My book about my time inside DOGE launched last week, and I’ve watched friends who privately cheer me on go completely silent in public. Thats how toxic the stigma around DOGE has become. And that stigma is built on a version of events I barely recognize.
My experience inside DOGE was almost nothing like what I read about in the mainstream news. The fairest and most balanced coverage I can remember was our interview on Fox News with Bret Baier in March 2025âbut let me tell you what it was actually like.
As the DOGE lead and Acting Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of the Interior, I saw the accusations that we cut everything indiscriminately. That could not be further from the truth.
Along with my DOGE colleagues and the incredible leadership of Secretary Doug Burgum, we went through thousands of contracts and grants ourselves and asked the people who knew them best to help us. Our request was simple: “Defend the spend” and tell us what was “mission critical.” If a contract couldn’t be defended, or even explained, why were hardworking Americans paying for it? We cut what didn’t make sense and made individuals accountable.
Then there’s the claim that we didn’t respect career civil servants. That wasn’t my experience either. I have tremendous respect for the many hardworking, genuine, and intelligent people who serve in government. Many are friends of mine today.Â
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What shocked me wasn’t the peopleâit was the system around them: the inefficient organizations, the decades-old technology, and the near-total absence of accountability. Many good people were trapped inside a machine built to resist common sense.
Did we get along with everyone? No. We were there to challenge the mindset that “this is how it’s always been done” as stewards of the American taxpayer. We intentionally disrupted a culture that had grown comfortable with the status quoâand yes, that made some jobs less comfortable. That was the point. Americans work hard for those dollars and deserve a government that spends them prudently. Some conflict was inevitable. But I left Washington with far more respect for career government workers than I expected to have.
What about the caricature of reckless “DOGE bros” running wild? First, those young engineers are some of the brightest people in this country. They are great Americans who sacrificed enormous private-sector opportunities to put their talents to work for their love of country. Second, the caricature erases the roughly 20 brilliant women on our team, three of them on mine at Interior. Did they want to step into the spotlight amid all the media hostility? Of course notâI feared for my own family’s safety, and theirs. They did it anyway and kept working relentlessly to reduce the deficit and help American families.
And our leadership? I keep hearing people ask how anyone could work for someone as volatile as Elon Musk.
I saw the opposite. I saw a man so locked in on the problem that he sometimes slept on the floor in a nearby office. In our meetings, two things struck me that I’ll never forget: his ability to be completely present with a problem until it was solved, and a sense of urgency so strong that everyone in the room felt it. It was
