DOGE in retreat, and the power of persistence.

May 31, 2025

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DOGE is in retreat. Not defeated (yet), but in retreat, nonetheless. Still, the writing is on the wall: DOGE is on track to become a monumental failure of historic proportions.

DOGE is in retreat because we persisted.

Our fight is not over, not by a long shot. But we must not let this moment pass without acknowledging the lesson from DOGE’s retreat—that an essential ingredient in reclaiming democracy is the simple act of not giving up. We must not quit or surrender to exhaustion, despair, or cynicism.

We must continue to persist, abide, and keep the faith. A key component of MAGA’s plan is to break our spirit, exhaust us, and make us look away because we are overwhelmed. We cannot allow that to happen.

We must pace ourselves, maintain perspective, take breaks when necessary, and do our part in proportion to our abilities, resources, and other commitments. But we must do our part, nonetheless.

Because we persisted, DOGE is in retreat, and on balance, it has been more of a failure than a success. True, the damage it inflicted will echo for a generation, and DOGE has managed to inject its retrovirus into the immune system of the federal government.

While many commentators emphasize that DOGE is “not over” and proclaim the “successes” of DOGE by reference to the damage it inflicted, I think those are the wrong points of emphasis for two reasons.

First, the “measurement date” for determining the success or failure of DOGE is not May 30, 2025. Just as DOGE is “not over,” neither is our resistance. But on May 30, 2025, the tide shifted. DOGE is in retreat while the resistance is rising.

The actual measurement date for evaluating the successes and failures of DOGE is a date after the last legal challenges have become final and “We the people” have had the opportunity to express our views of DOGE at the ballot box in congressional and presidential elections.

Second, many commentators are conflating “damage inflicted” by DOGE with “success.” Damage inflicted is not a proper measure of success—because that damage was inflicted on human beings whose safety, health, and financial security was devastated by DOGE. Those human beings are not lifeless statistics with no agency. They can vote, speak, protest, and become politically active.

Any assessment of the “damage” inflicted as a measure of DOGE’s success must include the downstream political consequences of that damage. If the political cost of short-term, illegal budget cuts is loss of control of Congress and the presidency, it is hardly fair to say that DOGE was a success because it was able to damage government programs and agencies for a limited time.

By almost all measures, DOGE was a failure in the short and long term.

By reference to its own goals, DOGE was a colossal failure. It sought to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. DOGE’s tracker site claims that it “saved” the federal government $175 billion. But that “savings” is a mirage because it does not account for current and future losses due to government inefficiency and reduced revenue collection by the IRS. A study by the The Budget Lab at Yale estimates that cuts to the IRS will result in $350 billion in reduced tax collections over the next ten years—an amount that is double the alleged “savings” by DOGE.

Most of DOGE’s “cuts” have been declared unconstitutional or illegal in dozens of federal lawsuits. Those lawsuits are not final and will take years to become so. But many commentators are evaluating DOGE’s “success” by assuming that its changes to the federal government are legal and permanent. They are neither. To suggest otherwise ignores the holdings in nearly 100 federal lawsuits.

DOGE sparked a fierce resistance movement that is growing every day. That movement is flexing its muscle in special elections, town halls, and consumer boycotts that are causing some of the nation’s largest corporations to feel the reflected pain inflicted by DOGE.

Elon Musk and Trump are heading for an ugly divorce in which both will lose. Musk made many enemies in the Trump administration, and they are beginning to exact their revenge. On Musk’s official last day as a special employee of the government, the NYTimes ran an anonymously sourced article that portrayed Musk as a drug-addled, out-of-control user dependent on extreme doses of legal drugs to make it through the day. See NYTimes, On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama. (This article is available to all.)

