Historians utilize documents to analyze historical events, developments, and patterns.

Journalists also rely heavily on documents in their reporting on contemporary events, leading some news organizations to claim that journalism is the “first draft of history.” While this claim may be problematic, journalists and historians certainly share an interest in obtaining, analyzing, and preserving documents.

News organizations play an important role in modern society in obtaining government documents through freedom of information requests (known as FOIA in the United States) and through leaks from civil servants and whistleblowers.

The Washington Post has now obtained internal documents of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team that reveal their “game plan” for gutting agencies of the federal government of the United States through a massive purge of civil servants that is politically motivated and arguably unlawful.

Reporters with The Washington Post are now analyzing these DOGE planning documents and publishing many of them on the news organization’s website.

The Washington Post reports: “A team of workers from the U.S. DOGE Service developed step-by-step plans for carrying out President Donald Trump’s order to purge diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the federal government — and over the next six months intends to expand that campaign dramatically, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. DOGE aims to target staffers who are not in DEI roles and employees who work in offices established by law to ensure equal rights, internal DOGE documents show.

“In the coming weeks, the documents show, DOGE has planned for the Trump administration to trim staff from dozens of offices across the executive branch, including those that protect employees’ civil rights and others that investigate complaints of employment discrimination in the federal workplace. Among the groups targeted are a Veterans Affairs office that works to ensure all veterans receive equal access to care and an office within Health and Human Services that provides information about the health of minority populations,” according to The Washington Post.

“The DOGE team is also looking to place on leave, and ultimately fire, scores of government employees who do not work in DEI roles but who perform functions that DOGE determined were related to DEI, the documents show. It is unclear precisely how DOGE intends to decide whether employees’ jobs are tied to DEI. Such a strategy will push, if not violate, the law and could draw legal challenge, team members wrote in the documents.”

The Washington Post reports on DOGE planning documents and has also published an annotated guide to the documents.

On the idea of news as the “first draft of history, see reporting by Slate,

See also:

Hansen, Kathleen A. and Nora Paul. Future-Proofing the News: Preserving the First Draft of History. Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.