The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Elon Musk-led effort early in Donald Trump’s second term to avoid “waste” in government spending, does not appear to have succeeded in any of its objectives, aside from overstepping its authority and killing valuable programs such as USAID and valuable medical research.
Also, a new report said, DOGE did other bad things that are just being discovered.
According to The New Republic, which cited reporting by The Washington Post, inspectors general in various agencies have not been as independent during the second Trump Administration as they were in the past. An example of that has been something that happened with DOGE.
Trump Team Changed a Report to Hide How Bad DOGE Made Things https://t.co/xtk7j9hjuX
— The New Republic (@newrepublic) March 20, 2026
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“The inspector general’s office has largely avoided digging into the work of the U.S. DOGE Service at the agency, but it recently told Congress it is investigating allegations that a DOGE member has improper access to sensitive Social Security data. Before that, it had told senators last year that it would not evaluate the agency’s decision to classify thousands of living immigrants as dead,” the Post story said.
Exclusive: The Social Security Administration’s internal watchdog is investigating allegations that a former DOGE engineer took sensitive data on a thumb drive and offered it to his current employer. https://t.co/n2p5XSwEWF
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 10, 2026
“In December, the Social Security IG released an audit of the agency’s phone metrics, which found that the wait time for someone to talk to a representative had dropped to single-digit minutes. Agency leaders celebrated the report as a vindication of their claims that they had improved customer service. Bisignano later told staffers he had thought the inspector general had wasted taxpayer dollars even looking into the statistics, according to a recording of his remarks.”
Something untoward may have happened in connection with that report.
“However, an unpublished draft of the report reviewed by The Post showed that the inspector general had planned to report another metric — called the “total wait time” — to measure the overall time it takes for callers to be connected with an SSA employee. According to that draft report, in 2025 total wait time averaged 46 minutes to over two hours. That information was deleted from the draft after the agency reviewed it before publication, according to the document’s revision history.”
“The tinkering gives what is meant to be an independent audit a whiff of propaganda. And it’s just one example of what has been a focused assault on inspectors general—who are meant to be bipartisan overseers of government agencies—by the Trump administration,” the New Republic said.
