By AJ Dellinger Published March 12, 2025 | Comments (0) | Donald Trump greets Elon Musk Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images During Donald Trumps first term, Steve Bannon explicitly laid out what the administrations strategy would be to get things done: flood the zone with shit. The theory is pretty simple: throw out as much bullshit as possibleknowing that there is only so much attention, outrage, and resistance that people can musterand take wins while everyone else takes the bait. Its not hard to see that this approach has been kicked into hyperdrive during the first months of Trumps second term, facilitated in no small part by Trump-backer and first buddy Elon Musk turning Twitter into a cesspool of distraction, disinformation, and disorientation. In what should be an extremely information-rich environment, its become near-impossible to separate signal from noise. Luckily, some fine folks are keeping their eyes on the ball so that we dont all fall victim to the high-stakes shell game. First up, there is the Project 2025 Tracker. Started as a spreadsheet maintained by two Redditors, the project has grown into a larger resource designed to keep tabs on the Trump administrations progress in implementing the plans laid out in Project 2025a 900-plus page blueprint for consolidating executive power and reshaping the government to serve a right-wing Christian Nationalist agenda. Project 2025 Tracker has broken out the policy recommendations of the Heritage Foundations guiding document, identifying them as goals of the administration and tracking its progress in actually accomplishing those efforts. Those goals are attached to specific agencies and are searchable in the projects database, or you can track the overall progress of the administrations efforts. So far, its going pretty well for them: Project 2025 Tracker estimates that Trump and his team have already accomplished nearly 40% of the goals established by Project 2025. As for Musks attempts to flood the zone, journalist Judd Legum of Popular Information and Musk Watch has launched a new project called DOGE Trackeran audit for the pseudo-agency that claims to be auditing the federal government but somehow keeps having to revise its own numbers. DOGE Tracker has a simple premise: dont take Elon Musk at his word. Instead, the project digs into DOGEs claimed savings, the actual itemized cuts that DOGE has bothered to record, and actual verifiable canceled funding.Youll be shocked (well, no, you wouldnt) to hear that these numbers dont add up. According to DOGE Tracker, the department has claimed to achieve $105 billion in savings as of March 12, 2025, but has only documented $29.9 billion of itand just $8.6 billion in savings can actually be verified. That means that Musk and his crew have overstated what they have saved the country by about 92%. Were barely two months into this iteration of the Trump presidency. Things are not going to slow down. The one will continue to be flooded. Use these tools to filter out the bullshit and pay attention to what matters.Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like Eli Hager, ProPublica Published March 12, 2025 By Matt Novak Published March 12, 2025 By Lucas Ropek Published March 12, 2025 By AJ Dellinger Published March 11, 2025 By Matthew Gault Published March 11, 2025 By Passant Rabie Published March 11, 2025