DOGE vs. Deep State

Plus: A listener asks the editors if there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of freedom in the United States.

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DOGE vs. Deep State

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Peter Suderman, Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and special guest Christian Britschgi assess the first steps taken by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut government spending and slash federal agencies.

 

01:52—DOGE vs. the Deep State

39:50—Weekly listener question

46:50—Lightning round: Gaza takeover, RFK Jr. confirmation, President Donald Trump sues CBS

55:28—This week's cultural recommendations

 

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Will Elon Musk Cut as Much Government as Al Gore Did?" by Joe Lancaster

"5 of the Worst USAID Scandals in History," by Matthew Petti

"Has DOGE Already Lost Its Way?" by Eric Boehm

"John Cochrane: How Will DOGE 'Disrupt' the Government?" by Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe

"USAID Paying for Politico Is a Nontroversy," by Robby Soave

"America Is Going Broke. Will the Department of Government Efficiency Help?" by John Stossel

"The Freakout Over 'Big Balls' and DOGE," by Liz Wolfe

"Trump's Middle East Policy: Pull Troops Out of Syria To Put Them in Gaza?" by Matthew Petti

"Riviera of the Middle East," by Liz Wolfe

"Just Asking Questions About RFK Jr.'s Senate Hearing," by Ronald Bailey

"We Don't Need RFK Jr. To 'Make America Healthy Again,'" by Kelvey Vander Hart

"Trump Is Flat-Out Lying About the 60 Minutes Interview With Harris," by Jacob Sullum

"How the FCC's 'Warrior for Free Speech' Became Our Censor in Chief," by Joe Lancaster

 

Reason Speakeasy: Brian Doherty, February 27, 2025

 

Send your questions to [e-mail]. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

 

Today's sponsors:

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Audio production by Ian Keyser

Assistant production by Hunt Beaty

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

• Video Editor: Ian Keyser
• Producer: Hunt Beaty

What are we consuming this week?

Katherine Mangu-Ward

• 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s: The 2000s

Christian Britschgi

• Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

Matt Welch

• Super Bowl LIX

Peter Suderman

• I'm Still Here

---

Comments

[Rubbish!]

Nooooo! Muh Bureaucracy I mean muh Democracy! Under Attack. You can't change the bureaucracy. Everything has to stay the way it is!

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

We need a Congressional committee take 6 months to write a Congressional plan to submit to an executive committee who can evaluate the proposal and implement a rule that will take year to implement a committee that will look at possible fraud before submitting a report to congress to then form a committee to discuss possibly stopping fraud.

[Don't look at me! (No longer muted!)]

Whoa! Whoa! Slow it down dude. Going too fast!

[Gaear Grimsrud]

I know. We need a bipartisan blue ribbon panel of high level government pensioners to sort this out. Cato and the Reason Institute will publish multiple 1000 page analysis of the findings, read by dozens of academics, by 2034 and recommend the pursuit of a process by which the identified deficiencies can be addressed. At the dawn of the 22nd century the libertarian moment will finally arrive.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Well, we do need a meeting to make sure we're on the right track.
I'd suggest 4PM on, oh, June 16th? Sound good, everybody? I'm willing to be flexible if someone can't make it.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

You might appreciate this.

https://x.com/Banned_Bill/status/1853842945767592429

Used AI to replace "democracy" with "bureaucracy" in a whole bunch of talking heads jabbering away.

[DesigNate]

Nice, and much more accurate.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

But nothing about orangemanbad? I'm disappointed.

[Dillinger]

>>Trump sues CBS

o/u on how many guests took CBS' side set at 4.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Reason never fails to surprise. Ever the iconoclastic rebels.

[Bananas]

We know where Reason and a few commenters, such as Jeff and sarc and molly, stand.

[SQRLSY]

We know where Bananas and MANY-MANY-MANY cummenters stand! Banish ass being udderly EVIL, ALL of the Demon-Craps and Anti-Fa and the Tele-Tubbies and udder evil advocates of political violence, and then HANG MIKE PENCE and EXECUTE GENERAL MILLEY without trails!!!

