DOGE and Consequences

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s been hard to miss the ongoing debacle that is President Trump’s DOGE. In between storming government and quasi-governmental agencies , firing entire staffs and slashing through both specific departments and the Federal workforce as a whole, including specialized and highly-technical centers like the NOAA Radar Operations Center in ruby-red Norman, Oklahoma. I suppose that having a federally-operated center to research weather radars and repair ones deployed in the field by NOAA and States is antithetical to the Federal government’s service to the people? Still, DOGE is an initiative being undertaken by the duly-elected President of the United States, enabled by his Republican political allies (who won their elections), and is at least technically partially within the remit of the executive branch (even though the implementation of DOGE-induced changes is stacking up a hefty pile of court cases and shredding established civil-service procedures and laws). Firing tens of thousands of employees at a time, cancelling leases and divesting infrastructure, and rendering basic work tasks very difficult, if not impossible is just another extension of Russ Vought’s dream- to break the Federal government.

This isn’t a post to criticize DOGE or Elon Musk, though. It is simply a recognition that actions have consequences, and the actions being undertaken right now are going to manifest in some deeply unpleasant ones for Americans in general, Republicans in particular and President Trump specifically.

First, let’s talk about money. Obviously, there’s a massive spending problem here in America, and although nuking the entire federal workforce and all foreign aid still wouldn’t solve it, there are undoubtedly programs, bureaus and projects and jobs associated with them that don’t serve a purpose for the American people (looking real hard at USAID) and/or that don’t meet Administration priorities and can be cut. To some extent, this churn happens with every administration, albeit not to the extent of the Trump cuts. Cutting these out of the budget is a tiny tiny step in the right direction- but who is determining what is worth spending money on? Slicing out something like $32,000 for a transgender Peruvian comic book is a pretty easy decision; that does nothing to further American interests and wastes what is comparatively a lot of American money on something abjectly useless. $32,000 might not be transformative for a nation, but that’s a month of food for a food bank, or a cardiac monitor, or the functional cost of a surgery for an ailing veteran in a VA hospital, or a lot of other worthy causes. Given a choice, doing something like feeding hungry people is going to be far more popular than wasting money on useless things with nearly every American, and it’s a damned shame that feckless, disconnected leadership from prior administrations of both parties allowed waste and exploitation to occur in the first place. Props where they’re due, Trump is restoring accountability. Likewise, quasi-government agencies like the U.S. Institute For Peace getting shut down doesn’t really bother me or most people- the mission sounds laudable, but was manifestly ineffective in a lot of ways. Still, the tyranny of numbers tells us that we can’t solve trillion-dollar problems by saving billions; and when that punishes millions by removing government services that Americans rely on to some extent or even just enjoy, it’s an expenditure that isn’t necessarily worth it. Trump, Musk and the GOP aren’t even pretending their DOGE cuts are intended to balance the budget; their proposals are literally to simultaneously borrow more money while cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from healthcare and human services that tens of millions of Americans rely on. I guess tax cuts are more important than feeding the elderly? So, we can safely conclude that the primary motivations aren’t financial. And that’s fine. It’s totally OK to have non-fiduciary motivations. In fact, those motivations are why a lot of the government exists- there’s no profit motive in providing a lot of the vital services we depend on.

So, if DOGE isn’t working from a fiscal responsibility, here’s my immediate next question: what is the point? Surely we as Americans are wanting a responsive, affordable, responsible government that meets our collective service expectations, but random DOGE firings guided by the Project 2025 crew and Elon Musk’s online syncophants/DOGE people aren’t exactly a well-laid plan for President Trump and his legendary second term. It’s literally the Underpants Gnome problem.

Namely, if good government is the goal and DOGE is the process, how does President Trump and his Administration navigate the easily-anticipated and inevitable consequences of DOGE-induced changes?

Take that weather center in Norman, for example. Aside from supporting a few hundred upper-middle-class technical jobs for what I assume and almost guarantee is a Trump-friendly demographic, the mission of that radar center is about as non-partisan and non-controversial as possible- to repair and maintain weather radars, to research new radar technologies and applications in weather radars and to train the people who do those things. Highly partisan sentiment, I know, but just maybe, there’s no real good reason to think that the Okies fixing weather radars for NOAA and the FAA are harming the national interest. But DOGE (and the Presidential association with them) happens, so they close. Radar service is disrupted, and storms go missed. No one (except the liberal media) is going to blame Donald Trump for a missed tornado alert, but those are real-world consequences that will end and change lives, but their changes will be be contributing factors that spurn decades of improvements in technology and procedures in favor of senseless chainsaw cuts. And that center? There’s a wealth of institutional knowledge in that workforce, and it’s in Norman because A) local jobs that keep local politicians happy; B) Oklahoma is a ‘weather-active area’ and C) It makes sense for it to be there, being in the middle of the country and all. Losing that workforce is going to be a blow to the Norman community and it’s not for lack of need. And it’s all going to be visibly the fault of Donald J. Trump.

Now, a few hundred fired radar techs and weathermen and Oklahomans aren’t going to be outcome-determinative in an election. They might not even change their votes. But across the government and the nation, the consequences of DOGE are going to be shaping Donald Trump’s legacy and the electoral fates of the GOP congressmen who are enabling DOGE. And as midterms and 2028 approach, sensitivity to those moments is going to get more and more keen, because politicians win races not on good sense and policy and long-term plans but on emotions and sentiments and money raised per quarter. And trying to defend an administration cutting necessary, middle-class, often-patriotic jobs while customary and critical federal roles go unfilled; trash piles up, storms go unreported and scandals boil on the front burner is a heavy lift when the alternative is to rebrand oneself as a common-sense Republican, a centrist or even (depending on sentiments) as a Democrat? Bluntly put, Trump is burning political capital for no actual gain and a lot of loss that only hurts himself. Or, to borrow the famous South Park clip, he’s taking the dumbest possible path to actually implementing the long-lasting changes that he claims to want, and he’s only going to damage his legacy by letting Elon take a chainsaw to the feds, because in 10 years, people aren’t going to remember USAID’s gay comic books, but they will remember how Donald John Trump ruined their 2025 and weather radar and the National Parks Service.

Hilariously though, it ultimately won’t be DJT who owns the consequences. It’ll be the Republican Party, as long as they retain their death lock on supporting him.