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budget cuts
DOGE 'Doesn't Exist' Anymore, But the Damage It Did 'Will Be Felt for a Long Time'
"The little bit of spending DOGE cut has already killed hundreds of thousands and will eventually lead to millions of deaths," one expert said.
Nov 23, 2025
The Department of Government Efficiency—Elon Musk's much-heralded attempt to take a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy—has quietly disbanded eight months before its official expiration date, Reuters reported on Sunday.
The news agency received confirmation of DOGE's demise from Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor earlier this month.
"That doesn't exist," Kupor told Reuters, adding that it was "no longer a centralized agency."
Kupor also said that a government hiring freeze implemented by DOGE had ended.
" DOGE is fading away like bank robbery gangs fade away after the robberies are done."
When President Donald Trump first signed the executive order creating DOGE, he said that it would last until July 4, 2026. However, following a public feud with Musk in late spring, Trump and his team had indicated the department was no longer active, often speaking of DOGE in the past tense.
Musk originally set out to save $1 trillion in federal expenditures by cutting what he claimed to be waste. According to the DOGE website, the department has only saved $214 billion of that aim. However, even that number is in dispute, with one Senate report finding the agency wasted over $21 billion.
At the same time, DOGE sowed chaos in the federal government by mass firing workers, hobbling consumer watchdog agencies, and gutting the US Agency for International Development (USAID)—a move that could lead to more than 14 million deaths worldwide by 2030. At the same time, DOGE employees' attempts to gain access to sensitive government data have made the data of millions of Americans less secure. One whistleblower report said the department uploaded Social Security data to a cloud server at risk from hacking.
Several experts reacted to Reuters' report by reflecting on DOGE's destructive legacy.
"Difficult to overstate how profound a failure DOGE was," Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote on social media. "Spending in FY2025 was not only than in FY2024—but higher than it was projected to be when Trump first took office.* The little bit of spending DOGE cut has already killed hundreds of thousands and will eventually lead to millions of deaths."
Rachel Khan wrote for the New Republic:
DOGE’s legacy is both very stupid and very sad: It decimated the federal workforce, including Social Security personnel at local offices, and made it easier for hackers to access your data. The agency tore apart USAID, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of lives lost globally. And all this for projected savings—numbers which grew smaller and less ambitious every time Musk mentioned them.
While DOGE may fade away into a fever dream of Trump’s first 100 days, its effects—and the suffering it inflicted—will be felt for a long time.
Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, joked, "DOGE seems to be out of business, I guess Elon put our $5k dividend checks in the mail," referring to a promise Musk had made to redistribute DOGE's savings to taxpayers.
However, other commenters argued that DOGE had not failed, but had rather succeeded at its unstated aims.
Georgia State University political scientist Jeff Lazarus wrote that Musk "donated $277 million to Trump so he could steal the federal government’s data, dismantle the nation’s infrastructure, and stop foreign aid from going to nonwhite people. It’s a quid pro quo breathtaking in scope, corruption, and damage, & completely unprecedented in American history."
Bluesky user En Buen Ora wrote: "DOGE did not fail in any way to accomplish its goals. Its goals were never efficiency or saving money. Its goals were to destroy as much of government as possible forever, and to steal data for the Space Nazi. DOGE is fading away like bank robbery gangs fade away after the robberies are done."
While DOGE as an entity may not longer be working, Reuters noted that several of its employees had moved on to other government positions:
- Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia now runs the Trump-created National Design Studio;
- former Acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason is an adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS);
- DOGE team member Zachary Terrell is chief technology officer at HHS;
- Rachel Riley is chief of the Office of Naval Research; and
- Jeremy Lewin, who helped gut USAID, works for the State Department overseeing foreign assistance.
ProPublica has compiled a running list of every DOGE staffer it could verify, which now totals 114.
Author Tyler King wrote on social media that “‘DOGE doesn’t exist anymore' is a misleading premise because more than 100 former DOGErs have become deeply embedded in federal agencies to generally fuck around with our data and arbitrarily disrupt budgets."
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Supporting Survivors: A Spark of Hope In A Climate of Violence
All communities must realize that funding for domestic violence resources is not just charity—it’s an investment in public safety, community health, and the future stability of families.
Sep 21, 2025
Another school shooting? Shooting of a social media conservative advocate? In a nation where children can be murdered at church or school, an activist like Charlie Kirk can be assassinated at a campus event, and a man can kill a pregnant teen because of “road rage,” it is a daily challenge to prepare for the worst and simply hope for the best.
I wonder if I will become a victim to my circumstances or a survivor with a cautionary tale.
