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Who wouldnt want a DOGE dividend? Such an idea is evidently being floated at the highest levels of government. DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, is currently slashing through the federal budget in what it says is an effort to weed out waste and fraud, lower the budget deficit, and claw back money for the taxpayers. As part of that, one idea that made its way to Elon Muskwho is (or perhaps is not) leading DOGEwas that some of the savings that DOGE is finding could be returned to taxpayers in the form of $5,000 checks, or DOGE dividends or “stimulus,” as some are calling them. On X this week, Musk said that he would “check with the president” about doing it, and President Trump himself has since said hes open to the idea. While most Americans would no doubt love to have an extra $5,000, how realistic is the idea? Not very, say experts. Could DOGE even send out checks? While the infrastructure exists to send checks to taxpayers, the executive branch can’t do so on its own. Congress would need to step up first, says Zachary Liscow, a professor of law at Yale Law School who served as chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at the White House in 2022 and 2023. In terms of technical feasibility, can the government send out a bunch of $5,00 checks? The answer is yes, Liscow says. But there are major challenges with doing so, he adds, first and foremost being that this would need to be a statute passed by Congress. Its not in the ability of the executive branch to send out checks without authorization from Congress. Additionally, Liscow says that the money, or savings that DOGE is finding, simply isnt there. Its wildly unfeasible, it is impossible, for Musk to save $2 trillion in a year and a half, which Musk said, at one point, was DOGEs goal. The federal government spent $6.75 trillion during fiscal year 2024, which ended in September, and most of that was mandatory spending. DOGE would be looking to cut discretionary spending, which would include National Parks, defense spending, border security, and much more. Even with wide-ranging cuts or proposed cuts, DOGE still wouldnt even come close to shaving off $2 trillion, Liscow says. You add it all up, and theyre going to be orders of magnitude off. It strikes me as a stunt. Its fake math, he says. Fast Company has reached out to DOGE for comment. What is DOGE actually up to? If DOGE is unable to deliver on its promises of saving trillions, then the question becomes: What exactly is it doing? So far, it seems like the answer is clear: Trollololol. Thats according to Martha Gimbel, executive director and cofounder of the Budget Lab at Yale, a nonpartisan policy research center that analyzes federal policy proposals and their potential effects on the economy. In effect, even as DOGE has caused a lot of waves in recent weeks, it hasnt really done anything to further its goals. It is incredibly unclear how much spending DOGE has actually cut, and how much spending they have legally cutand those are two separate questions. The best data we have about how much the government is spending, you cant see any impact at all. So theyve accomplished basically nothing, except the degradation of government services. By Gimbels calculation, even if you assume DOGE has cut $8.5 billionwhich is what it claims to have cut so fartaking that and sending out a check to each taxpayer would net them around $50, nowhere near $5,000. Not only that, but it would run counter to DOGEs stated goal of decreasing federal spending. Technically, they keep saying the point of DOGE is to cut the deficit, which is quite large. If you were going to plow any savings back to the taxpayer, then youre still left with the deficit problem. Youre not doing anything at all, Gimbel says. This is all to say that, no, you should not expect to receive a DOGE dividend check anytime soon, and certainly not a $5,000 one, despite what youre hearing from those in and around the White House. We really are in a situation where theres a lot that is being promised to Americans, but none of its being delivered, Gimbel says. There are ways you could do this in a way that makes the government function better, be more efficient, and get better outcomes for the taxpayer. Instead, theyre slashing and burning.
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E-Commerce
Information on the internet might seem like its there forever, but its only as permanent as people choose to make it. Thats apparent as the second Trump administration floods the zone with efforts to dismantle science agencies and the data and websites they use to communicate with the public. The targets range from public health and demographics to climate science. We are a research librarian and policy scholar who belong to a network called the Public Environmental Data Partners, a coalition of nonprofits, archivists and researchers who rely on federal data in our analysis, advocacy and litigation and are working to ensure that data remains available to the public. In just the first three weeks of Trumps term, we saw agencies remove access to at least a dozen climate and environmental justice analysis tools. The new administration also scrubbed the phrase climate change from government websites, as well as terms like resilience. Heres why and how Public Environmental Data Partners and others are making sure that the climate science the public depends on is available forever. Why government websites and data matter The internet and the availability of data are necessary for innovation, research and daily life. Climate scientists analyze NASA satellite observations and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather records to understand changes underway in the Earth system, whats causing them and how to protect the climates that economies were built on. Other researchers use these sources alongside Census Bureau data to understand who is most affected by climate change. And every day, people around the world log onto the Environmental Protection Agencys website to learn how to protect themselves from hazards and to find out what the government is or isnt doing to help. If the data and tools used to understand complex data are abruptly taken off the internet, the work of scientists, civil society organizations and government officials themselves can grind to a halt. The generation of scientific data and analysis by government scientists is also crucial. Many state governments run environmental protection and public health