🌊 DOGE's Attack on DC

DOGE isn’t just trying to take down bureaucracy, but the city’s entire economy

February 27, 2025

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By Max Towey, Roca co-founder

The scale of wealth in the Washington, DC area is staggering: Five of the seven wealthiest counties in America border DC, including the two richest. 10 of the 25 richest counties in America – 40% – fall in the DC metro area. And the District itself has a higher rate of millionaires per capita than Napa, CA, and Naples, FL.

This is nothing new: A 1984 Washington Post article found that the two richest counties in the country in 1970, as defined by median household income, were in the DC area: Montgomery County, MD, and Fairfax County, VA.

If looking purely at the top end of metrics like income, wealth, and home values, DC is not the richest. But what makes the nation’s capital unique is its high floor – a floor propped up by hundreds of thousands of high-skilled jobs that rely on recession-proof funding from the federal government.

Given this, DOGE has sparked an existential panic in DC. In DC this past weekend, I saw “Boycott Tesla” and “F*** Musk” painted on walls downtown and anti-DOGE ads taken out by government agencies themselves. 

Anti Elon Ad

An anti-Elon Ad – apparently bought by USAID – in downtown DC

Whether or not you support DOGE’s efforts, the anger and pushback appear nothing but logical when you consider how DC operates. After all, it’s not just federal employees who are threatened by DOGE, but a web of contractors, lobbyists, lawyers, non-profits, and service workers who have made the region the richest in the nation. 

So how exactly does the DC economy operate? How do these organizations make their money? How could DOGE blow that up?

That’s the subject of today’s deep-dive.

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Editor’s Note

A huge number of responses to yesterday’s newsletter on how institutions like the APA have lost society’s trust. Thanks for reading and thanks for writing in. If you missed it, find it here.

From Harrison:

I disagree with the premise that progressive viewpoints should delegitimize an organization. The way you stated it, you make it sound like many of these viewpoints are just opinions meant to alienate conservative Americans, while many are based on a lot of research and work in understanding the problems. It culminates with a favorite of conservatives, the word “experts” in air quotes. I am a doctor, one of those “so-called experts,” and have grown quite tired of this hatred of my advice based on decades of research and years of my own study, which peaked due to the pandemic. Perhaps expert fields have a branding problem, but I’m tired of this concept among conservative America that “experts” are purposely lying to people to try and trick them to become democrats, or to make them sick so we can make money off of them, swindle them into believing in climate change for personal gain, or to brainwash them on behalf of the establishment. Most of us are just going off of our understanding of the current data we have and trying to make the best recommendations for people to stay safe and healthy. I’m still waiting for all those pharma yachts people claim I’m getting for believing in vaccines…

Editor’s Note: It's not that holding progressive viewpoints should delegitimize an organization. It's that when an organization, like the APA, adopts explicitly partisan positions and seeks to advance a political agenda on topics outside of its purview, people then see it as political and stop trusting it – even many who agree with its politics.

It's highly unlikely that all science yields progressive outcomes. So when an organization like the APA becomes a progressive organization, people will naturally assume they are suppressing science and findings that don't fit its politics. And when people lose faith in one institution, they lose faith in others. And then experts become "experts."

This is our belief about the news media: Companies have lost trust by becoming explicitly liberal and conservative. Many liberals don't want liberal news and many conservatives don't want conservative news because they can't trust them – they know they aren't getting the full story.

Christopher wrote:

You confuse progressive social views with politics. You know, as I started to read this email I thought to myself “do I trust RocaNews?”. I looked into it by reading the next few lines of your dangerously unscientific opinion piece garbage on a topic that you have no business writing about without doing far more research and providing far more evidence than you did (did you even stop to think about how your words might impact people struggling with mental health?) and calling it “journalism” unless by that you mean “writing your journal”. Either way - I’m out. Unsubfuckingscribe.

Editor’s Note: So long, Christopher!

And Sam from Colorado wrote:

Excellent stuff today. I do think the rise of many more extreme right wingers has been facilitated by the obvious ideological capture of institutions like the APA. What ultimately happens is many people will throw the baby out with the bath water and ignore real issues only because these captured institutions raise the point. Many of these people were so confident they are on the right side of history that they gave up any credibility, and now that things are shifting in another direction they’ve entirely lost.

Thanks, Sam. And thanks to the many others who have been writing in. We love writing for you all. Please send us your thoughts on today’s story, and see you tomorrow!

–Max and Max