Despite US President Donald Trump recently dismissing domestic violence as "a little fight with the wife," 1 out of every 2 women are subjected to gender-based violence by an intimate partner in the US. This means every employer employs survivors and we all know someone affected.
Despite its prevalence, the silence and stigma surrounding this issue continue to isolate survivors. Equally concerning, survivors face overwhelming financial obstacles, unlivable wages, reduced access to essential services, and now recent funding cuts to domestic violence services. Nonprofit organizations that support survivors are being asked to do more with fewer resources.
The fact is economic security for survivors is not just about preventing them from returning to abusers—it’s about investing in a safer, healthier, more resilient society for everyone.
In this political climate, it feels audacious to hope for government budgets to include the kind of holistic, wraparound services that support communities’ most vulnerable populations. From the highest levels of government there have been thousands of layoffs including the US Agency for International Development, the Internal Revenue Service, the Education Department, the Defense Department, health agencies, the National Park Service, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In light of these devastating layoffs and funding cuts, survivor-serving organizations have lost most, if not all, government funding and must pivot to sustain themselves. In an ideal situation this may transpire into leveraging complimentary community resources, exchanging services, and collaborating to build grassroots, organic networks of support.
This can also look like survivors of domestic violence left alone with shame, fear, and confusion on what to do next. The window of opportunity for survivors to access support is narrow.
Without immediate emergency support, survivors are forced to return to unimaginable circumstances and some never make it out. Research is clear: Economic security is one of the greatest pathways to helping individuals break free from the cycle of abuse; without stable housing, income, or childcare, survivors are often forced back into unsafe situations.
As a survivor, I acknowledge the privilege I have by being the breadwinner. Once I broke free from the mental bondage and fear of physical abuse, I was fortunate enough to have my career (although I almost lost it), a home with my name on the lease (and $15,000 in back rent), and just enough fight left to obtain a restraining order and full custody of my son.
I tried utilizing what services existed in my area but ran into agencies with reduced staffing and hours. The providers did their best to support me over the phone, but they were also overwhelmingly busy and forgot to send follow-up emails, so I did the best I could on my own with a lot of faith and just a little spark of hope. Statistics and experiences show most survivors aren’t that lucky.
All communities must realize that funding for domestic violence resources is not just charity—it’s an investment in public safety, community health, and the future stability of families. When someone makes the courageous decision to leave an abusive environment, their path forward must not be blocked by scarcity and closed doors.
I share my experience to help others. I speak up to destigmatize talking about domestic violence and its correlation to economic security. I offer to take care of survivors' children while they figure out what to do next and sometimes just provide a safe space to process.
No one wakes up and decides to become a victim, nor does a person wake up and decide to be a batterer—however this happens at a frequency equal to 24 people per minute and 10 million people per year in the United States.
By focusing on the most vulnerable populations, there will be positive residual consequences for everyone. There is an estimated $7.73 billion cost of domestic violence in my home state of California alone.
Nationally, “One study estimated the cost of intimate partner violence against women to US society, including health costs and productivity losses," would be $12.1 billion n 2025 dollars.
This affects everyone as economic insecurity is widespread: 77% of US adults report they don’t feel fully financially secure. The fact is economic security for survivors is not just about preventing them from returning to abusers—it’s about investing in a safer, healthier, more resilient society for everyone.
By providing stable economic foundations, it is possible to create a world where leaving isn’t a leap into the unknown—it’s a step toward a future filled with hope and opportunity.
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Why Male Suicide Prevention Requires Policy, Not Just Awareness
On this Suicide Prevention Day, the question is whether we will stop treating male suicide as a seasonal headline and start treating it as a preventable epidemic.
Sep 10, 2025
Today is September 10, World Suicide Prevention Day. The hashtags are already out. Politicians are tweeting about “awareness.” Nonprofits are posting hotline numbers. News outlets will run a few stories, maybe a profile of a grieving family or a segment on rising youth anxiety. Communities will hold vigils and light candles. And then, as happens every September, Congress will return to debating budgets that cut the very services that keep people alive.
Suicide has become an annual ritual of shock, treated as if it were a hurricane that blew in unannounced instead of a slow-moving crisis we have been measuring for decades.
Suicide is not weather. It is not random. It is patterned, predictable, and preventable. Rates climb where jobs collapse and housing becomes unstable. They spread where guns are plentiful and mental healthcare is scarce. They grow in cultures that equate vulnerability with weakness. And they accelerate when elected officials strip away the programs that keep people from falling over the edge.
I know the consequences of silence. My father died by suicide when I was young. For more than a decade, I did not know how he died. My family believed silence could protect me. But silence also isolates, leaving questions that cannot be asked and grief that cannot be named. That fog never fully lifts. It is a reminder that behind every statistic is a family that carries loss forward, often without words for it.
