DOGE Has a Math Problem

Since President Trump took office, Elon Musk and DOGE have wielded an unprecedented level of power to help the administration cut the U.S. government, and they claim to have stopped tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. David A. Fahrenthold, an investigative reporter for The Times, explains why those claims are not what they seem — and what that tells us about Mr. Musk’s project to shrink the federal bureaucracy.