It is no coincidence that the Times’ article on Musk’s drug use appears above-the-fold on Page One, just below the article reporting that Trump and Musk are “parting as friends.” We must assume that Musk’s enemies planted the story with the Times to serve as the equivalent of the proverbial Mafia visit to a local store by two goons who casually observe, “Nice place you got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”

As Trump's agenda continues to unravel and the economy worsens, Trump must find someone else to blame. Musk is the logical target. On Friday, Trump foreshadowed his future betrayal of Musk by attacking Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, blaming Leo for the spate of federal court rulings that Trump's executive orders are unconstitutional. See NYTimes, Trump, Bashing the Federalist Society, Asserts Autonomy on Judge Picks.

Trump used particularly harsh language to condemn Leonard Leo, the person who single-handedly guided Trump's judicial picks to produce the Dobbs decision (overturning Roe v. Wade) and Trump v. US (granting Trump presidential immunity). Per the Times, Trump wrote,

I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use the Federalist Society as a recommending source on judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.

Ouch! If Trump can savagely attack Leonard Leo after all that Leo did for Trump, Musk should be preparing for a bruising battle with Trump. Indeed, there are signs that Musk understands that he is on dangerous ground and has begun to make preemptive attacks on the reconciliation bill.

See Financial Times, Elon Musk criticizes Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill, (Musk said he is “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, which increases the budget deficit . . . and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing”) and The Hill, Elon Musk criticizes Donald Trump bill over abrupt end to energy tax credits. (Musk said cutting electric vehicle credits was “unjust.”)

If the endpoint of the DOGE effort is a political bloodbath between Trump and Musk, there is no universe in which the DOGE efforts can be called successful.

I am aware that my views are in the minority, and I expect to receive plenty of emails from readers telling me that other commentators are highlighting the damage inflicted and the permanency of DOGE. I have read and viewed those comments and respectfully disagree.

To repeat, DOGE is in retreat, not defeated. It will take persistence and hard work to root out DOGE’s remnants from the federal government. The pain inflicted by DOGE is real and lasting. But virtually all its work has been declared unconstitutional by district court judges, and the Supreme Court will have the final say.

I am not underestimating DOGE. But I believe that others are underestimating the persistence and determination of the American people.

When the final history of DOGE is written, it will be recorded that the American people prevailed because they refused to quit or surrender to exhaustion, despair, or cynicism.

The battle is ongoing. Let’s not tarry over disagreements about the final judgment on DOGE, but instead internalize the lesson that DOGE is in retreat because we persisted.

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Supreme Court lifts stay, allows Trump administration to remove temporary protected status of 500,000 immigrants

For the second time in two weeks, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to remove the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of migrants granted humanitarian parole by the Biden administration. See The Guardian, Supreme court allows White House to revoke temporary protected status of many migrants | US immigration.

The Guardian reports that as many as 530,000 migrants granted humanitarian parole will become immediately subject to deportation. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing that lifting the stay

undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.

The unfairness of the decision by the Supreme Court was highlighted by Ade Ferro on the Latino Victory Substack. Ade Ferro writes,

Moreover, it’s clear that the ultimate goal of this policy is to strip these individuals of their legal status in order to make them targets for deportation. That has always been the true intention of this administration: to force people into illegality in order to justify their removal—regardless of the fact that they entered legally, with approved documents, and after rigorous background checks.

In two decisions in the span of two weeks, the Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to target nearly 1 million migrants who are—or were—in the US in a legal status. Removing their protected status will be a blow to the economy.

Per The Guardian,

A report from the American Immigration Council found that halting the program would, apart from the humanitarian effect, be a blow to the US economy, as households in the US where the breadwinners have temporary protected status (TPS) collectively earned more than $10bn in total income in 2021 while paying nearly $1.3bn in federal taxes.

Migrants who were previously in the US under a temporary protected status and who had work permits may be forced out of jobs by nervous employers or may quit public-facing jobs out of fear of deportation. Either way, the Supreme Court has just imperiled a significant portion of the American labor force of 170 million eligible workers (about 0.6%).

