Government Furiously Trying to Undo Elon Musk's Damage
Federal agencies scrambled to bring back over $220 million worth of contracts after Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency cancelled them, The New York Times reports.
However, of those 44 contracts that were cancelled and eventually reinstated, DOGE is still citing all but one of them as examples of the government spending the group supposedly saved on its website's error-plagued "Wall of Receipts." The White House told the NYT that this is "paperwork lag" that will be fixed.
Clerical errors or not, the "zombie contracts" are a damning sign of the chaos sowed by the billionaire's hasty and sweeping cost-cutting that would seem antithetical to its stated goals of efficiency.
"They should have used a scalpel," Rachel Dinkes of the Knowledge Alliance, an association of education companies that includes one that lost a contract, told the NYT. "But instead they went in with an axe and chopped it all down."
Musk brought the Silicon Valley ethos of "move fast and break things" he uses at his business ventures, like SpaceX, to his cleaning house of the federal government. And this, it seems, resulted in a lot of wasted time and effort.
Some of the contracts DOGE cancelled were required by law, according to the NYT, and some were for skills that the government needed but didn't have. The whiplash was most felt at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which reversed 16 cancelled contracts — the highest of any agency in the NYT's analysis.
Many of the contracts that DOGE cancelled were reinstated almost immediately. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, revived a contract just two and a half hours after Musk's team cancelled it, the paper found. Others were brought back within days.
After losing a contract with the US Department of Agriculture in February, Raquel Romero and her husband gained it back four days later. The USDA told the NYT that it reinstated the contract after discovering that it was "required by statute," but declined to specify which one. Romero believes that a senior lawyer at the agency, who was a supporter of the couple's work, intervened on their behalf.
"All I know is, she retired two weeks later," Romero told the NYT.
The waste doesn't end there. Since the contracts are necessary, it puts the fired contractors in a stronger bargaining position when the government comes crawling back. In the case of the EPA contract, the agency agreed to pay $171,000 more than before the cancellation. In other words, these cuts are costing, not saving, the government money.
A White House spokesperson, however, tried to spin the flurry of reversals as a positive sign that the agencies are complying with Musk's chaotic directions, while also playing down the misleading savings claims on DOGE's website.
"The DOGE Wall of Receipts provides the latest and most accurate information following a thorough assessment, which takes time," White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the NYT. "Updates to the DOGE savings page will continue to be made promptly, and departments and agencies will keep highlighting the massive savings DOGE is achieving."
Harrison also called the over $220 million of zombie contracts "very, very small potatoes" compared to the supposed $165 billion Musk has saved American taxpayers.
If this latest analysis is any indication, however, that multibillion-dollar sum warrants significant skepticism. We're only beginning to see a glimmer of the true fallout from Musk tornadoing through the federal government.
More on DOGE: This DOGE Operative Got a Huge Surprise Once He Was Actually Inside the Government
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San Francisco Chronicle
25 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Alert: Republicans are less enthusiastic about Musk after his feud with Trump, a new AP-NORC poll finds
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are less enthusiastic about Musk after his feud with Trump, a new AP-NORC poll finds.
37 minutes ago
Republican enthusiasm for Musk cools after his feud with Trump, a new poll finds
WASHINGTON -- Tech billionaire Elon Musk has lost some of his luster with Republicans since his messy public falling-out with President Donald Trump last week, a new survey finds. Fewer Republicans view Trump's onetime government efficiency bulldog 'very favorably' compared with April, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Though most Republicans continue to hold a positive view of Musk, their diminished fervor suggests his vocal opposition to Trump's signature spending and tax cut legislation — and Musk's subsequent online political and personal taunts — may have cost him some enthusiasm within the party. 'Some things have happened lately that have changed how I feel about him a little,' said Alabama Republican Katye Long, whose feelings for Musk have cooled to 'somewhat favorable.' 'I liked what he was doing when he was helping. But now I feel like he's kind of hurting,' said the 34-year-old automotive component factory employee and mother of three from Woodstock, Alabama. 'I also don't feel like he matters that much. He's not actually part of the government. He's just a rich guy who pushes his opinions.' Musk's overall popularity hasn't shifted, the poll found, and most of the shift among Democrats and Republicans was between 'very' and 'somewhat' strong opinions. Americans are less likely to view him favorably than his electric vehicle company, Tesla. That said, about half of Americans have a negative opinion of Tesla, highlighting another challenge for Musk when the company has dropped in value and been the target of protests in the U.S. and Europe. About one-third have a favorable view of Tesla, while about 2 in 10 don't know enough to say. Even a subtle shift in the intensity of Republicans' feelings about Musk could be important as the electric car and aerospace mogul weighs a second political act after spending about $200 million in service of Trump's 2024 election effort. After decrying the GOP's massive tax and budget policy bill as 'a disgusting abomination,' Musk wrote on X, his