Nevada City, CA — It started with a whisper at the Safeway Starbucks: local progressive activist Tina Hartfield had received a mysterious digital deposit—1,250 DOGE coins—with the subject line, “Thank You For Believing in Efficiency.” Then came reports from members of Nevada City’s Compost Coalition, the Sierra Foothills Mutual Aid Slack Channel, and three out of five part-time DJs at KVMR. All were receiving DOGE-based government refunds issued by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DGE), a newly minted federal agency tasked with making America “leaner, meaner, and meme-ier.”
But it wasn’t until Terry McMichaels of Penn Valley checked his wallet and found it as empty as the shelves at SPD on kombucha delivery day that the real story began to take shape.
A Refund for Whom?
Marketed originally as Patriotic Performance Refunds, the DOGE disbursements were said to reward citizens who had “demonstrated peak alignment with American innovation values.” But a growing number of confused MAGA supporters are reporting that they’ve received nothing—while their left-leaning neighbors are inexplicably getting richer by the DOGE.
“I was gonna use that DOGE to buy a second AR-15 and maybe start a YouTube channel,” McMichaels lamented while sitting on a camo cooler at the Penn Valley Rodeo Grounds. “Now what do I do? Invest in silver? That’s my divorce money.”
Dozens of Trump voters across the county are echoing his outrage. Many had spent years touting Elon Musk as the nation’s last hope against bureaucratic bloat, electric stoves, and the metric system, only to watch as the DOGE windfalls landed squarely in the laps of folks who once protested SpaceX for cultural appropriation of the stars.
A Minor Algorithmic “Glitch”
The Department of Government Efficiency insists the issue is nothing more than a “minor processing hiccup.” In a press release tweeted from the agency’s official account (@EfficiencyLads), the DGE blamed a flaw in its social credit algorithm.
“Apparently, anyone whose Spotify Wrapped featured Phoebe Bridgers, or who shopped at Whole Foods in the last six months, scored a perfect refund rating,” explained X Æ-Susan, Acting Undersecretary of Algorithmic Rectification, during a livestream conducted entirely via Bitmoji.
“We’re working to recalibrate the system to reward users with more traditional American markers,” she continued. “High concentrations of Toby Keith, lifted pickups, or anti-Biden flag ownership will be weighted more heavily in the next round.”
Still, the explanation has done little to calm the growing fury among the red-capped faithful. Some have accused the DGE of reverse targeting, suggesting that the algorithm deliberately flagged MAGA voters as Russian bots, thereby disqualifying them from refunds entirely. DGE spokespeople refused to confirm or deny this, instead issuing a cryptic GIF of Elon Musk shrugging beside a meme of Reagan riding a cybernetic eagle.
“To rectify this unfortunate situation,” the tweet continued, “we’ll be sending all affected voters a commemorative NFT of Ronald Reagan riding a cybernetic eagle, minted exclusively on the blockchain known as ‘PatriotChain.'”
Local Fallout: Bitterness in the Bitcoin Mines
In true Nevada County fashion, the chaos is manifesting in petty, passive-aggressive ways. One side of the Cornish Christmas planning committee—the vegan one—is flush with DOGE and talking about booking Bon Iver for a “non-denominational solstice jam.” The militia faction, by contrast, has begun stockpiling canned chili and accepting shotgun shells as barter currency.
Even local governance is in disarray.
“Honestly, I expected better from Elon,” sighed Mayor Hilary Hodge, looking over a handwritten letter from a concerned constituent who had stapled a DOGE coin to the paper. “We told people crypto would never come to this county, and frankly, we’re disappointed it arrived like this.”
In nearby Rough and Ready, a group calling itself the People’s Constitutional Redemption Committee (PCR-C) has already launched a plan to start its own crypto coin, “TRUMPYCOIN,” and is demanding the Board of Supervisors declare DOGE ‘enemy script’ and suggesting TRUMPYCOIN could be used exclusively to buy patriotic-themed NFTs and MyPillow merchandise.
A County Divided
Back in downtown Nevada City, Quinn S., a non-binary interpretive dancer who once fasted for 72 hours to protest the existence of Amazon Prime, admits to receiving a DOGE check—but doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
“I thought it was a scam,” they confessed. “But then it showed up in my wallet and now I feel obligated to use it… maybe to fund a mutual aid bike repair zine? Or an herbalist workshop on sustainable kombucha-brewing? Honestly, it’s stressful.”
Even local historian Phil Gunderson is weighing in on the madness:
“DOGE hasn’t caused this much drama since the Great Auburn-Dog Bar Bridge controversy of ’09,” he said, shaking his head. “At least back then, we knew what side we were on. Now it’s leftists with crypto and conservatives begging the government for digital scraps. Strange days.”
Whether the DGE will correct its course or simply ride this meme-fueled glitch into a new American aristocracy of kombucha billionaires remains to be seen.
EDITOR’S NOTE: At press time, Elon Musk had tweeted that he’d never heard of Nevada County and that the entire issue “sounds made up by ChatGPT, TBH.”
