Elon Musk is gone, but 'Big Balls' remains—and we're all paying for him
Billionaire Elon Musk may no longer be an official member of Donald Trump's administration, but the racist and unqualified goons he brought with him to help run the so-called Department of Government Efficiency remain.
Wired reported on Wednesday that three of Musk's operatives—who, like Musk, had started out as special government employees, which limits how long they can serve—are now full-time employees working to cripple the federal government.
That includes Edward Coristine, a former employee at Musk’s brain chip implant company Neuralink who has gone by the online moniker "Big Balls." The 19-year-old Coristine has ties to hackers, which, as Wired reported in February, would mean he may not pass the background check necessary for a full-time government role. It's unclear whether he has undergone a background check now that he is a full-time federal worker.
Luke Farritor—a 23-year-old DOGE bro who helped dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which will lead to thousands of deaths—is also now a full-time government employee, as is Ethan Shaotran, a 22-year-old Harvard University dropout who has complained about being ostracized because of his work with DOGE.
It’s unclear whether Marko Elez, an infamous one of Musk’s DOGE minions, remains in the government. Elez initially quit the organization when his racist social media posts were uncovered, but he was quickly rehired. After all, being a racist isn’t a disqualifying trait in the Trump administration.
According to Wired, Coristine and Farritor are in the highest government pay bracket of GS-15, which earns between $125,133 and $162,672 annually, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Meanwhile, in the bracket of GS-14, Shaotran is earning between $106,382 and $138,296.
The fact that DOGE employees are now full-time federal workers shows that while Musk may be gone, his legacy of making cuts that damage critical government functions like Social Security, weather forecasting, and medical research will live on.
Ultimately, even though DOGE has hobbled essential government programs, it has so far also been a failure, getting nowhere close to the $1 trillion in cuts Musk had promised to make.
And rather than be the political winner Trump hoped for, DOGE is a polling nightmare. Surveys clearly show that voters disapprove of how DOGE was handling cuts.
What's more, even the White House knows that the cuts DOGE made are unpopular. It sent just $9.4 billion of the alleged $160 billion in cuts DOGE claims to have made to Congress to officially strike from the budget.
Included in the cuts the White House wants Congress to make permanent is $9 million to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a program that has slowed the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide. The White House also wants cuts to NPR and PBS to be made permanent.
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