That loss is now multiplied across nearly 50,000 American families each year. Almost 50,000 people died by suicide in 2022—the highest number ever recorded—and nearly 50,000 again in 2023. That is one death every 11 minutes. Three out of four were men. Men are half the country yet nearly 80% of its suicides. The rate for men over 85 is the highest of any group, 15 times higher than women of the same age. Middle-aged men follow close behind, especially in rural counties where work has dried up, institutions have withered, and guns are everywhere. Even among younger men, suicide remains a leading cause of death.
The methods matter. More than half of suicides now involve a firearm. Men are far more likely than women to use a gun, and that choice often makes the difference between an attempt and a death. A gun is immediate and almost always fatal. A moment of despair becomes permanent because the tool at hand was designed to be permanent. Where lethal means are easy and care is scarce, brief despair turns irreversible. States with higher gun ownership have higher suicide rates. The connection is not mysterious. It is arithmetic.
Suicide is not inevitable. It rises when supports are stripped and stigma is reinforced.
Economics tell the same story. Men who lose jobs, homes, or the ability to provide are at higher risk. One national study found that more than 1 in 5 men aged 45 to 64 who died by suicide had recently lost a job, faced eviction, or been buried by debt. When a man’s sense of worth is tied to being a provider, losing that role can feel like losing his reason to live. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton called these “deaths of despair,” and the label fits. But despair is not destiny. Raise the minimum wage, expand tax credits, stabilize housing, and suicides among working-class men decline. Let wages stagnate, strip away safety nets, and suicides rise. If despair tracks wages and rent, then budgets decide who lives long enough to get help.
Budgets are moral documents. In 2025, the Trump administration proposed cutting more than a billion dollars from the nation’s main mental health agency. That means fewer clinics, fewer treatment teams, fewer crisis counselors. The same budget threatened to scrap parts of the 988 crisis line, including its LGBTQ youth service. At the Department of Education, $1 billion in school counselor grants was pulled back, leaving rural districts that had finally hired mental health staff facing layoffs. Insurance rules that would have forced companies to cover therapy on par with physical health were paused. On homelessness, the administration reversed Housing First, vowing instead to sweep encampments, force treatment, and “bring back asylums.” Each of these choices falls hardest on men. When Medicaid is cut, when housing supports vanish, when community clinics close, the men most in need are left to cycle through emergency rooms, jails, or morgues.
Policy failures meet cultural stigma. Only about a third of men say they would seek professional help if depressed, compared to nearly 60% of women. The rest say they would handle it on their own, or not at all. That reluctance is reinforced by leaders and influencers. US President Donald Trump once suggested veterans with PTSD “aren’t strong.” Andrew Tate tells millions of young men that “depression isn’t real.” Jordan Peterson blames despair on feminism and political correctness. These voices frame pain as weakness, recast systemic causes as personal failings, and tell men that asking for help makes them lesser. For someone already on the edge, that message can be lethal.
And when suicide is mentioned in politics, it is often weaponized rather than addressed. Commentators invoke male suicide to claim that society only cares about women or minorities. Lawmakers cite “what’s happening to our boys” while voting against Medicaid expansion or school mental health funding. Grievance substitutes for prevention. The fire is pointed to, then the water is cut.
The alternative is straightforward, if not simple. Treat the 988 crisis line like 911: permanent, funded, universal. Expand Medicaid and enforce insurance parity so therapy is covered like any other medical need. Keep counselors in schools. Invest in housing with voluntary supports. Build mobile crisis teams so despair meets a trained counselor, not a police squad. And meet men where they are: union halls, barber shops, job sites, veterans’ groups.
We know this works. In Colorado, “Man Therapy” has used humor and direct language to reach men who would never otherwise consider counseling. Veterans’ peer networks reduce stigma and improve follow-through on care. In Australia, the “Men’s Shed” movement has built thousands of local spaces where older men gather, work on projects, and informally support one another—a model credited with reducing isolation and depression. These are not small-scale experiments. They are blueprints for national policy.
Suicide is not inevitable. It rises when supports are stripped and stigma is reinforced. It falls when care is reachable, affordable, and treated as normal. My father’s death remains a personal loss. But the broader crisis is a collective choice. We know the patterns. We know the risks. We know the solutions. What remains is whether policymakers are willing to act on them.
On this Suicide Prevention Day, the question is not whether we will keep raising awareness. It is whether we will stop treating male suicide as a seasonal headline and start treating it as a preventable epidemic. If policymakers can count the dead, they can also count the votes that decide whether men keep dying at this scale. The choice is not between silence and hashtags. It is between burying another 50,000 next year—or building a country where men live long enough to be heard.
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