Elon Musk may have left the Trump administration months ago, but his stink still lingers in just about every federal office building. The latest agency to get bogged down by the legacy of the Department of Government Efficiency is the Energy Information Administration (EIA). According to Bloomberg, the department missed the publishing time for the Weekly Petroleum Status Report, a crucial update that is closely watched by players in the energy industry.
On paper, the delay may not seem like much. The report, which contains weekly data on the state of the US oil market, was slated for 10:30am on Monday but got pushed back until 5pm, after trading markets had closed for the day. But delays are very rare for the report, and the EIA was hit hard by DOGE cuts earlier this year. According to Bloomberg, the agency lost more than 100 of its nearly 350-person staff, leaving those remaining extremely shorthanded as they try to keep everything running smoothly.
While the report had steadily come out on time, even through the government shutdown, an apparent coding error resulted in the delay. The report was also already technically late, though at no fault of the EIA. Instead, it got bumped from its normal Wednesday release and pushed to Monday thanks to an executive order signed by Donald Trump that declared December 24 and 26 a federal holiday. It joins other once-trusted government reports, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly jobs report, as examples of the federal government losing its status as a reliable source of information.
The delay, blip of a problem though it may be, is a good reminder of just how much damage was done to the underlying infrastructure of the federal government by Trump, Musk, and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The reality is, as The Guardian recently pointed out, we still have no real idea of how much damage was done.
Taking DOGE at its word—a dubious decision, given how unreliable its figures have been proven to be—the agency saved about $214 billion in spending by canceling federal contracts, firing workers, and closing departments. Other estimates put that closer to $16 billion, while a report from congressional Democrats suggests DOGE actually created $21.7 billion in waste. Regardless, one effect is real and easy to see: The government is smaller and working less efficiently.
According to the Trump administration, the federal government will exit 2025 with 300,000 fewer employees than it had at the start of the year. That includes the 100 or so who left the EIA, resulting in the agency losing credibility as it struggles to continue to function. One source told Bloomberg that industries are “rolling their eyes on how inefficient and unpredictable data has become from the US government.” That seems like a bad sign.
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