Reign of Error

In a short few weeks, the ill-conceived, poorly staffed DOGE effort has resulted in a myriad of embarrassing and costly errors for the Trump Administration. In fact, the sheer number of times Elon has been forced to say "Oops" is staggering, but not surprising given DOGE's dumb ideas. At this point, it appears the federal government is expending more resources cleaning up DOGE s**t than DOGE is saving taxpayers. Here are just a few of DOGE's major missteps:

You're Fired! No, Wait, Please Come Back! In agency after agency, DOGE-related terminations have been reversed. In many instances, these reversals have been sparked by a belated realization these federal employees perform critical roles, with the government issuing pleas for employees to "please come back". In other instances, the courts have found the terminations were illegal and employees must be reinstated. In a recent article, the Huffington Post offered a clear and concise summary of the many instances when DOGE terminations have been reversed (Bendery, 2025).  Termination retractions have occurred at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Agriculture, in part due to a need to address the nation's bird flu epidemic. National Nuclear Safety Administration staff were recalled due to their critical responsibility for national security.  Food and Drug Administration responsible for guaranteeing food and medical device safety were also identified as critical after the fact as were Department of Veterans Affairs staff operating the Veterans Crisis Line, Bonneville Power Administration staff providing power to the Northwest US, National Park Service staff ensuring public access to national park services, National Science Foundation staff studying debilitating diseases, Environmental Protection Agency ensuring clean air and drinking water, and World Trade Center Health Program staff aiding the victims of 9-11. DOGE-related terminations recognized as illegal by members of the judiciary have been identified at the US Department of Agriculture, Department of Veterans Affairs, National Park Service, Small Business Administration, Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Defense, and the Fish and Wildlife Service, National Labor Relations Board, and Office of General Counsel among others (Hsu, 2025). As Sherzod Odilov noted in Forbes (2025) "Indiscriminate cuts paint every employee, team and department with the same brush." As he wisely concluded, critical roles are eliminated and institutional knowledge is lost via this haphazard approach. 

DOGE Can't Read Spreadsheets.  In the first widely recognized DOGE error, DOGE repeatedly claimed USAID provided $50 million in taxpayer dollars to fund condoms for residents in Gaza. However, no condoms, or any other forms of contraception, were shipped by USAID to Gaza in fiscal years 2007-2023 (Dale, 2025). Elon Musk eventually admitted this claim was not accurate (Reuters Fact Check, 2025). Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk wryly summed up the issue: "What's going on here is NOT a billion condoms for Gaza. What's going on is that the bros at DOGE apparently can't read govt spreadsheets." (Golden, 2025). DOGE should stop trying to impress the American people with "shock and awe" examples of inappropriate government spending, they are just embarrassing themselves.

DOGE Accepts Data at Face Value without Confirmation.  In reviewing data, DOGE quickly jumps to conclusions without taking the critical step of confirming the data. As an example, DOGE has repeatedly suggested they have identified massive fraud in the social security administration, discussing the presence of 150 year-old-individuals in the database. However, DOGE does not take the necessary steps to verify data. Rather than thoroughly investigating an issue, they assume fraud.  Real auditors conduct a comprehensive assessment, considering whether there may be keying errors, missing data, bugs in the computer system, etc. accounting for the findings. In this instance, DOGE needs to reconcile the social security database with the payment system at the Treasury Department.  Only then will they know if fraud is involved. Bottom line, if fraud is occurring at this scale, why are we not seeing sweeping arrests of individuals fraudulently receiving social security checks?

DOGE Can't Do Math or Accounting.  Reuters conducted a particularly damning review of the DOGE website's flimsy "Wall of Receipts" (Heath & Reid, 2025). On this website, DOGE took credit for eliminating contracts which were ended years ago and inflated the value of eliminated items. The initial list of canceled contracts on the DOGE website totaled $16 billion in savings, but was reduced to $8.9 billion in savings within two weeks. In one often cited example, DOGE claimed a canceled contract saved taxpayers $8 billion, when it fact it only saved $8 million. In another instance, a $655 million contract was triple counted, reporting savings of $1.8 billion. By the end of the first week in March, DOGE deleted its five biggest alleged cost savings from its website. More than 1,000 entries to the DOGE website were either removed or modified and by DOGE's own admission, 941 of the 2,300 contracts it cut saved taxpayers no money at all. 

DOGE Doesn't Understand Computer Programs Written Before They Were Born.  Elon Musk claims Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" and the Social Security Administration (SSA) is riddled with fraud. Specifically, he has suggested social security benefits are regularly disseminated to individuals 150-years-old, and older, and President Trump repeated these claims in an extended monologue before Congress and the American people. However, the dated programming language (COBOL) accounts for this data, not widespread fraud (Gilbert, 2025). When a birthdate is missing in COBOL, the system defaults to a reference point, i.e., inserts an arbitrary date, which inadvertently shows an age of 150, or more for the individual. If DOGE took the time to research this issue just a tiny bit, they would have found the SSA was already well of aware of this issue. In 2023, the Inspector General found 98% of individuals age 100 or older in the database are not receiving benefits (Gilbert, 2025).  Furthermore, the SSA automatically stops benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115, pending further review. 

DOGE Puts a "For Sale" Sign on Critical Federal Properties.  On March 4, at the urging of DOGE, the General Services Administration (GSA) published a list of 440 federal properties to sell, including the FBI Headquarters and the Department of Justice's main building in Washington DC deeming them "not core to government operations" (Colvin et al., 2025). Hours later, the list was reduced to 320, and the next day the list was removed in its entirety and the GSA website's "Non-Core Property List" was updated to read "Coming Soon" (GSA, 2025). 

DOGE Doesn't Always Fix Its Mistakes. In a February 26, 2025 press conference in the Oval Office, Elon Musk noted the following: "We will make mistakes. We won't be perfect. When we make mistakes, we'll fix it very quickly. So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention." (Emanuel, 2025). Not so fast Elon. Multiple experts quickly spoke out, noting this aid has not been fully restored. The head of Refugees International, Jeremy Konyndyk, called Musk's reassurance that things have been restored "total garbage." Reinstating aid, grants, and employees is not an easy fix, as the government is quickly learning.