The Freakout Over 'Big Balls' and DOGE

Plus: NYC trans medicine protest, airplane collision (again), and more...

Mainstream media apoplectic that Trump is doing things he promised: "President [Donald] Trump's administration deepened its pressure campaign on government employees to resign before a Thursday deadline, rattling and angering a civil service steeling itself for a prolonged battle with Elon Musk and his ongoing foray into the federal bureaucracy," reads a New York Times lede on the buyouts. The deadline is today, when federal employees may decide to voluntarily leave and be paid through September 30.

"Trump's gut-it-all plan for D.C.'s 'Deep State,'" reads an Axios headline, noting that "Trump promised during his campaign to root out the 'Deep State'—generally framed as institutional resistance in D.C. that impedes his agenda," and lamenting that "the speed and tactics of Trump's vengeance-fueled cost-cutting efforts have been surprising." A longer, more alarmist Politico feature posits that "the widespread political purges of the early 1950s echo clearly today" and that "seventy years ago, the reasonable pretext of hunting Soviet agents opened the way to a yearslong, paranoid campaign, motivated by outlandish conspiracy theories, that destroyed countless careers but did nothing to improve America's security."

Meanwhile, Wired is attempting to drum up opposition for the team of young and talented engineers Musk has hired to help him cull the federal government computer systems of waste and inefficiency. Note the deference to "experts" here:

NEW: Experts question whether Edward Coristine, a DOGE staffer who has gone by "Big Balls" online, would pass the background check typically required for access to sensitive US government systems. https://t.co/Tc0PEWQ0H1

— WIRED (@WIRED) February 6, 2025

I'll grant that everyone's playing their part perfectly: It's not like these publications were going to welcome the Elon Musk–helmed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), heralding the cuts as some huge accomplishment (though Wired used to seemingly be on the side of engineers). But as Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane told Zach Weissmueller and me yesterday on our show Just Asking Questions, it's not really about the cost-savings right now. Something more symbolic is happening here, where Trump, ever a showman, is bringing everyone's attention to the rampant government waste that we've come to accept as standard.

Trump should do this via the proper mechanisms, and he should respect constitutional limits on his power. So far, he has not done a good job of that. But the gutting of the federal government and cutting it down to size, should not be reflexively opposed; perhaps people should instead feel disrespected when their taxpayer dollars are used to fund diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) workplace initiatives in Serbia (even if it is just a drop in the bucket). But many of these things are third-rail issues for liberals: "Defund NPR," writes Musk in a representative tweet. "It should survive on its own." (Over here at Reason, we've been beating this drum for a while.)

Musk has said publicly in the last few days that he intends to "make rapid safety upgrades" to air traffic control following high-profile aviation disasters. And "Musk's team was also spotted at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where they obtained access to the agency's computer systems to search for programs and staff tied to diversity policies that the Trump administration has vowed to stamp out," per The New York Times.

"In an email to some federal employees Tuesday," reports Politico, "a commissioner at a department overseen by Musk's allies warned of the impending pain if they don't leave. Josh Gruenbaum, who manages the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration, said that 'we won't need staff in certain areas of the country' and 'will be cutting redundant business functions and associated staffing.' He said 'we're also considering how we can utilize AI in our portfolios.'" Though employees who are concerned about whether the federal government will uphold their portion of the buyout deal deserve clarity and assurances, all of the efficiency focus seems perfectly defensible—perhaps even what the federal government should have been focused on all along.

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Scenes from New York: People are protesting NYU Langone hospital for complying with Donald Trump's executive order and ceasing their administration of puberty blockers to children.

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QUICK HITS

• "A majority of the justices tend toward a unitary conception of the executive branch, which treats the president as supreme within his domain, but toward limits on executive power in the interbranch struggle," writes Yuval Levin at National Review. "That's how the same Court, in the same term, can overturn Chevron deference (constraining the power of executive agencies to interpret the meanings of laws) while reinforcing executive privilege (guarding the freedom of the president to exercise his power as chief executive)."
• Trump might not be an isolationist; he instead looks a bit like a sovereigntist, writes Jennifer Mittelstadt.
• "The right wing of Japan Airlines Flight 68 struck the tail of Delta Air Lines Flight 1921 while the planes were taxiing at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport," yesterday per the Federal Aviation Administration. Nobody was injured. This follows last week's major accident in which a commercial plane and a Black Hawk helicopter collided midair, seemingly due to air traffic control failures, killing 67 people in Washington, D.C.
• Trump signed an executive order banning transgender men from competing in women's sports; if schools allow this, they risk Title IX investigations and loss of federal funding. I've never competed in team sports, but I spend a lot of free time in male-dominated sports—I surf, skateboard (poorly), and run—and any female athlete of any variety is aware of how high-impact contact with biological males presents a real risk to safety.
• Weissmueller and I did Pirate Wires:

• Bad news:

Bloomberg Economics calculates that tariff uncertainty will cut US industrial production by 1 percent by May 2026: https://t.co/bSIXnXj3UO pic.twitter.com/ZXQSzeE41i

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) February 5, 2025

• Look, I'm not especially sympathetic to federal employees (ahem), but this is a massive problem:

A federal worker sent me audio of a call that HR did today with staff about "deferred resignation" agreements offered by DOGE … I think this is pretty well understood by now but helps confirm what many suspect

The audio goes:

Employee: Lets say I accept the agreement tomorrow…

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) February 5, 2025