The Sunday Subject: March 23, 2025
Week nine: Federal employees question DOGE’s methods; Israel continues bombing civilians; Stranded astronauts return.
Federal auditors call DOGE’s funding cuts a “heist.”
Several federal auditors — government employees who specialize in reducing fraud and abuse — spoke to Wired about DOGE’s cuts to numerous federal agencies. DOGE is Elon Musk’s unofficial government agency, which convicted felon Donald Trump has tasked with cutting government spending, in defiance of the Constitution, which reserves that power for Congress alone.
Musk originally claimed he would cut $2T in “wasteful spending” from the government’s $7T annual budget. (The budget ballooned from just under $4T to $6.82T during Trump’s first term, largely, but not entirely, due to the COVID pandemic, and decreased under President Biden’s first two years in office, before rising again to just under $7T last year.)
Experts say that, even if it were possible to eliminate all waste and fraud entirely, the gains would be between $233B and $521B, and even Musk quickly cut his $2T estimate in half. However, experienced auditors say Musk and DOGE aren’t perfoming traditional audits to assess spending, instead rushing the process, producing bad results. (Such as Musk’s false claim that 150-year-olds were claiming Social Security benefits; in fact, his inexperienced staff misinterpreted how the SSA database stores birth dates.) “In no uncertain terms is this an audit,” claimed one federal auditor. “It’s a heist, stealing vast amounts of government data.” “None of them have any auditing background, none have any certifications, none have any clearances,” said another auditor of DOGE’s staff.
Palestinian death toll passes 50,000
After breaking a recent ceasefire agreement hammered out by former president Biden, Israel resumed its airstrikes against Palestinian civilians, bringing the death toll in the conflict to over 50,000. Israel’s government claims the tens of thousands of noncombatant deaths are part of an effort to fight Hamas, and that they have “eliminated” dozens of militants among the 673 people killed since the ceasefire was broken.
However, Israel’s cabinet approved a proposal for “voluntary departure” of Palestinians from Israel, echoing convicted felon Donald Trump’s proposal to push every Palestinian off of their land and turn it into a Mediterranean resort. Forcibly removing people from their land is a violation of international law..
Stranded astronauts return from space
Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have finally returned home after nine and a half months on the International Space Station. They had been scheduled to return on a Boeing Starliner, but when that spacecraft’s thrusters stopped working properly, NASA elected to leave the astronauts in orbit rathern than risk disaster. (At that time, Boeing was under investigation for several incidents in which parts fell off of their airplanes mid-flight.)
During their time on the ISS, Williams and Wilmore orbited the Earth 4,576 times and travelled 195 million kilometers, over 286 days in space. After returning to Earth last Tuesday, they were flown to Johnson Space Center to be reunited with their families.