DOGE failed to create efficiency efficiently
At the end of Trump's first year in office, roughly 300k fewer public servants held office.
In the name of efficiency, it indeed is the case that government is ripe for a crackdown. Areas of enormous waste and inefficiency exist. The main problem with a crackdown is purely the logistical effort needed to understand well enough what is inefficient, and what is needed to make it more efficient.
So what happens if you don't? When Elon was appointed head of government efficiency, employees received an email titled 'Fork in the Road.' It offered 8 months pay to anyone who resigned, and no assurances of job security to those who stayed. A follow-up email encouraged them to 'move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.'
This is not a clever solution. Wholesale exodus is not efficient. Those with the most marketable, senior skills are the best slated to leave, and receive the greatest remuneration for doing so. You should seek to retain your experts and top practitioners.
Such a program should also take care not to lessen the dignity of government work. The subtext of such an email is 'your efforts are not respected, please leave', a message that directly attacks the bargain that makes government work attractive: lower pay offset by uncommon job security and a sense of professional mission. It implies (and has pre-empted), a reduction in job security that itself would cause many to leave. Find a job somewhere elsewhere rather than be fired out of the blue. Lowering of morale is tactless and should be avoided for the sake of efficiency.
The toll of the purge will not be immediate. It is the flash flood that precedes desertification. As the delicate ecosystem of government erodes, crises that lay bare its indispensability will multiply. When The US Fish and Wildlife Service loses its biologists that track and conserve bat populations, they can no longer address circumstances leading to their extinction. As bat populations dwindle, insect populations soar. Farmers will compensate through increased use of pesticides, which are powerful endocrine disruptors.
Here are some notable departures:
Eric Green, 1996-2025
Eric Green was the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. He has been involved in the Human Genome Project since the start, and became its leader shortly after its (version 1) conclusion. Under his leadership, the National Human Genome Research Institute revolutionised medicine and a new understanding of cancer. Genomics could now be used to analyse a tumour and suggest a treatment that might curtail its growth. On March 17, 2025, the Trump administration forced Green from his job, the first of 5 NIH-institute directors it removed. A Health and Human services official told The Atlantic that 'under a new administration, we have the right to remove individuals who do not align with the agency's priorities.'
Liz Oyer, 2022-2025
As a Pardon Attorney, Liz Oyer's job was to go to prisons and communicate with inmates how they could apply for a presidential Pardon. This work attempts to ensure that the country's ultimate extension of grace would not be reserved for donors and the powerful. The Trump Administration asked her to assemble a list of convicts whose criminal history prevented them from owning firearms, so that the attorney general could restore that right. An associate deputy general instructed her to add the actor Mel Gibson, who had a domestic-violence conviction, to the list. Because he hadn't undergone a background check, as everyone else she'd recommended had, Oyer refused. She was fired on March 7. This version of events is disputed by the Trump Administration, of which Todd Blanche said her allegations were 'a shameful distraction from our mission to prosecute violent crime, enforce our nation's immigration laws, and make America safe again.'
Bree Fram, 2021-2025
Working with the military, Bree tested new technologies to protect convoys from IEDs. This assignment lead to her specialty: managing teams that built novel systems (such as tools that could be used to take over an attacking drone). When Space Force was created, Bree drafted the blueprint for acquiring technologies of the future and ensuring that new initiatives didn't get smothered in bureaucracy. Bree had one biographical fact against her: she is transgender. Trump barred from service anyone who did not identify with their birth gender upon taking office.
Merici Vinton, 2023-2025
Working in the IRS to develop a free website to allow Americans to file taxes. This process is actively lobbied against by tax software companies. With the arrival of DOGE, the platform was scrapped and she resigned.
What I am attempting to capture with these examples is the scale of destruction. These are 4 examples. A tiny tiny sample of the 300k lay-offs and resignations.
Unfortunately DOGE is a political exercise used to inform cronyist tactics. Promulgating acts that are unethical (Liz Oyer), purely and undressedly political (Bree Fram), a direct attack upon the prestige and grandeur of the institution itself (Eric Green), or actively against the interests of millions of Americans (Merici Vinton). These firings and resignations are largely to the benefit of no one. And there are so many more.