Did the reporter who broke a news story about the resignation of a DOGE employee work for USAID when the story was published in February 2025? No, that's not true: Katherine Long, the reporter in question, was previously employed by an organization that worked with USAID. At the time of this publication, Long was writing for the Wall Street Journal.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on February 7, 2025. The post read:
Katherine Long, the journalist of the hit piece that got a DOGE employee to resign for spicy posts, is a USAID employee. How is this not a conflict of interest?
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 10 19:38:41 2025 UTC)
The user who published the post used screenshots from this profile of Long (archived here) published on May 14, 2020. In it, Long states that she previously worked "for the federal government, managing USAID projects in Central Asia." However, it never said that she was working directly for USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development). According to the "Experience" section of Long's LinkedIn profile, she worked in communications and outreach with the American Institutes for Research for seven months in 2016. The organization worked with USAID on its Quality Reading Project (archived here).
Additionally, when Long's profile was published, she was working for The Seattle Times. She has worked as a journalist since her role with The Seattle Times, followed by positions at Business Insider and her current position at the Wall Street Journal (archived here).
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Long broke a story about the resignation of Marko Elez, a DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) employee who left the agency after alleged previous racist social media posts from 2024 were discovered (archived here). The article was published on February 7, 2025.
Elon Musk heads DOGE and announced on February 7, 2025, that Elez would be "brought back" (archived here). In his DOGE role, Musk repeatedly criticized USAID and called it a "criminal organization" in a post made on X on February 2, 2025 (archived here).
Lead Stories reached out to USAID for comment on Long's previous employment. We will update this article if a response is received.
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to DOGE can be found here.
