Americans are of two minds about the recent crusade by President Donald Trump’s adviser Elon Musk and his DOGE corps of (mostly) young, fast and scientific federal budget slashers.

They love it.

Or they hate it.

Which camp are you in?

That’s our Question of the Week for readers.

Musk, the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX mogul, is the richest man in the world. He’s brought in Silicon Valley allies (and interns), some of whom are living on cots and couches in the federal offices they’re auditing for waste, fraud and corruption, to review dozens of departments and agencies in Washington, D.C.

The White House’s Department of Government Efficiency was created by Trump Jan. 20 with a mandate to take a whack at federal spending. Musk’s task force says it has already saved more than $1 billion by canceling diversity, equity and inclusion contracts and other expenses.

Democratic lawmakers and other critics have been outraged after DOGE gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system and its sensitive data on all U.S. taxpayers.

Musk says he’s planning to put the budget for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government’s lead agency for humanitarian aid, “into the wood chipper.” He says USAID. is “evil” and “a criminal organization,” He ordered the sign on the agency’s D.C. building taken down.

Are such wholesale purges putting Washington on just the fiscal diet it needs, or are they capricious slashes at the established order?

Monday, a federal judge said the White House has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants. But Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Is this setting up an unprecedented showdown between the president and the judiciary? What do you think of the administration’s “offer” to tens of thousands of civil servants to resign now and receive pay until September? If there were a vastly smaller federal bureaucracy, would that make our nation weaker, or stronger?

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