Welcome to today’s episode, where we’re diving into Benjamin Wallace-Wells’s report on the rise and fall of DOGE—the Department of Government Efficiency. Elon Musk spent nearly three hundred million dollars to help elect Donald Trump, and as his reward he won a free-floating executive agency to remake Washington. “Elon goes on these destiny quests,” a prominent conservative told Wallace-Wells, “and then a lot of the government is on a destiny quest.” Musk’s team of techies demanded unprecedented access, and he disparaged members of Congress as “N.P.C.’s—non-player characters.” Mid-level bureaucrats were left scrambling to decide how much power this new agency really had. But after a spectacular online snit between the President and the world’s richest man, DOGE has slipped into a zombie state. Six months in, the big question remains: Did it work?
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