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Edward Coristine, the former DOGE engineer better known as “Big Balls,” is now helping build the Trump administration’s new digital front door to the federal government — an effort aimed at giving Americans one place to navigate information and, eventually, complete services now spread across thousands of government websites.
“I think that the fact that there’s 29,000 government websites is pretty insane,” Coristine told Fox News Digital in a sit-down interview. “And it is the citizens’ objective to have to go figure out which government website they’re supposed to use for each specific thing.”
Coristine — better known around Washington by his attention-grabbing “Big Balls” nickname — sat down with Fox News Digital at the White House to talk about his new role helping build America.gov, what he learned during his time at DOGE, the administration’s plans to make more government services fully digital, his experience being attacked in Washington, and how the nickname that helped make him famous actually came from his dad.
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Coristine is now working with the National Design Studio on the administration’s revamped America.gov, which launched Sept. 29 as an AI-powered single point of entry for information drawn from thousands of government websites. President Donald Trump singled out Coristine during the launch, identifying him as the project’s lead engineer and thanking him for his work.
Coristine said his time at DOGE gave him a firsthand look at the frustration Americans face when trying to navigate federal services and helped shape what he is working on now.
“I think we got a lot of feedback that the American government is hard to interact with because you have to navigate the maze of bureaucratic services,” Coristine said.
The software engineer had already worked in Musk’s orbit before joining DOGE, spending several months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, before later joining the government efficiency effort at 19.
“What I think is really special about America.gov is it presents a single point of entry to find all the information that you need,” he added, including finding government services tailored to the user and asking questions with answers sourced from the federal government.
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Coristine pointed to Medicare as one example, saying Americans currently may have to move between Medicare.gov and the Social Security website to enroll in benefits.
“Companies, generally speaking, only have one website and everything is easy to find,” he said. “We should have the same vision for the government.”
The ambitions for America.gov also go beyond simply helping users find the right information. Coristine said the administration plans to make first-time passport applications fully digital, expanding beyond the online renewal system already available to eligible Americans.
“Specifically with passports, what we’re going to do is we’re gonna make new passports online for the first time ever,” Coristine said, describing the existing process as “very manual.”
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“You have to go in person, you have to get to the post office, you get your photo taken like a CVS or Walgreens,” he said.
Under the planned system, Coristine said users would be able to take their passport photo at home, preview how it would appear on the document and complete the process “without leaving the America.gov website.”
Coristine also offered a glimpse into how Trump has talked about the broader project, comparing the president’s approach to digital government with his background in hospitality.
“I think the president has been a great host for his entire career. He’s been in the hospitality business, right?” Coristine said. “So any great host knows they have to make things easy, they have to make it all feel clean.”
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“President Trump is very focused on removing the potholes from the digital government that make it hard to get things done,” he added.
The role marks the latest chapter in a whirlwind stint in Washington that began at DOGE and quickly thrust the 20-year-old — and his now-famous “Big Balls” nickname — into the national spotlight.
Coristine told Fox News Digital the “Big Balls” moniker had a far less dramatic origin than its eventual notoriety might suggest.
“I got the nickname Big Balls from my dad,” he said, explaining that he eventually made it his LinkedIn URL AND THIS IS WHAT DROVE IT INTO THE NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT, RIGHT?
“It was actually, like, fairly underground, but I was discovered,” Coristine said. “It’s been very funny ever since.”
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Coristine’s profile rose further in August 2025 after he was attacked while walking a female friend back to her car in Washington’s Logan Circle neighborhood, an incident that left him with a broken nose and concussion and drew national attention.
Coristine has said he rushed his friend into the car before the group turned on him, slamming him against the vehicle and throwing punches.
“I really thank President Trump for making D.C. safe again,” Coristine said. “Like all my friends, they’re now able to walk outside.”
“Everyone is very calmed by the National Guard because it feels like the city is so much safer,” he continued. “And the crime numbers totally represent that. The crime has been falling like a knife in D.C.”
Trump established the Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force in March 2025 before launching an intensified federal crime crackdown in August, with the operation delivering more than 16,000 arrests, 3,200 narcotics arrests and nearly 2,000 illegal firearms seized in its first year.
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“So I’m unbelievably grateful to the president for making the city safe and beautiful,” Coristine said.
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