DOGE supposedly served "higher purpose" Five allies granted anonymity to discuss DOGE's goals told The Guardian that the point of DOGE was to "fundamentally" reform government by eradicating "taboos" around hiring and firing, "expanding the use of untested technologies, and lowering resistance to boundary-pushing start-ups seeking federal contracts." Now, the federal government can operate more like a company, Musk's allies said.
Early one morning in April, John Weiser checked his email, worried that a colleague at the Division of HIV Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was on the list for another round of firings. That's when he found his own termination notice. Weiser, a 14-year CDC veteran who ran the agency's Medical Monitoring Project, a surveillance system that's the sole source of nationally representative data on people with HIV, had been suffering along with everyone else at the health agency due to Elon Musk's DOGE cuts.
As the Senate closed its doors for the Christmas holiday, lawmakers left town without confirming Sean Plankey to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extending a leadership vacuum at the nation's top cyberdefense office into the new year. The nomination, which will have to be renewed if the White House still wants him in the role, stalled amid a series of procedural hurdles and objections from both Republicans and Democrats.