Department of Government Efficiency

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is an initiative of the second Trump administration tasked with cutting federal spending which it characterizes as "waste, fraud, and abuse". It emerged from discussions between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and was established by executive order on January 20, 2025. DOGE's actions have included accessing government data systems; organizing mass layoffs of federal workers; and cutting climate change initiatives, scientific research, and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs. The initiative has targeted federal agencies including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Department of Education, Social Security Administration (SSA), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Musk's role within DOGE is unclear. The White House has denied, in media and in courts, that Musk is running DOGE and that he is making government decisions; it asserted that he was only a senior advisor to the president. Trump insists that Musk is the head of DOGE, and courts have declared that he must be its de facto leader. Formerly known as the U.S. Digital Service, "USDS" now abbreviates U.S. DOGE Service and comprises the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization (USDSTO), which is scheduled to be dissolved on July 4, 2026, the country's 250th anniversary. The acting administrator of USDS and USDSTO has been named by the White House as Amy Gleason, not Musk.
DOGE has been met with opposition and lawsuits. A federal judge found that Musk's role likely violates the Appointments Clause, and legal experts have warned of a constitutional crisis. Democratic Party members have challenged DOGE's authority, with some calling its actions a "coup". Musk did not divest from companies that are receiving billions in government contracts and are clashing with federal regulators DOGE is trying to slash, creating potential conflicts of interest. Musk has promised transparency while Trump has tried to exempt DOGE from public disclosure rules. The White House has said that DOGE complies with federal law, and that Musk would "excuse himself" if DOGE activities conflicted with his business interests.
Musk has stated a goal of cutting $1 trillion, or about 15% of the federal budget. As of March 24, 2025, DOGE has claimed to have saved $130 billion. Independent analysis has found that DOGE's reports misaccounted tens of billions of dollars, with more than a third of canceled contracts already obligated or yielding no savings. Musk, DOGE, and the Trump administration have made multiple claims of having discovered significant fraud, none of which have held up under scrutiny. According to watchdogs, DOGE is redefining fraud to target federal employees and programs to build political support for their cuts; former Republican budget experts said DOGE cuts were driven by political ideology more than frugality. Despite widespread criticism, Trump has reiterated his support for Musk and DOGE.
Starting in 2023, Musk has financially backed Trump and other Republicans, becoming the largest individual donor of the 2024 election cycle after spending more than US$290 million in campaign contributions. In September 2024, Musk described deregulation as the only path to his Mars colonization program. In his November 2024 Tucker Carlson interview, he admitted: "If Trump loses, I'm fucked".
On September, 5, 2024, Trump promised to the Economic Club of New York: "at the suggestion of Elon Musk [...] I will create a Government Efficiency Commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms." Javier Milei revealed that, prior to the public declaration, Musk had called Federico Sturzenegger to discuss emulating his ministry's deregulation model in the United States.
The New York Times compared the project to Theodore Roosevelt's Keep Commission, Ronald Reagan's Grace Commission, and vice president Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government.
The project emerged from a discussion in the summer of 2024 between Musk and Trump, where Musk floated the idea of a "government efficiency commission". In an August 18 interview to Reuters after a campaign event, Trump said that, if elected, he would be open to giving Musk an advisory role. The next day, an X user suggested "Department of Government Efficiency"; Musk replied "That is the perfect name", and posted "I am willing to serve" with an AI-created image of him in front of a lectern marked "D.O.G.E." The DOGE acronym refers to an internet meme and to Dogecoin, a meme coin that Musk promotes.
On October 27, at a Trump campaign rally in Madison Square Garden, Musk said he thought DOGE could reduce federal spending by "at least" $2 trillion, a figure higher than the 2023 discretionary spending budget. On November 1, Musk mentioned that Ron Paul could work with DOGE; Paul vowed to join; they agreed on cutting military spending; this led nowhere.
Days after the election, a small group, including Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Howard Lutnick, and Brad Smith, started meeting at Mar-a-Lago. On November 12, Trump announced that Musk and Ramaswamy would lead DOGE and analogized it to the Manhattan Project. During an interview with Tucker Carlson on the same day, Musk proposed consolidating the 400 federal agencies: "99 [...] is more than enough". On November 17, Ramaswamy stated that DOGE may eliminate entire agencies and reduce the federal workforce by 75%.
On January 2, 2025, Musk posited that DOGE had a good shot at cutting $1 trillion, but that $2 trillion was the best-case scenario. At the first cabinet meeting of the second Trump administration in February, Musk remained optimistic that $1 trillion–15% of the budget–could be cut.
On November 19, 2024, Rep. Aaron Bean (R-FL) and Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) launched the congressional Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency Caucus (DOGE Caucus) to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-KY) announced plans two days later for a new subcommittee, called Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee, and chaired by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). On November 22, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) was appointed to lead the corresponding Senate DOGE Caucus.