programs that depend on science and data collected by federal agencies. Removing information from government websites also makes it harder for the public to effectively participate in key processes of democracy, including changes to regulations. When an agency proposes to repeal a rule, for example, it is required to solicit comments from the public, who often depend on government websites to find information relevant to the rule. And when web resources are altered or taken offline, it breeds mistrust in both government and science. Government agencies have collected climate data, conducted complex analyses, provided funding and hosted data in a publicly accessible manner for years. People around the word understand climate change in large part because of U.S. federal data. Removing it deprives everyone of important information about their world. Bye-bye data? The first Trump administration removed discussions of climate change and climate policies widely across government websites. However, in our research with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative over those first four years, we didnt find evidence that datasets had been permanently deleted. The second Trump administration seems different, with more rapid and pervasive removal of information. In response, groups involved in Public Environmental Data Partners have been archiving climate datasets our community has prioritized, uploading copies to public repositories and cataloging where and how to find them if they go missing from government websites. As of Feb. 13, 2025, we hadnt seen the destruction of climate science records. Many of these data collection programs, such as those at NOAA or EPAs Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, are required by Congress. However, the administration had limited or eliminated access to a lot of data. Maintaining tools for understanding climate change Weve seen a targeted effort to systematically remove tools like dashboards that summarize and visualize the social dimensions of climate change. For instance, the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool mapped low-income and other marginalized communities that are expected to experience severe climate changes, such as crop losses and wildfires. The mapping tool was taken offline shortly after Trumps first set of executive orders. Most of the original data behind the mapping tool, like the wildfire risk predictions, is still available, but is now harder to find and access. But because the mapping tool was developed as an open-source project, we were able o recreate it. Preserving websites for the future In some cases, entire webpages are offline. For instance, the page for the 25-year-old Climate Change Center at the Department of Transportation doesnt exist anymore. The link just sends visitors back to the departments homepage. Other pages have limited access. For instance, EPA hasnt yet removed its climate change pages, but it has removed climate change from its navigation menu, making it harder to find those pages. Fortunately, our partners at the End of Term Web Archive have captured snapshots of millions of government webpages and made them accessible through the Internet Archives Wayback Machine. The group has done this after each administration since 2008. If youre looking at a webpage and you think it should include a discussion of climate change, use the changes tool in the Wayback Machine to check if the language has been altered over time, or navigate to the sites snapshots of the page before Trumps inauguration. What you can do You can also find archived climate and environmental justice datasets and tools on the Public Environmental Data Partners website. Other groups are archiving datasets linked in the Data.gov data portal and making them findable in other locations. Individual researchers are also uploading datasets in searchable repositories like OSF, run by the Center for Open Science. If you are worried that certain data currently still available might disappear, consult this checklist from MIT Libraries. It provides steps for how you can help safeguard federal data. Narrowing the knowledge sphere Whats unclear is how far the administration will push its attempts to remove, block or hide climate data and science, and how successful it will be. Already, a federal district court judge has ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions removal of access to public health resources that doctors rely on was harmful and arbitrary. These were put back online thanks to that ruling. We worry that more data and information removals will narrow public understanding of climate change, leaving people, communities and economies unprepared and at greater risk. While data archiving efforts can stem the tide of removals to some extent, there is no replacement for the government research infrastructures that produce and share climate data. Eric Nost is an associate professor of geography at the University of Guelph. Alejandro Paz is an energy and environment librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Since Donald Trump regained the presidency, he has coveted Greenland. Trump has insisted that the U.S. will control the island, currently an autonomous territory of Denmark, and if his overtures are rejected, perhaps seize Greenland by force. During a recent congressional hearing, senators and expert witnesses focused on Greenlands strategic value and its natural resources: critical minerals, fossil fuels and hydropower. No one mentioned the hazards, many of them exacerbated by human-induced climate change, that those longing to possess and develop the island will inevitably encounter. Thats imprudent, because the Arctics climate is changing more rapidly than anywhere on Earth. Such rapid warming further increases the already substantial economic and personal risk for those living, working and extracting resources on Greenland, and for the rest of the planet. I am a geoscientist who studies the environmental history of Greenland and its ice sheet, including natural hazards and climate change. That knowledge is essential for understanding the risks that military and extractive efforts face on Greenland today and in the future. Greenland: Land of extremes Greenland is unlike where most people live. The climate is frigid. For much of the year, sea ice clings to the coast, making it inaccessible. An ice sheet, up to 2 miles thick, covers more than 80% of the island. The population, about 56,000 people, lives along the islands steep, rocky coastline. While researching