reforms born out of deceit and ignorance won't lead to government efficiency. Who's to say that tomorrow Musk’s DOGE won’t put “president,” “trump,” "top," and "dog" on the flagged word list?

Sooner or later, either Trump’s or Musk’s egos won’t be able to fill the same space. Will it then be a "DOGE eat (top) dog” world or the other way round?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…..

This article is also published on the author's blog. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.