Well, Phase One of the Musk Plutocracy is apparently at an end. Musk has put down the chainsaw, although I have no confidence that the damage that was wrought by it will be easily, or ever, undone. He claims to have 'saved' the Government $160 billion, far short of the ridiculously ambitious goal of saving two trillion dollars. And even that figure has to be adjusted for the immense costs of rectifying stupid DOGE decisions made by 20-something Tesla interns combing through protected data. Musk, meanwhile, is facing the fact that Tesla might be on a death spiral, excacerbated by his association with the politics that Tesla buyers hate, the immense flop of the Cybertruck, and the huge threat of Chinese manufacturing.

The net result has been the disbanding, disabling and destruction of many valuable agencies, services, careers, and departments, across many sectors of Government, affecting science, climate, education, human rights, foreign aid... the list goes on.

Here's a partial list of DOGE/MAGA stuffups, courtesy Motherjones.com:

• “Accidentally cancelled,” in Musk’s words, funding for “Ebola prevention.”
• Sent Harvard an “unauthorized” list of demands, which led the nation’s wealthiest university to stop negotiating with the administration and fight back in the courts.
• Rescinded job offers for the Veterans Crisis Line, “due to an administrative error.”
• Fired Health and Human Services employees that, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “should not have been cut.”
• Accidentally fired, and tried to rehire, employees at the National Animal Health Laboratory Network who were working on the administration’s response to bird flu.
• Fired, and scrambled to rehire, people responsible for maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
• Fired, and then un-fired, workers at the Environmental Protection Agency.
• Fired, and then rehired, people responsible for ensuring the safety of medical devices.
• Fired workers at the Small Business Administration, then un-fired them, and then fired them again.
• Accidentally fired people who had already taken a buyout offer.
• Tried to fire 22 US attorneys, but sent the termination emails to the wrong addresses.
• “Mistakenly” gave the “normalize Indian hate” guy the power to rewrite Treasury payment systems.
• Accidentally published classified information about the National Reconnaissance Office.
• Shared an unclassified list of new CIA employees via email.
• Tried to sell a government complex that includes a secret CIA facility.
• Inadvertently put both the Justice Department and the FBI headquarters up for sale.
• Accidentally made Brian Driscoll (aka “Drizz”) acting director of the FBI and then just went with it rather than acknowledge the mixup.
• Accidentally revealed living peoples’ Social Security numbers as part of their big dump of JFK assassination files, after Trump ordered the documents released with 24 hours notice.
• Accidentally cut off the ability of people in Maine to get Social Security numbers for their newborns because, according to the acting Social Security administrator, “it looked like a strange contract.”
• Accidentally made it possible for anyone to update the Doge.gov homepage, which resulted in the words “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN” staying up on the site for 12 hours.
• Claimed $8 billion in savings on an $8 million contract.
• Completely invented a non-existent $50 million program to supply condoms to Gaza.
• Hired a new IRS chief—on Tax Day—without telling the Treasury Secretary, leading to the new IRS chief being replaced with yet another new IRS chief three days later.
• Paid $2 billion because the acting solicitor general appealed the wrong court ruling.
• Submitted an internal legal brief saying that their congestion pricing case against New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is bad, as an unsealed filing in their congestion pricing case.
• Added Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to an emoji-riddled group chat about war plans in Yemen.
• “Accidentally” terminated and then reinstated environmental grants in Michigan.
• Cut off funding to food programs “that were not meant to be cut.”
• Announced an investigation into a non-existent medical school.
• “Mistakenly” removed Jackie Robinson and Japanese-American soldiers from the Department of Defense website.
• Imposed tariffs on an island of penguins.
• Made tariffs 4 times too high because of an incorrect math equation.
• Broke, for 10 hours, the mechanism for actually collecting tariffs.
• Accidentally told an immigration attorney from Massachusetts, who is a US citizen, she had to leave the country.
• Accidentally told Ukrainian refugees they had to leave the country.
• Accidentally detained US citizens in immigration sweeps.
• Deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”
• Accidentally pronounced 82-year-old Ned Johnson of Seattle dead.

So I was just listening to Fareed Zakaria declare DOGE ‘an abject failure’. Of the $165b savings it claims to have made, media analysis indicates a figure nearer to $65b. (I don’t know if that takes into account repairing the damage accidentally inflicted by the chainsaw.) Musk has practically dropped from view in Washington, presumably to rescue Tesla from its death dive, and DOGE programs have been taken over by Dept of Finance.

Also, Bill Gates has come out with blistering criticisms of DOGE, saying that the richest man in the world has destroyed programs (which Gates as head of Gates Foundation knows backwards) which could lead to literally millions of lives lost. Musk has maintained a sullen silence, although some of the MAGA minions have been trying to find insalubrious rumours to spread about Gates, who has said he plans to sink his entire vast wealth into global health and economic initiatives. The contrast between the two could not be clearer, though. Bill Gates may not be a saint, but he’s at least a good guy.

What did they accomplish anyway?

New Social Security Data Reveals Musk, DOGE Lied in Claims of Social Security Fraud
^{— Natalie Alms (Elizabeth Warren) · US Senate · May 15, 2025}
DOGE’s Fraud Tracker at Social Security Turns Into a Massive Self-Own
^{— Josh Fiallo · The Daily Beast · May 16, 2025}

Shouldn't they hit the White House next?