Meritocracy or random firings? Over in DOGEland, things are going just about as you'd expect: more firings, this time at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where some 800 probationary employees (out of 13,000 total employees) are being let go. The Social Security Administration plans to slash its workforce by half. An office within the Department of Labor tasked with enforcing equal employment opportunity laws is cutting staff by 90 percent, per internal documents. Meanwhile, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head honcho Elon Musk is tweeting about how it's not just cutting that his team aims to do, but also a healthy bit of promoting.
Hundreds of federal workers are being promoted daily every time we encounter excellence. The @DOGE team will be more clear about this.
The goal is to make the federal government a meritocracy as much as possible. https://t.co/ThmWMY28V2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2025
