Trump races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people

This seems to be just par for the course for very large companies I’ve been associated with. Major downsizing exercises are so painful and expensive that you go overboard a bit when you execute one, because you don’t want to have another one for a while (say 4 years in this case). The extra money you pay in returning some employees on a lucrative contract basis is made up for by the sheer size of the headcount reduction and the speed and simplicity of implementation. “Kill them all and let God sort them out.” “The kindest executioner has the sharpest blade.”

It continues to seem like this administration sets out to achieve 200% of each objective so that they can retreat to a position where they have attained 90 or even 100% of their original plan after a series of court decisions and popular backlash.

Every institution which could in theory check executive overreach is either already captured by ideological allies or is completely overwhelmed.