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Never happened, and you now know that, although Milley did promise the Chinese to spy for them by his own admission.

[SQRLSY]

The HANGING OF MIKE PENCE and the EXECUTION of GENERAL MILLEY (without trails) indeed never happened, Oh Great Queen of Internet Cesspools... Butt said shit snot happening twas SNOT due to the Benevolence, Cumpassion, Decency, or Tendencies towards Justice (all of which are hardly EVER displayed by Him) of Dear Leader!

Thanks for writing a truth, for once!

[Social Justice is neither]

Funny how the folks at Reason didn't give a shit about the future of freedom when the Biden regime was rounding up people across the country for daring to question the unconstitutional changes to election law and the results it generated or when half of Americans were declared terrorists for daring to raise concerns at public school board meetings or jailing people for daring to pray near their sacred abattoirs (sorry, Planned Parenthood).

[Gaear Grimsrud]

But but but, the adults were in the room and the mean tweets disappeared.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Those tweets were so mean.

[Bananas]

Not to mention lockdowns and mask and injection mandates. Or censorship (does anyone at Reason even know about the Twitter files?) Why have talibbi and greenwald been memory holed at Reason?

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

B/c the current Reason staff is embarrassing themselves.

[SQRLSY]

I rest ASSured that "Social Justice is neither" will help us all out, and immeasurably ASSist Truth, Freedom, and Justice for All, by pointing us to the mass graves and cunt-centration camps and re-education camps of ALL of the victims of the Dreaded Biden Regime... VERY soon now!

[PLP 2]

NO one was "rounded up"...than is a lie. "In addition when half of Americans were declared terrorists for daring to raise concerns at public school board meetings..." another ignorant lie, people were not merely "questioning or raising concerns" What was actually happening were gangs of people, many with no kids in the districts they were "protesting" were intimidating officials and threatening them with violence and death, I saw one guy leap on to the hood of a school board officials vehicle in the parking lot and started screaming like a demonic troglodyte, he cracked his damn windshield. Come to find out he had no kids in the district. The week after the National School Boards Association sent its letter to Biden, Garland issued a memo to the FBI and federal prosecutors. The October memo decried “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff,” said the Department of Justice would work to identify such threats “and prosecute them when appropriate,” and directed the FBI and prosecutors to convene meetings with various leaders around the country to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats” against education personnel. The GOP never wanting to loose the chance to exaggerate a story made up the contents of the memo and lied about it.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Time to play spot the fed.

[Vernon Depner]

AI-generated fed.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Hey. he's from the government and he's here to help!

[Ama Valde Intellectum]

TRUE !!!!

[Gaear Grimsrud]

"A listener asks the editors if there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of freedom in the United States."
Yes. Yes Virginia there are. But Reason editors have nothing to do with it.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Sorry but I feel like when your special guest is Christian Britschgi you may have reached the bottom your talent pool. I would suggest you bring in an outside expert like this guy,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_McMillan

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

Next week: Special guest Nick Gillespie.

[JesseAz (mean girl ambassador)]

Special is an older but accurate descriptor.

[DesigNate]

They could get an actual libertarian like Dave Smith, but then they’d look even worse.

[Mother's Lament (Here's your attention, Sarc. Enjoy)]

"A listener asks the editors if there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of freedom in the United States."

Not if the foundation or Cato can help it. There's no point in being a contrarian rebel if the base canaille are too.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (Trump Ascendant!! )]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPTdssI_iZw

“Don't quote me regulations...I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that regulation is in...we kept it gray.”

[JasonT20]

Meanwhile, the head of DOGE, who is also the richest man in the world, owns two major companies, one of which has billions of dollars in government contracts and the other benefits from tax credits for people buying its product, is leading a group of investors to buy OpenAI for over $97 billion. Of course, OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015, with Musk and Sam Altman as co-chairs and several AI computer scientists involved along with some pledges for funding from other notable tech figures, like Peter Thiel and Amazon. Musk left in 2018 and has been in some kind of feud, apparently, with Sam Altman ever since. (Altman said no thanks to Musk's offer, and said they'd buy twitter for $9.7 billion instead, if he wanted.)