Because workers with temporary protected status are concentrated in five states, labor shortages will likely be noticeable in Florida, Texas, California, New York, New Jersey, and Georgia.

America became a great nation, in part, because of immigration. America will remain a great nation, in part, because of immigration. Trump's war on immigrants and immigration is bad for everyone, but especially for the families who entered the US with necessary documents.

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Concluding Thoughts

I will host my usual Saturday morning Substack livestream at 9:00 a.m. PT / Noon ET. Open to all on the Substack App.

I am going to call an audible on Concluding Thoughts. I was going to discuss Joni Ernst’s comment to her constituents that, “We all are going to die,” when responding to a statement that cuts to Medicaid would cause some people to die. See ABC News, 'We all are going to die': Republican Sen. Ernst defends Medicaid cuts at town hall. I will let readers share their thoughts on that development.

Late Friday evening, I began receiving panicked emails about comments by two experts on fascism and the fall of constitutional governments. One of the experts, appearing on a cable news show, repeated the claim that “DOGE has become the federal government.” The other drew parallels between the US and the rise of fascism in Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela, and concluded by saying that “Don’t think it can’t happen here” and that the US is “far along” the path toward fascism.

I don’t want to dismiss the comments by the experts out of hand. They are respected scholars and serious commentators who are not trying to be alarmists. Indeed, anyone who is not worried about the threat to American democracy isn’t paying attention.

But highlighting their views on cable news or social media is a delicate balancing act. Scholars conduct deep research that is primarily intended for consumption by other experts who are equipped to contextualize, evaluate, and critique highly specialized research. In this case, I am not in a position to challenge the views of either expert. But I strongly suspect that there would be a diversity of views among their peers about their dire conclusions.

The comments that I have (thus far) shared with readers include the following:

An expert understandably views the world through the lens of their expertise. That does not invalidate their views; it simply means that there may be other relevant explanatory factors that may—or may not—support the expert’s view.

While I hesitate to resort to folk sayings in response to expert analysis, one of my law partners used to say, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

A more sophisticated articulation of that saying might assert that there were social, economic, ethnic, racial, demographic, and religious factors at work in Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela that may limit their utility as comparators to the present situation in the US.

Selection bias is also ever present. Even if Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela are valid comparisons to the US, there are 74 democracies in the world. How many of those democracies faced similar challenges to the US and resisted the rise of fascism? I don’t know the answer, but that is the type of counterfactual analysis that other experts could utilize in evaluating the scholarly research and conclusions of a colleague.

We should also not disregard our own history as a point of comparison. Many of the conditions that are viewed as warning signs of emergent fascism in the US today have existed singly or in combination in our past. And yet, we do not have a fascist government today. In my non-expert opinion, our own history in experiencing brushes with fascism and resisting that path may be the most relevant comparison.

As I said, I am not contesting the experts’ warnings. (Except the comment about DOGE being the federal government. That is hyperbole.) But I am saying that the fact that other countries with some similar attributes to the US have slid into fascism does not mean that it will happen in the US. It is a possibility, yes. But the question is “How likely is that possibility?”

The good news is that we get to answer the question about the likelihood that the US will follow Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela. I have strong faith in the American people to do the right thing over time.

Let me close this overly long Concluding Thoughts with a question. Let’s accept as an incontestable truth everything both scholars say.

What would we do differently?

My answer is, “Nothing.” I hope that is your answer, as well, because it means that you are engaged, alert, and committed to defending democracy. Yes, our democracy is threatened. It has been threatened before, and it will be threatened again.

As long as enough of us rise to the defense of democracy, we can save it for all of us. Victory is not guaranteed, but our dedication must be.

Stay strong, and keep the faith! I will talk to you tomorrow—and join me Saturday morning at 9 PT / Noon ET for a live discussion of these topics.

Daily Dose of Perspective

Below is an image of the Whale Galaxy—30 million light years from Earth. The galaxi’s “whale” shape is due to the fact that we are observing the galaxy “on edge.”