my book When the Ice is Gone, I discovered how Greenlands harsh climate and vast wilderness stymied past colonial endeavors. During World War II, dozens of U.S. military pilots, disoriented by thick fog and running out of fuel, crashed onto the ice sheet. An iceberg from Greenland sunk the Titanic in 1912, and 46 years later, another sunk a Danish vessel specifically designed to fend off ice, killing all 95 aboard. Now amplified by climate change, natural hazards make resource extraction and military endeavors in Greenland uncertain, expensive and potentially deadly. Rock on the move Greenlands coastal landscape is prone to rockslides. The hazard arises because the coast is where people live and where rock isnt hidden under the ice sheet. In some places, that rock contains critical minerals, such as gold, as well as other rare metals used for technology, including for circuit boards and electrical vehicle batteries. The unstable slopes reflect how the ice sheet eroded the deep fjords when it was larger. Now that the ice has melted, nothing buttresses the near-vertical valley walls, and so, they collapse. A massive rockslide, triggered by permafrost melt, tumbled down the fjord wall and into the water at Assapaat, West Greenland. [Photo: Kristian Svennevig/GEUS] In 2017, a northwestern Greenland mountainside fell 3,000 feet into the deep waters of the fjord below. Mments later, the wave that rockfall generated (a tsunami) washed over the nearby villages of Nuugaatsiaq and Illorsuit. The water, laden with icebergs and sea ice, ripped homes from their foundations as people and sled dogs ran for their lives. By the time it was over, four people were dead and both villages lay in ruin. Steep fjord walls around the island are littered with the scars of past rockslides. The evidence shows that at one point in the last 10,000 years, one of those slides dropped rock sufficient to fill 3.2 million Olympic swimming pools into the water below. In 2023, another rockslide triggered a tsunami that sloshed back and forth for nine days in a Greenland fjord. Theres no network of paved roads across Greenland. The only feasible way to move heavy equipment, minerals and fossil fuels would be by sea. Docks, mines and buildings within tens of feet of sea level would be vulnerable to rockslide-induced tsunamis. Melting ice will be deadly and expensive Human-induced global warming, driven by fossil fuel combustion, speeds the melting of Greenlands ice. That melting is threatening the islands infrastructure and the lifestyles of native people, who over millennia have adapted their transportation and food systems to the presence of snow and ice. Record floods, fed by warmth-induced melting of the ice sheet, have recently swept away bridges that stood for half a century. As the climate warms, permafrost frozen rock and soil which underlies the island, thaws. This destabilizes the landscape, weakening steep slopes and damaging critical infrastructure. Permafrost melt is already threatening the U.S. military base on Greenland. As the ice melts and the ground settles under runways, cracks and craters form a hazard for airplanes. Buildings tilt as their foundations settle into the softening soil, including critical radar installations that have scanned the skies for missiles and bombers since the 1950s. Greenlands icebergs can threaten oil rigs. As the warming climate speeds the flow of Greenlands glaciers, they calve more icebergs in the ocean. The problem is worse close to Greenland, but some icebergs drift toward Canada, endangering oil rigs there. Ships stand guard, ready to tow threatening icebergs away. Greenlands government banned drilling for fossil fuels in 2021 out of concern for the environment. Yet, Trump and his allies remain eager to see exploration resume off the island, despite exceptionally high costs, less than stellar results from initial drilling, and the ever-present risk of icebergs. As Greenlands ice melts and water flows into the ocean, sea level changes, but in ways that might not be intuitive. Away from the island, sea level is rising about an inch each six years. But close to the ice sheet, its the land thats rising. Gradually freed of the weight of its ice, the rock beneath Greenland, long depressed by the massive ice sheet, rebounds. That rise is rapid more than 6 feet per century. Soon, many harbors in Greenland may become too shallow for ship traffic. Greenlands challenging past and future History clearly shows that many past military and colonial endeavors failed in Greenland because they showed little consideration of the islands harsh climate and dynamic ice sheet. Changing climate drove Norse settlers out of Greenland 700 years ago. Explorers trying to cross the ice sheet lost their lives to the cold. American bases built inside the ice sheet, such as Camp Century, were quickly crushed as the encasing snow deformed. In the past, the American focus in Greenland was on short-term gains with little regard for the future. Abandoned U.S. military bases from World War II, scattered around the island and in need of cleanup, are one example. Forced relocation of reenlandic Inuit communities during the Cold War is another. I believe that Trumps demands today for American control of the island to exploit its resources are similarly shortsighted. However, when it comes to the planets livability, Ive argued that the greatest strategic and economic value of Greenland to the world is not its location or its natural resources, but its ice. That white snow and ice reflect sunlight, keeping Earth cool. And the ice sheet, perched on land, keeps water out of the ocean. As it melts, Greenlands ice sheet will raise global sea level, up to about 23 feet when all the ice is gone. Climate-driven sea level rise is already flooding coastal regions around the world, including major economic centers. As that continues, estimates suggest that the damage will total trillions of dollars. Unless Greenlands ice remains frozen, coastal inundation will force the largest migration that humanity has ever witnessed. Such changes are predicted to destabilize the global economic and strategic world order. These examples show that disregarding the risks of natural hazards and climate change in Greenland courts disaster, both locally and globally. Paul Bierman is a fellow of the Gund Institute for Environment and a professor of natural resources and environmental science at the University of Vermont. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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