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Musk Connection: Unknown
Other Corporate Affiliations: Palantir Technologies, blockchain search engine Elementus, software engineering and finance start up Theorem
DOGE Deployment: Chief Information Officer, Executive Office of the President

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has been destroyed. It provided free collective-bargaining mediation and saved hundreds of millions of dollars in labor costs.

Musk Connections: SpaceX, Starlink, X (Twitter)

DOGE Deployments: White House, FHFA

Musk Connections: SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), Boring Company

Other Corporate Connections: Board of Advisers, Atlas Society; Former owner, Mr. Yogato; Former owner, Thomas Foolery

DOGE Deployments: “Day-to-day leader.” SSA, GSA

In Abundance and in press, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson have made it clear they want to close the book on Rachel Carson’s seminal work.

Musk Connections: N/A

Other Corporate Connections: Founder of Russell Street Ventures, Co-founder of Aspire Health, Co-founder of CareBridge, Co-founder of Main Street Health. 

DOGE Deployments: HHS

On March 21, BigLaw firm Paul Weiss struck a deal with the Trump administration in exchange for an executive order targeting them to be lifted. This capitulation to Trump undermines the rule of law and will invite future authoritarian moves by the administration. As RDP’s Henry Burke wrote, “Appeasement will only lead to certain destruction.”

Fascists respond to capitulation with more aggression. Elon Musk has already started targeting firms himself.

While national security adviser Michael Waltz’s Signal chat security breach debacle has dominated headlines this week, it’s not the only act of reckless disregard for the safety and security of Americans in the news. This week also saw projections that Trump-Musk cuts to the IRS could lead to a $500 billion tax revenue shortfall this year, with a slump already in effect at this point in tax season.

In the months before the re-election of Donald Trump precipitated our rapid descent into authoritarianism, two books were being written about the idea that progressivism went astray in the 1960s and 1970s. In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson describe a drift into a “politics of scarcity,” and in Why Nothing Works, Marc Dunkelman calls it a “cultural aversion to power.” Both books ask a pertinent question: Why doesn’t the government do big, bold things, quickly, to address the pressing issues of our time? We have an abundance of viewpoints and veto points, they argue, but a shortage of affordable housing and transmission lines. Something’s got to give. The unstated question, of course, is who must give.

Abundance co-author’s word salad about environmental review left us scratching our heads.