DOGE is spreading. Its chainsaw went to work this week to stop agencies that helped the homeless, recall volunteers to aid after disasters, prepare its plans to whittle the Energy Department, and intimidate a non-profit. But don’t worry, they are also making a fast track for rich people to get legal status in the US so they don’t have to be bothered by all that paperwork. Hopefully, this will cover the bill we now owe El Salvador for housing the “illegal immigrants” we disappeared. Or not. Apparently, even with all this “cost cutting” the government is running up quite a bill in 2025.
DOGE put the entire staff of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness on leave this week. This was a group that coordinated various government agencies with the private sector to address homelessness in the US. Homelessness saw a 12% jump in 2023 and another 16% increase in 2024, so still kind of a problem.
The folks at AmeriCorps were sent packing as well. This was a group that would send volunteers, usually people aged 18 to 26, to help with projects related to disaster relief, education, housing, and development. In exchange, the volunteers had their housing, meals, and health benefits covered while earning some money for educational expenses. Seems like a win-win, but, per the Trump admin, these are states’ problems now. Or at least the ones that voted for him. Arkansas, currently governed by Sarah Huckabee, Trump’s press secretary from his first term, can have their emergency funding. North Carolina has maxed out their tab out.
DOGE has been working with the Department of Energy to pare back its clean energy initiatives, which will cut contracts with companies working on hydrogen, carbon capture, long duration energy storage, and an array of other technologies. Trump is looking to halt those unsightly windmills everyone (just him) complains about so we can put some serious effort back into coal production. And who doesn’t want to live near a coal mine!
Oh, and DOGE is also working to assign staff to non-profit agencies that get money from the federal government. Not government agencies, mind you. They sent staff to the VERA Institute of Justice to inform them of their fate, but backed off when VERA reminded them that DOGE had canceled their government contacts and got very “question-y” over what gave them the legal right to ask at all. VERA has also made sure to report this far and wide to warn other non-profits about what was happening.
Why is DOGE trying to claw their way into every agency that gets federal money? Probably the same reason they want access to all federal agencies. Data, among other things. A whistle blower came forward this week to report some odd findings at the NLRB. When DOGE accessed their data, they made sure to do it in a way that would not allow their actions to be tracked directly. However, a whistle blower said they observed a large amount of data being sent out after DOGE got access and then observed Russian accounts trying to access the database shortly after. Whoever was trying to access the database had correct usernames and logins. The only reason those accounts were denied access was because of location-related blocks.
Nothing to see here folks, but for those that are keeping count, this administration has;
If these people were bad guys in a movie, I would be bored because it’s so cliche.
What would drive a person’s mindset to go after the neediest among us? If you take a closer look at Musk, a disturbing picture emerges. First, Musk is hyper-concerned about the world population collapsing and has started a very weird effort to have as many babies as he possibly can. He is apparently up to 14 kids, that are known, and actively propositioning women to make more. But it's strange to cry about population collapse while actively gutting the programs that help people survive long enough or reproduce or help them with the kids they have.. Unless your goal was never to save everyone– just a select few.
My initial thought when Elon threw that “sieg heil” was he was trolling like a true internet fanboy, but what if there is something more to that gesture? What if, instead of a troll, it was more of a Freudian slip? The man has it in his genes. While his dad has gotten a lot of attention from various media, this is about his mom’s side. His grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, was deeply involved in the Technocracy movement that ran through the 1930’s, which much like today’s movement, thinks the government should be run by technical experts. Oh, and he may have thought Hitler was awesome. He definitely thought the apartheid movement in South Africa was great. And let’s not forget – this region of South Africa was a haven for Nazi sympathizers after WWII.
I’m sorry, but Nazi gestures, apartheid past, an advocacy for the Technocracy movement trying to take over today mixed with fervent baby making while pulling the rug from programs that help the “lesser” people–there might be some causation in this correlation. Why work to build up a workforce of people when we have AI and automation on the horizon? It seems like the intent is to cull the herd.
If it feels like DOGE is targeting everything that keeps society humane, that’s because it is. This isn’t budget cutting– it’s ideological cleansing. The programs being gutted weren’t broken. They were lifelines– for disaster survivors, the unhoused, the young, the sick, the poor. They dared to serve the people who couldn’t pay for protection.
Maybe the scariest part isn’t that they’re tearing it all down– it’s that so many believe they’ll never need what’s being destroyed. But luck is not permanence. No one is immune to a diagnosis, a layoff, a wildfire, a bad break. The line between “fit” and “forgotten” is thinner than you think. And disaster doesn’t give a damn about your tax bracket or your political alignment.
What kind of future are we building if we only make room for the people who already have everything? When we treat struggle like a character flaw and survival like a privilege?
Start watching closely. Start calling it what it is. Because when the fall comes– and it will– there may not be a safety net to catch you.