Where does he find the time to do all of this great stuff!?!

[Bananas]

Now do Soros.

[JasonT20]

Has Soros ever held even a quasi-official government position where he could make a decision that would directly determine whether a project was funded, defunded, or a government employee hired or fired? I don't think so. You can make your case that he's worked from the shadows to do those things, or whatever floats your boat, but that would be a false equivalence and is just whataboutism anyway.

You are all supposed to be libertarians around here, right? Or maybe, like me, you're not libertarian, but you find value in seeing what libertarians have to say even if you strongly disagree with them. Either way, my point here is to note that skepticism of government power is supposed to be a defining characteristic of libertarian ideology. It isn't skepticism, though, if it is only directed at one's partisan opponents. Then it is just tribalism.

There is a reason why "whataboutism" is a problem in political discourse. That term, of course, is just a relatively recent term related to a very old concept: the logical fallacy of tu quoque ("you also") when directed at the person one is arguing with, making it a type of ad hominem, or a red herring fallacy when directed at some other entity or concept. In either case, it is a deflection that avoids the argument or claim one is disputing.

People engage in this kind of deflection when they are more interested in discrediting an opponent's argument (or the opponent's side) than they are in supporting their own (or their own side). Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I'd accept the possibility, at least, that this is unconscious on your part, rather than a deliberate deflection. If that is correct, then I'm sure you'll be happy to explain why it isn't a problem that Musk is using his wealth and ability to influence public discourse (through the social media platform he bought for $44 billion) in the way he is to wield government power. And you'll do so without any further distractions or deflections.

[Bananas]

Now do Soros.

[JasonT20]

You'd think I'd have learned by now. I first came to Reason when the Volokh Conspiracy blog moved here from the Washington Post website. Those posts get pretty wonky about the law and Constitution, so even some of the super-partisan commenters are lawyers and/or they will actually make reasoned arguments some of the time.

But around 90% of the comments elsewhere around here are from people that want to play pigeon chess.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

BTW, this (^) slimy pile of lefty shit supports murder as a preventative for, well, the shit-stain really isn't sure:

JasonT20
February.6.2022 at 6:02 pm
“How many officers were there to stop Ashlee Babbitt and the dozens of people behind her from getting into the legislative chamber to do who knows what?...”

Fuck off and die, asshole.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Ooops, not Bananas. The slimy pile of lefty shit JasonT20.
Sorry.

[Bananas]

:). I'm about 10 years from just saying 'fuck off and die lefty shit' to everyone

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

As was I about 10 years ago when suffering lefty shits became insufferable.

[AT]

If you haven't had a good look at Google Maps lately, I highly encourage you to go take a look at the body of water between Texas and Florida - the one sharing coastline with America's Pants.

lololololol

[DesigNate]

I wasn’t sure it was going to be what I thought, but it was!

Hahahahahaha

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

"Plus: A listener asks the editors if there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of freedom in the United States."

Absolutely NOT! Orange bad man was elected instead of the oh, so competent, preferable and totally wonderful Harris, whom we can be sure got the reluctant and strategic votes of the TDS-addled shits writing for Reason!

[AT]

Freedom to do what, exactly?

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Protest in the nation's capital? While leakin' Joe was supposedly POTUS (regardless of who the acting POTUS really was), that was declared an "insurrection".

[Nobartium]

If you find yourself even adjacent to the deep state, you have turned in your libertarian card.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Most of the Reason staff must now admit to being deep-state, TDS-addled, steaming piles of lefty shit, but that's what opening a DC office does for a once-libertarian organization.
Hope cashing that $5 check cost more than $5, Welsh! Your incompetency deserves that and more. Suggest you try to find a real job and learn what that takes.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

And betting no one hires you.

