This week marks six months since President Trump introduced Americans to the four words that have helped define his second term, Department of Government Efficiency.

They're working on efficiency, among other things, and they're going to be saving a lot of money and making our country stronger and better, and they'll be coming out with individual reports, but a big one toward the

end. It turned out to be a lot more than reports. With Elon Musk at the helm, Doge has dramatically

shrunk huge parts of the federal government. It effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for

International Development, which provided food and medicine to some of the most vulnerable people around the world.

Musk explained that move in a live stream on X.

It became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms.

Then there was the deferred resignation program through the Office of Personnel Management. That offered some

two million employees paid leave in exchange for quitting. The offer mirrored one Musk sent when he took

over Twitter, down to the email subject line, fork in the road. Some who didn't take the offer

have since been fired. Exactly how many is unclear. In fact, there's a lot we still don't know

about Doja's work. Musk promised transparency. All our actions are maximally transparent. In fact,

I don't think there's been, I don't know the case where an organization has been more transparent

than the Doge organization.

But Doge has offered little evidence to back up its claims of waste and fraud.

Many of the savings it posted on its website have been misleading or just wrong.

And the Trump administration has fired some people whose job it was to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.

Musk announced on an earnings call last month that he'll be spending less time on Doge to focus

on running Tesla.

With a large slug of work necessary to get the Doge team in place and working in the government

to get the financial house and order is mostly done.

But the consequences of his chainsaw approach to the federal government are just beginning.

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