This account of what happened inside the U.S. government in 2025 is based on a year’s worth of messages and interviews with more than 1,200 current and former federal workers. More than 200 also agreed to fill out a Washington Post survey asking about their experiences. Thirty participated in nearly 60 hours of video and phone interviews, with many speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs or their families.
At the National Institutes of Health, Elizabeth Ginexi was sent a list of grants to review for DOGE, along with words to watch for: “inclusion,” “race,” “ethnicity.” It felt unscientific. Had she really earned a Ph.D. to do this? Breaking the rules, she called one grantee from her personal phone and told them to revise their study abstract — removing the words “gender” and “minorities.”
Then DOGE arrived at her building. They were easy to spot: Silent young men in their 20s and 30s, always wearing backpacks.
Social Security started requiring that one of fewer than a dozen people sign off on expenses for all 1,300 field offices. Staff ran out of paper, printer cartridges and phone headsets, even as calls poured in from Americans asking what Trump might be doing to their benefits.
In a Colorado branch of the Forest Service, one man was designated purchaser for the entire office. Anyone who wanted to buy horse fodder or irrigation pipes had to wait until the man returned from weeks-long firefighting trips. The new system meant staff were a week late buying chainsaw fuel, delaying the thinning of flammable forest brush. “In 15 years, I have never seen us so unprepared for fire season,” the local fire management officer told staff at a meeting, according to one worker in attendance.
Rather than eat, the worker rose from his desk and walked until he found somewhere secluded. He knelt in prayer.
“If I am supposed to be here, then I am going to keep doing this,” he told God. “But if it’s time for me to go, please open the doors, so I can go.”
He repeats the prayer almost every day, waiting for a sign.
Lambert here: Many, many incidents of — to be charitable — Stupid like the four above aggregated by WaPo after immense labor. Very little analysis at all; eight (8) mentions of DOGE, some in captions (and no names). Way too much throat-lumpery: You can really see how this article is targeted at the DMV ‘burbs. The deck:
How DOGE and the White House carried out a once-unthinkable transformation of the nation’s sprawling bureaucracy.
A serious case of over-promising.
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