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

[mr simple]

Reason editors have become institutionalized. 1) Every libertarian should know USAID as the slush fund for our nations various regime change and hegemony engines. And it's not going away! If there's actually any useful (and constitutional) programs funded by it, they can continue. 2) Judges were never meant to be an over lord class that gets to rule on every action of every government official, which you seem to be advocating for. Not everything falls under their purview. 3) You're so focused on whether Trump can constitutionally change the size or scope of these departments, while ignoring wheteher or not the departments are constitutional themselves! The president was always meant to be another voice/judge on this. He should say he'll continue the funding when they can rationally point to the part that authorizes congress to spend funds in this way.

[Rick James]

Plus: A listener asks the editors if there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of freedom in the United States.

This question puts me in mind of what I started wondering on a daily basis in around 2012.

[JasonT20]

It would make more sense to have started thinking about that question on a daily basis by at least Oct. 26, 2001, if not sooner.

[Uomo Del Ghiaccio]

I agree with Katharine that part of me wants DOGE to reveal the waste, fraud, and abuse. I notice that Matt is still in his Trump-Deranged self.

There is a thing called separation of powers and the three branches do battle with each other. Matt of course is completely all in letting the judicial branch to be the final arbitrator and run roughshod over the other branches, however the abuse of separation of powers by any of the three branches is equally bad.

It is the responsibility of the executive branch to administer and execute these very agencies that Matt has his undies in a bunch over. The executive branch should be able to enlist advisors, which is effectively what DOGE is.

The real problem is that there are too many sacred cows and too many fingers in the cookie jar and the trajectory is an accelerating ever increasing growth in ineffectual government, graft and bribery.

Do I like, Trump? Not really, however he is much better than the only other alternative with a reasonable chance of being elected. Still he is a very bad option, which illustrates just how poor the candidates were.

Tariffs are indeed taxes, but in my opinion, not any worse that any other form of taxation. Trump appears to be using the threat of tariffs as a cudgel to open negotiations. It appears to be working at the moment, but will not work in all situations. Even, so there are some situations, where tariffs are warranted.

For long term prosperity, it is not wise to offshore all of our manufacturing to other countries, just because another country is willing to provide products for a cheaper price. The cheaper price is not necessarily due to lower production costs. Discounting your price way lower than your costs to eliminate the competition is a tactic that is often used. If your pockets are deep enough, you can survive while the competition goes bankrupt.

Unfortunately, many people, companies, government, and media, only look at the short term.

[JasonT20]

It is the responsibility of the executive branch to administer and execute these very agencies that Matt has his undies in a bunch over. The executive branch should be able to enlist advisors, which is effectively what DOGE is.

This is largely my issue with DOGE. As something with authority to examine executive branch operations and make suggestions, that seems really easy to justify, as a constitutional matter. The problem comes when people in DOGE start making decisions that even the President might not have the legal authority to make, let alone delegate those decisions to people not confirmed by the Senate. And they seem to be accessing information that existing law limits to specific agencies that don't include DOGE. Ever get money from the federal government for any reason? (Like SS, tax refunds, etc., not just paychecks for federal employees) Have DOGE tech bros been connecting to the databases that hold your direct deposit information? Do we know whether they have accessed that data, what they may have done with it if so, and whether they have maintained the security of that data?

If more government transparency and accountability is the goal, then I would think that should start with DOGE itself.

[Fist of Etiquette]

There are checks and balances but in an era of near total special interest capture of Congress - a body with no consensus other than its shared appetite to cede its duties to other branches - it appears that the judicial has de facto final say. There will be no reforming the United States federal government through bureaucratic channels.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Even though it's my understanding that the hosts don't reference me by name anymore, I think I'll listen to this episode.

[Uncle Jay]

I read such genius level politicians like Mad Max Waters is demonstrating against Musk because he is exposing the waste and fraud the feds have been engaging in for the past few years.
Apparently, these anti-Musk and anti-DOGE bureaucrats and politicians want to keep their corruption a secret, especially the secret about where all those billions of taxpayers' money went.