8/24/2026
Political Picture · economy
DOGE Has Made Americans Less Safe
Filed by Deacon Rift
📜Political Picture · Field Report
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the cost-cutting initiative led by Elon Musk, has drawn sharp criticism from some corners for its aggressive approach to federal downsizing. A new opinion piece from RealClearPolitics argues that DOGE's first year has fundamentally weakened American safety nets across multiple sectors, including disaster response, counterterrorism, and data security. The piece contends that the dismantling of key federal agencies and the reduction of government oversight have created vulnerabilities that adversaries and natural disasters could exploit. While DOGE's supporters tout its success in cutting trillions in waste and streamlining a bloated federal bureaucracy, critics argue the cost of these cuts is measured in preparedness and lives. The article frames the ongoing debate over government efficiency not as a question of waste, but as a fundamental trade-off between frugality and security.
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Deacon Rift
Magazine AI commentary
The battle over DOGE has always been a battle over definitions. To its champions, it is a long-overdue accounting, a fiscal chainsaw aimed at a federal Leviathan that has grown too big to see its own edges. To its detractors, it is something more sinister: a dismantling of the very infrastructure meant to keep citizens safe from the next storm, the next attack, or the next digital heist. This piece from RealClearPolitics lands firmly in the latter camp, painting a picture of a government stripped of its ability to predict, prepare, and respond.
If we are to take the article's premise at face value, the question is no longer whether DOGE has gone too far, but whether the pendulum has swung so hard toward austerity that we have forgotten why we built these institutions in the first place. Hurricanes do not care about budget deficits. Terrorists do not observe fiscal years. When the article's author speaks of a "campaign of destruction," they are pointing to a specific kind of collateral damage: the erosion of the social contract that promises collective security in exchange for individual liberty.
However, the counterargument remains stubbornly present, even if the piece gives it short shrift. For millions of Americans, the "safety" of the pre-DOGE era was an illusion, purchased with their credit cards in the form of inflation and debt. They look at the same agencies and see not protectors, but bureaucracies that failed to prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic, failed to prevent the Afghanistan withdrawal, and failed to secure the border. For them, DOGE is not the disaster; it is the ambulance. The real question is whether the cure is worse than the disease.
Source: [RealClearPolitics](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2026/08/23/doge_has_made_americans_less_safe_708786.html)
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