Why Washington D.C. Will Never Recover From the DOGE Revolution

Trump and Musk are the duo needed to give the federal government the punishing enema it has sorely deserved.

When Elon Musk initially touted his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the 2024 presidential campaign as a solution to chronic problems plaguing the federal government, most people laughed it off as mere bluster.

It was considered little more than a meme, something that Musk was pushing to stir people up on X, a gimmick to promote a silly cryptocurrency under the same name.

Less than a month and a half into Trump’s presidency, nobody is laughing anymore as it is well understood how Musk was deathly serious about his DOGE project, and President Trump is giving Musk carte blanche to attack any aspect of the federal government that he deems necessary to achieve efficiency.

The rise of DOGE has sent the establishment into a panic as seemingly no sacred cows remain. DOGE is moving at such a frenetic pace that the federal government does not know how to respond. It is a multi-front war that the Washington D.C. machine never imagined it could possibly be in, and the collapse of the administrative state seems imminent as a result.

Much of what is being found and exposed by Musk’s DOGE task force is not too much different from what is revealed in Sen. Rand Paul’s annual government waste report and subsequent Festivus grievance session, such as $10 million for voluntary medical male circumcision in Mozambique, $39 million to promote “fiscal federalism” and “biodiversity conversation” in Nepal, $74 million to promote “inclusive justice” in Colombia, $8 million to “reduce stigma, discrimination, and violence against LGBTQI+ communities” in the nation of Lesotho, and $3.5 million for “larval fish monitoring” classified by the Bureau of Reclamation as “non-essential.”

These are expenditures that would not cause anyone who is knowledgeable about the extent of federal waste to bat an eyelash.

But with so much fanfare and the full weight of the executive branch behind them, DOGE poses an existential threat to the Washington D.C. status quo in a way that Sen. Paul and other voices in the wilderness never could. It is also opening eyes to the nature of federal leviathan to the layman who may have never seriously considered what the federal government is doing.

The media can parade out a conga line of whiny bureaucrats to give their sob stories about losing their six-figure salaries, but they cannot refute the fraud and abuse claims made by DOGE. As millions of Americans are able to peer into details of the spending, the feds are put on the defensive and have no answer other than to admit they have bilked the American people for generations.

After going after some of the lower-hanging fruit like USAID and the Department of Education, DOGE is moving on to bigger targets such as the IRS and Federal Reserve. IRS offices are already shuttering because of the reduction in the federal workforce, making it much more difficult to conduct their auditing process with tax time looming ahead to terrify the American public into ponying up to their federal oppressors.

Musk has floated the name of Ron Paul, the most outspoken critic of America’s central bank, as an individual who should be involved in the auditing process of the Federal Reserve or even serve as Chairman of the Fed. Musk has proven repeatedly that he is deadly serious when he makes these proclamations.

What has changed in Washington D.C. because of the rise of DOGE is the high-level profile of the fight against federal waste and corruption, enabled by President Trump’s full-fledged support of the project. Before it would be overly academic libertarians and stodgy fiscal conservatives who complained about federal waste, taking an admirably principled stance but ultimately lacking the charisma and public profile to be able to do anything to stop it.

With the tag team of Trump and Musk in power, cutting federal waste is on the forefront of the national discussion, the federal bureaucracy is in a panic, and the prayers of conservatives and libertarians are being answered. Where are the people who said Trump wouldn’t be able to effectively govern hiding at now?

Musk showed during the 2024 election that his aggressive, hands-on approach to the corporate world translates well to the political realm.

Musk is willing to shake up the status quo and take considerable flak to reshape the U.S. government under his vision, following the renegade principles that have branded Musk a business savant. Musk is willing to spend hundreds of millions of his own largesse in a calculated fashion to enact political change.

If Musk is able to successfully fund primary challengers to the DOGE agenda through his America PAC, as he has threatened to do, that may be the final domino to fall on Washington D.C. corrupt. The political class will never learn through any measures but pain and fear, and DOGE is offering plenty of both heading into 2026. Trump and Musk are the duo needed to give the federal government the punishing enema it has sorely deserved.