The DOGE-acolypse

As we re-enter the theater, the curtain on Act 1 of The DOGE-acolypse has just fallen, following a shouting match between cabinet secretaries and the head of DOGEworld, Elon Musk. It was a surprising ending to an act of our play that began, just seven weeks ago, with a fevered debate about whether President Trump would be able to win Senate confirmation of cabinet nominees like Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as well as FBI Director Kash Patel.

Would the president possibly be able to get ALL of these controversial nominees confirmed? But as this drama played out on center stage, a surprise character entered from stage far right:  Musk, leading a DOGE-acolypse. At first, the debate was what this DOGE thing was (a department? an advisory committee? a plaything of a billionaire that happened over a chance Mar-a-Lago dinner?). 

But soon memos started flying, with Musk launching a three-pronged war: take over the government’s personnel system by placing loyalists inside the Office of Personnel Management; take over the government’s information systems, by pushing his team members to get control of the data that controls the government’s payments; and take over the government’s facilities, by strategizing over buildings to close and sell.

There was the surprisingly important memo on Jan. 20 that broadened, beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, the government’s power to dismiss probationary employees and put other feds on “paid leave.” That snowballed into “deferred resignations,” the creation of a deal that had never previously existed. The cabinet secretaries found that, after struggling for every last vote in the Senate, they weren’t really running their departments. 

The rise of the DOGE-acolypse, however, made the headline-hungry president nervous and the cabinet furious. That culminated in the meltdown on March 6, with the curtain falling on Act 1.

That had the audience at the edge of their seats, waiting for Act 2. Who was really going to run the government? Musk and his Muskovites, maybe 150 in number, who had fanned out across the government and, in some cases, wheedled their way into departmental appointments, so they insinuated themselves in the chain of command? Or the cabinet secretaries, who thought they had come to Washington with the president’s blessing to move MAGA? Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought who moved into the job he coveted most, as part of the Project 2025 empire, which itself had been generated with hundreds of billions of dollars (maybe a billion dollars?) since the 2020 election—or Musk’s bulldozer, which wanted to break as much china as possible until there was no china left to break?

From the wings of our play in Act 2 comes a player that had not even appeared in Act 1: Congress, which faced the challenge of preventing the government from closing down—and, along the way, finding enough spending cuts to finance the tax cut over which they had been drooling for many months. The cabinet secretaries, Muskovites, Vought, and Republican congressional leaders all come to center stage in the middle of Act 2.

Toward the end of Act 2, however, yet another set of characters comes onto the stage: John Roberts and the Supremes, pressed to sort out delicate balance-of-power questions in a political environment as super-charged as any the Supreme Court had ever faced. The curtain falls.

That set the stage for Act 3 of our play. As the curtain rises, Chief Justice John Roberts wakes up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat, trying to figure out how to deal with a constitutional crisis he can’t escape and the fundamental legitimacy of the court, which hangs in the balance. The politicization of the Court was the nightmare he has always feared most. Cases are cascading onto his doorstep. Can the feds slash indirect cost spending in federal research grants? Can federal employees be “fired” under the pretense of “paid leave?” Was the blanket dismissal of probationary employees under the guise of poor performance, even when some “poor performance” letters went to an employee who hadn’t even started work yet? Can the president dismantle an entire agency created by Congress, like USAID? Can the president impound money appropriated by Congress?

The Supremes meet behind closed doors. Which cases should they take? When should they take them? On what grounds should they decide—small bites or the Big Bang? 

As the Supremes debate these questions—and more—the spotlight goes to Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the corner of the table. She has the most stirring soliloquy of the entire play, weighing what “original intent” really means against the political chorus of external pressure she’s feeling. 

She and Roberts try to figure out a way through. They know that what they do not only shapes the political legitimacy of the Supreme Court. It ultimately defines what the separation of powers really means as the country nears the 240th anniversary of the Constitution. 

The curtain falls on Act 3, leaving everyone puzzled over how the issues will play out.