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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For more than 30 years, Wired has been where discerning nerds go for some of the sharpest tech coverage around—but as Silicon Valley exerts ever greater influence over Washington, its writers have been proving time and again that they’re also happy to scoop the traditional press on vital political stories. If you’re trying to keep up with DOGE, their coverage is essential reading.

Much of the best of that reporting has recently come from the keyboards of Senior Writer Makena Kelly and Platforms and Power Reporter Vittoria “Tori” Elliot.

In a scant few weeks, they’ve explored explored DOGE’s plan to rewrite Social Security’s source code, mapped its myriad corporate connections, audited its approach to auditing, and pulled back the curtain on”Elon Musk’s digital coup.”

Makena and Tori joined us for a wide-ranging conversation about their reporting—and where they hope to shine the spotlight next. If you have tips, you can reach them at vittoria89.82 or makenakelly.32 on Signal.

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It’s a horror movie scenario: People are suddenly falling ill in a small area. Is it food poisoning? Is it a virus? What do the victims have in common? Is a local farm contaminated, or is another global pandemic brewing?

Itir Cole was working on software to help hospitals report symptoms that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) would use to trace the contours of the threat when DOGE took control. And it quickly became clear they weren’t interested in the answers.

Concluding our series of interviews with U.S. Digital Service alumni, we explore why Cole is no longer working to answer these questions—and what she’s doing next.

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