I think it's very important to understand that DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, is not primarily interested in efficiency. If it were, it wouldn't have encouraged mass resignations in the civil service, nor is it primarily interested in transparency or accountability or better government. If it were interested in those things, it wouldn't be firing random people. It wouldn't be searching to get control of data for unclear purposes. It wouldn't be dissolving whole departments. What DOGE is interested in is something that I've seen happen in other countries. What it's doing is altering the nature and values of the American federal civil service. What Trump and people around him have been calling for for a long time is a new kind of politics in America and a new kind of government. And now what we see is them carrying out that desire.
—Anne Applebaum, on NPR's Fresh Air, February 19, 2025















