In an article centered on the Musk-led DOGE’s move to poke heavily into each of the Federal government’s agencies with a view to identifying misspent—for whatever reason—monies, Alexander Ward and Ginger Adams Otis quoted Richard Painter, Bush the Younger’s Ethics Lawyer, as he lamented,

This is completely unprecedented. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

That really is a weak argument against DOGE’s moves. Precedent does matter; it gives a measure of stability and predictability in law and in economic activities and in other milieus.

Precedent isn’t immutable, though; making unprecedented moves isn’t even illegal, nor should it be. If we never did anything because it would be unprecedented, we’d never get anything done. Everything that’s ever been done was done for the first time—was unprecedented—when the doing got started initially.

“Completely unprecedented”—so what? We’ll see soon enough the outcomes of these unprecedented moves.