| Every day brings new, concrete evidence that Elon Musk’s slashing of government services via his U.S. DOGE Service risks the health, safety and well-being of Americans — and he and the Trump administration have yet to explain what, if anything, they’ll build government back up with. About half of America disapproves of the work Musk is doing, according to a recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll. Musk is unpopular, and Republican strategists say they’re starting to worry that DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, is a drag on their party’s ability to retain Congress. The courts are starting to weigh in about whether any of this is legal. (It’s not, say most legal experts we’ve spoken to.) And recently fired federal workers are suddenly having a moment sharing what they did in their jobs to keep America safe: from figuring out how to ship hazardous material across the nation, to trying to lower the country’s maternal mortality rate, to preparing for how geomagnetic storms could disrupt modern life. “Without making sure that things are safe to be transported … accidents are bound to happen,” one fired federal worker told The Post’s Kyle Swenson, Rachel Roubein and Amudalat Ajasa, who interviewed former federal workers who held those jobs and others. Here’s a list of what Musk is doing that could be problematic not just for him but also for President Donald Trump: The Education Department has been cut nearly in half, and Trump says he wants to eliminate it entirely: Officials say this will send more services to students but have yet to explain how, report The Post’s Laura Meckler and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel. Musk’s team forcefully took over the Social Security Administration by seizing sensitive data without protecting it: A fired top official worries payments to millions of seniors and people with disabilities won’t be sent out on time. It has “me seriously concerned that SSA programs will continue to function and operate without disruption,” she said in a lawsuit, as The Post’s Lisa Rein reports. There are similar concerns for the IRS’s ability to process tax payments and send tax refunds: About 7,000 employees at the agency have been laid off. “I don’t think this is a good-faith attempt to improve how government functions,” Laura Edelson, a cybersecurity researcher at New York University and a former Justice Department official, told me recently. “I am sympathetic to the idea that these systems need to be modernized, but the idea you just take a hacksaw to them — that’s completely fine if you’re talking about Twitter. It’s not fine if you’re the person who didn’t get their Social Security check.” His engineers of 20-somethings have accessed, or tried to get access to, some of the government’s most sensitive data: Income details on nearly every U.S. worker, disability claims, child-support payments, payment systems for the entire government and financial information on virtually every person, nonprofit and business in the country. (That last one is so extraordinarily sensitive that the Trump administration blocked DOGE from getting it, The Post’s Jacob Bogage reports.) DOGE is cutting Veterans Affairs programs and firing veterans from the federal government: “You feel betrayed, let down and like you don’t matter,” said one of the thousands of veterans fired from their jobs. And they’re planning to cut 80,000 jobs from the Department of Veterans Affairs, an extraordinary number that — much like the other agencies Musk’s team has taken over — risks its ability to provide basic functions to the Americans it serves. The transportation secretary accused Musk of trying to lay off air traffic controllers after a deadly midair collision: “What am I supposed to do?” Sean P. Duffy, the transportation secretary, asked Musk in a Cabinet meeting faceoff reported by the New York Times. “I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?” Musk’s conflicts of interest are massive: Besides the corporations he runs having billions of dollars’ worth of federal contracts, his space company is trying to overhaul air traffic control, The Post reports. He seems intent on replacing government workers with AI, experts tell me, and it’s possible only he and his team know how to use it. DOGE is starting to recognize it’s hard to defend slashing government services, especially when it’s not clear what will be put in their place — if anything. “I need wins to defend,” a government official involved in DOGE told his team, as The Post’s Elizabeth Dwoskin, Faiz Siddiqui and Emily Davies report. “The president is right that there are a lot of government workers who aren’t putting in a full week! Taxpayers deserve better,” said Michael Strain, an economist with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “But the way Trump is going about this is totally nuts. It is harmful. It is a terrible way to treat employees. It is a terrible way to treat American citizens. And I suspect it will ultimately be counterproductive. In a small start-up, you can tear down quickly, realize you’ve made some missteps and rebuild quickly. But the federal government is not a small start-up.” | 
