## Notes from 25 December 2025 [[2025-12-24|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2025-12-26|Next note →]] A [working paper](https://lucabellodi.com/material/DOGE_Bellodi_Lee.pdf) by [[Luca Bellodi]] and [[Kyuwon Lee]] provides the first empirical audit of DOGE's "efficiency" drive, analyzing 11,075 contract terminations (valued at ~$53 billion) scraped between February and June 2025. By matching these cancellations against campaign finance records, the authors identified a precise mechanism of political retribution masked as fiscal discipline. The data shows that termination risk was not based on contract performance, but correlated heavily with the firm's political alignment: - A $100,000 increase in donations to the Republican Party **reduced** a firm's probability of contract termination by 15% (0.22 percentage points). - The same amount donated to Democrats **increased** termination probability by 25% (0.35 percentage points). - "Liberal" agencies (e.g., EPA, Education) saw ~8% of their contracts cancelled, compared to just 0.5% in "conservative" agencies like the DoD. The most significant finding is what could be called the "Wisconsin Anomaly", which suggests centralized political control over the timing of cuts. In the months leading up to the critical April 1, 2025, Wisconsin Supreme Court election, DOGE effectively paused targeting in the state. While terminations in other states averaged 95 per month, Wisconsin averaged only 7. Immediately following the election (once the political risk to the GOP subsided) cancellations for Wisconsin firms doubled, diverging sharply from the national trend. This helps to shape the concept of "[[Hostile State Capacity]]": the administration did not just "break" the state, but weaponized its administrative infrastructure (specifically the USDS data systems) to execute targeted partisan punishments. The speed of implementation (statistically significant patterns emerged within just two months) implies the targeting logic was pre-planned rather than a byproduct of chaotic governance.