Keeping our eyes on the ball
How the chaotic Trump news cycle sometimes obscures the real story
The news about the cuts has been everywhere: how Elon Musk and his DOGE crew are waging a war to shrink the federal workforce that is drastically reshaping the government.
Reading the coverage, you might come away with the impression that the entire federal government is being dismantled by this pirate crew, seemingly overnight. This has been perhaps the most fundamental storyline coming out of the Trump administration so far; experts say that it is unprecedented, and potentially illegal, as many are now arguing in court. And the reductions are already being felt in many critical agencies.
But having covered Trump-era politics for many years now as a reporter, this also feels like one of those moments where coverage, taken together, also paints a misleading picture that obscures deeper truths — and ends up servicing the very image Trump and his team are trying to project.
I was struck recently when I stumbled upon an article listing the actual number of jobs cut by the new administration: in the tens of thousands. The New York Times, which notes that statistics about layoffs and firings may have a significant lag, has counted a relatively low 30,123 cuts. The Associated Press’ number is even lower.
Both outlets note that many of those reductions have been targeted towards the federal government's more than 200,000 probationary employees. Those employees have less on the job rights, although still enjoy some significant job protections. Overall, the upper range of estimates for the cuts so far is around 100,000.
This is not to downplay the significance of those job losses across the government and the chaotic manner in which they are being made. And the numbers will likely grow, as well: some 75,000 employees have reportedly agreed to take buyouts according to the White House.
But let’s step back and put those numbers in the context of the country’s massive, $7 trillion budget — and the promises made by Musk to cut an astounding $1 to $2 trillion to pare back wasteful spending and address the $1.9 trillion deficit.
The entirety of the federal workforce, not including the military or the postal service, make up about 6 percent of the roughly $7 trillion budget, or a little more than $400 billion. And 100,000 jobs would be just 4 percent of that 6 percent. That equates to a reduction of less than a quarter of a percentage point of federal spending — under $20 billion — very modest progress towards those steep reduction targets. In terms of the wider contract and budget cuts beyond the labor force, reporters who have dug deep into the details on DOGE’s website have found significant accounting errors indicating that those cuts are often much less in practice than what has been claimed.
Trump has long been a genius at using controversy and chaos to his advantage, turning the tide of public attention generated by seemingly negative press coverage into an asset. It’s a bit of a superpower — while traditional journalism operates under the assumption that shining a light on problems will ameliorate them, Trump has inverted the formula, reflecting the light, even when it is harsh, back out at the world as a projection of his messaging and power.
And I worry that some of the coverage about Musk and DOGE is being used that way, for voters who don’t have time to cross reference reports, sift through details and documents, or follow the seemingly endless trail of firings, rehirings, and firings again. I found this piece from Politico, where a reporter talked to voters at a fairgrounds in rural Texas about the effort to be particularly revealing. This was Starr County, a heavily Latino border community which Trump won in November after it had gone resoundingly for Democrats in previous cycles — in short, a testing ground for the types of voters who have been leaving the party in recent years. Many folks in the article heartily endorsed the DOGE effort, saying they supported eliminating government inefficiency and waste.
But I wonder what vibe would trickle down to voters if the coverage was framed more around how little a difference these cuts are actually making to the budget, how small in scope they are to the Administration’s stated goals. If the tenor was less “Trump and Musk are recklessly having their way with the government,” but instead “They are making a lot of noise about what so far are only the most modest cuts.” For an administration whose legislative agenda may be in peril, what if the coverage was tweaked tonally to underscore the ways they are falling short or coming up empty. That they are hamstrung, not omnipotent.
Matt Iglesias had some similar observations this week, calling the DOGE cuts “nickel-and-dime stuff” so far. He also remarked on a related dynamic to the one I pointed out above, writing that “Donald Trump likes to be seen as strong, as a winner, as a domineering figure. Democrats like to portray Trump as a threat, a menace, a uniquely malign force. These two tendencies play off each other and feed into each other.” Media coverage that unintentionally hypes Trump up as a boogey man and plays up his power is another factor in this dynamic.
As a bit of a counterpoint to this argument, there are some reports from town halls across the country showing lawmakers facing what looks like a real backlash from the cuts. “Why is the supposedly conservative party taking such a radical and extremist and sloppy approach to this?” one man asked at a particularly energetic one of these in Georgia. And plenty of folks, like my old Washington Post colleague Jeff Stein, who has been one of the best reporters on this beat, believe that the DOGE crew is just getting started and that the effort will grow significantly.
Here’s some other things I’m reading right now:
A HANDFUL OF SENATORS are asking the DOJ to investigate whether Elon Musk is using his new influence at the White House to pressure advertisers into returning to X. While many advertisers fled the service over concerns about extremist content in the wake of Musk’s purchase, many name brands such as Amazon and Verizon have been returning or increasing their spending on X again, the WSJ reports.
Relatedly, The Atlantic on what ketamine does to the human brain.
And about the WSJ, many were confused as to why the newspaper laid off a number of tech reporters this week, including those covering Google, Intel, Microsoft and other prominent companies. Tech coverage is typically a growth area for mainstream media companies. Perhaps not as bad as the previous two years, but 2025 is shaping up to be yet another year with significant 1Q media layoffs.
“$1,000,000 PER PERSON.” That’s text from an actual invite to dinner at Mar-a-Lago, according to Wired. The magazine reported that one-on-one meetings with the president are going for $5 million; the $1 million figure is for a general seat at a “candlelight dinner.”
EZRA KLEIN thinks AI should be the biggest story right now, one that is potentially getting drowned out by other, you know, news.
On that note, the LA Times’ new AI tool “Insights,” which offered readers summaries, “bias ratings,” and counter-perspectives to opinion pieces, had only been live for a few hours before offering a sympathetic defense of the KKK. Oopsies! It was later removed, although the tool is still being used for some but not all opinion pieces, interestingly.
AI data centers are forecasted to require some 12 percent of the country’s electricity demand by 2028, and a new report from Harvard Law says that the increased demand will result in higher prices for regular consumers like you and me.
THE ECONOMY is an interesting beat these days. Tomorrow’s jobs report, which I used to cover every month at the Washington Post, will provide another proverbial indicator of “How Things Are Doing” that I will be very curious to see.
DRAGGING THE DEMOCRATS is another active beat these days. To say the party is struggling to find its voice is an understatement. Shouts out to reporter Ken Klippenstein for relentlessly documenting these ham-fisted attempts to connect. James Carville seems to be the only one who has articulated a theory behind the approach and how it connects to, you know, exercising power: “Roll over and play dead,” he says. Then “make like a pack of hyenas and go for the jugular.” No hyenas in sight, at least for the moment.
OSCAR-WINNER ANORA is in many ways a labor story. And along those lines, it drew this unsparingly critical take written by a sex worker in the digital magazine Angel Food, and is trailed by some big claims about how union workers were treated during production in New York.
A MERE 9,000 WORDS on the Zizians from The Guardian, for those following that story.
Sesame Street Workshop, the nonprofit behind the eponymous show, announced layoffs this week, just one day after 200 workers declared their intent to unionize with the OPEIU.