social media platform, 'In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.' The poll suggests the messy feud with Trump may have rubbed some Republicans the wrong way, as the share of Republicans viewing Musk as 'very favorable' has dropped from 38% in April to 26% now. At the same time, antipathy toward Musk among Democrats has waned a little. About two-thirds, 65%, of Democrats have a very negative view of Musk, down slightly from about three-quarters, 74%, in April. Musk's bitter back-and-forth with Trump has business implications, too. Tesla was already struggling with a backlash against Musk's association with Trump. Sales across Europe plunged by half in May, even as growth in the electric car market accelerated. Then the company's shares plunged in value when Musk began sparring publicly with the president. Victoria Brown, of Kansas City, Kansas, rated Tesla 'somewhat unfavorable' because she objects to how Trump is conducting his administration and links the company's owner with the president's agenda. 'I don't favor Trump. So, pretty much the fact that they have been working together means I don't care too much for Tesla,' said Brown, 63, a political independent and an insurance agent. While the intensity of people's feelings about Musk may have changed, their overall opinions have not. About one-third of U.S. adults have a favorable opinion of Musk, compared with about 6 in 10 who hold an unfavorable view, while about 1 in 10 don't know enough to say. That's unchanged from the April poll. The new poll was conducted June 5-9, after Musk left his government role and began attacking Trump's marquee legislative priority. Musk's public clash with Trump began four days after Trump honored Musk effusively during an Oval Office event discharging him from duties as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency. After first tearing down the budget bill, Musk two days later complained he had never seen the language, and he aimed his fire at Trump, suggesting the president didn't sufficiently appreciate the role Musk assumed as the chief benefactor to Trump's reelection effort. 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,' Musk wrote. 'Such ingratitude.' Musk went on to claim without evidence that the federal government was concealing information about Trump's association with infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. 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The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points. ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Atlantic
42 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Aging in America Is About to Get Worse
At the core of every joke about Baby Boomers lies a seed of jealousy. Unlike younger generations, they have largely been able to walk a straightforward path toward prosperity, security, and power. They were born in an era of unprecedented economic growth and stability. College was affordable, and they graduated in a thriving job market. They were the first generation to reap the full benefits of a golden age of medical innovations: birth control, robotic surgery, the mapping of the human genome, effective cancer treatments, Ozempic. But recent policy changes are poised to make life significantly harder for Baby Boomers. 'If you're in your 60s or 70s, what the Trump administration has done means more insecurity for your assets in your 401(k), more insecurity about sources of long-term care, and, for the first time, insecurity about your Social Security benefits,' Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist at the New School, told me. 'It's a triple threat.' 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Seniors with some financial security are more likely to live long enough to contend with the diseases of old age, such as Alzheimer's and dementia. The Trump administration has cut funding for promising research on these diseases. 'Going forward, you'll find less treatments reaching fruition,' Thomas Grabowski, who directs the Memory and Brain Wellness Center at the University of Washington, told me. For now, the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center, where Grabowski works on therapies for Alzheimer's, has stopped bringing in new participants; as time goes on, he said, they'll have to tighten more. (Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, told me in an email that the cuts to research funded by the National Institutes of Health are 'better positioning' the agency 'to deliver on medical breakthroughs that actually improve Americans' health and wellbeing.') Changes at the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center could have dramatic effects on current patients, including Bob Pringle, a 76-year-old who lives in Woodinville, Washington. In April, he started getting infusions of donanemab, an anti-amyloid medication approved by the FDA last year. The drug doesn't cure Alzheimer's; it's designed to slow the disease's progression, though the utility of donanemab and other Alzheimer's drugs remains controversial among experts. Pringle, for one, has found donanemab helpful. 'With the medication, my decline is a gentle slope, rather than a rapid decline,' says Pringle, whose mother died of Alzheimer's and whose sister lives in a memory-care facility. 'You're always hopeful that somebody with a bigger brain than you have is working on a cure, and the medication gives us some time until then,' Bob's wife and caretaker, Tina Pringle, told me. 'But right now, because of the funding cuts, our outlook is grim.' The unknowability of the future has always been a scary part of getting older. The enormous upheaval that the Trump administration has created will only magnify that uncertainty for Boomers. After a historical arc of good fortune, their golden generation has to contend with bad timing. Younger generations, including my own, shouldn't gloat, though: Cuts to Social Security and a halt to medical research could well worsen the experience of aging for generations to come. Younger Americans will likely grow old under challenging conditions too. Unlike the Boomers, we'll have plenty of time to get used to the idea.
