¿Porque no los dos? Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons:

* https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa...

Firing the folks dealing with bird flu:

* https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-...

Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA (including maintenance mechanics) even though it's already short staffed:

* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo

Random and spiteful (?).

USAID was investigating Starlink

Consumer Protection Bureau has numerous investigations open vs Musky companies

Treasury is involved in regulating Muskys X for Finance thing

This is, I think, just "stage 1"

I don’t care what happens to Ukraine, just don’t want us to send another dime. Hoping it can just end soon, which is more likely now than it was with previous administration.

Tariffs are a terrible idea though, but would take them if we got rid of the income tax.

As of now DOGE and Trump are doing exactly what I hoped, and I’ll check back in a year and see if I’m worried.

$4,700,000,000,000 income taxes

$...100,000,000,000 tariffs

Sooner than you think.

My tax refund is quite late.

Even firing all probationary employees explicitly _for cause_ when there's no evidence of performance problems with most of them is worse than random, it opens them up to legitimate legal backlash. Have you ever worked anywhere where the last two years of hires were all just completely worthless as employees? Of course not, that's basically impossible. Eliminating these people would have been harsh but understandable if it were said to be done for simple budget reasons, because yes they indeed are in a vulnerable less protected situation, but to call them all poor performers at the same time is worse than random, it's an obvious and transparent lie.

This isn't about efficiency, money, or employees. It's about power and the consolidation thereof. They will have ransacked the VA and the American people not only gave them the keys but they cheered them on.

But as others have noted, these are not the only ones being mass fired.

I suspect the people in charge of the firings are under the same mistaken impression as you are, that all the probationary people are new hires who aren't yet essential. Witness the "oops, we fired the wrong people" rush to rehire.[2][3]

1 https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5298182/trumps-probatio...

2 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g3nrx1dq5o

3 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/usda-accidentally-fire...

And that's not counting the firings at the DOJ and FBI which were explicitly retribution (though you could argue DOGE had nothing to do with those firings, which may be true, but I'm referring to Trump's mass firings in general).

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-18/fda-offic...