For most of her career in journalism—first at The Washington Post, now at The New York Times—Emily Badger’s beat had been housing, transportation, and urban policy. But since the start of the second Trump administration, she’s distinguished herself as one of the sharpest observers of the fledgling Department of Government Efficiency.
The piece that first caught our eye—and the central topic of our conversation—was her impressively exhaustive catalog of the personal information contained in databases DOGE has sought access to. This episode, she walks us through what they want to know about you, and why it has privacy advocates worried.
Badger has also done essential reporting on DOGE’s ambitious claims about the money they’re supposedly saving taxpayers—and why those numbers just don’t add up. And most recently, she wrote about why Elon Musk’s latest breathless claims about fraud supposedly newly uncovered by DOGE are misleading.
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