Several Democrats have expressed willingness to work with the Congressional Caucus, including Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), and Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR). Others offered ideas: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) on agency redundancies, online tax forms, fossil fuel subsidies, and IT systems; Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) on government form size; Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) on permit processes; Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) on sending federal agencies back to states. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has sent a letter to Musk with 30 ways to save $2 trillion in the federal budget: stopping waste at the Department of Defense, curbing Medicare insurers abuse, lowering prescription drug costs, cutting into the Federal charter school program, closing tax loopholes for the rich, etc. Her recommendations have been ignored.
On December 17, the Congressional Caucus held its first meeting, with over 60 attendees, including Democrats Steven Horsford (D-NV), Hoyle, and Moskowitz. Lawmakers described it as largely organizational, with discussions about "low-hanging fruit", such as cutting remote work. The next day, Ernst proposed a "Drain the Swamp Act" bill, requiring agencies to relocate 30 percent of Washington, D.C., employees outside the metro area while restricting the ability to telework. Moskowitz proposed days later to make the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Secret Service independent from the Department of Homeland Security. By February 5, the only Democrat to have joined the DOGE Caucus was unsure to stay, seeing no purpose; a week later he renounced: "Elon's been doing it all himself."
On December 2, 2024, Ramaswamy posted that "Most government projects should come with a clear expiry date"; Musk replied that the final step of DOGE was "to delete itself". Trump stated that the entity's work will "conclude" no later than July 4, 2026. This termination will coincide with a "Great American Fair" that Trump has proposed on the 250th anniversary of the United States. Trump called the promised results "the perfect gift to America".
Trump's January 20 order on DOGE (E.O. 14158) created and divided DOGE into a permanent part and a temporary part. What exactly the temporary part consists of has yet to be determined. Trump's February 26 DOGE executive order (E.O. 14222) does not stipulate any termination date.
On January 19, 2025, CBS News reported that Ramaswamy would step away from DOGE and instead run for Ohio governorship; it also reports internal friction between Ramaswamy and Musk, with Musk's supporters "privately undercutting" Ramaswamy for his perceived lack of engagement. A Republican strategist has confided that Ramaswamy was wanted out of D.C. after his post on how Americans "venerated mediocrity over excellence". On January 20, following the second presidential inauguration of Trump, the White House confirmed that Ramaswamy would not join DOGE. On January 27, Ramaswamy denied being ousted and announced his resignation, contrasting his focus on "constitutional law, legislative-based approach" and Musk's "technology approach, which is the future approach".
In his November 12, 2024, announcement, Trump stated that DOGE will work with the Office of Management and Budget to address what he called "massive waste and fraud" in government spending. Less than a week into his presidency, Trump fired 17 inspectors general, whose job is to audit federal agencies.
In their February 11, 2025, joint Oval Office appearance, Trump and Musk used the word "fraud" or "fraudster" about a dozen times. Trump said DOGE discovered "billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse" while Musk suggested that 20 million people received Social Security past age 100, which he later called "the biggest fraud in history". That claim has since been refuted; it rests on a misunderstanding of the database. Karoline Leavitt asserted the day after that the DOGE Subcommittee discovered $2.7 trillion in improper Medicaid and Medicare payments to people overseas. Musk shared the claim on his social. Since then the claim has been refuted. Two judges had rebuked the Trump administration a few days later for alleging fraud without evidence.
In his speech to Congress on March 4, Trump repeated Musk's claim about people of implausible ages receiving social security benefits. In a March 27 interview on Fox News with Brett Baier, Musk suggested that those who criticize DOGE are fraudsters.
On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump established by executive order the "Department of Government Efficiency". In it he renamed the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) the U.S. DOGE Service, and created a temporary entity within USDS that retrofits the project laid out by Trump and Musk during the electoral campaign. The executive order introduced the concept of a "DOGE team", and called for the implementation of an unspecified DOGE agenda. Other executive orders also referred to DOGE, mostly to ask agencies to cooperate with it.
Judges and journalists have struggled to define DOGE; members of the Trump administration have given conflicting accounts of its authority, membership, and leadership. The repurposing of USDS to accommodate the legality of DOGE has been challenged in court. Trump has tried to exempt DOGE from disclosing its internal documentation. In court, DOGE has argued that it is not a government agency; a federal judge found that it needs to abide by the responsibilities of one. DOGE lawyers sought to shield its members by restricting the meaning of "DOGE employee" to having a formal tie with USDS.
Trump has issued several executive orders involving DOGE:
See the list of executive orders in Trump's second presidency for an exhaustive list or orders.
In the section DOGE Structure of the executive order 14158, the reorganization follows three steps: (a) renaming of the United States Digital Service; (b) establishment of a temporary organization; (c) creation of DOGE Teams.
The existing United States Digital Service (USDS) was renamed to "United States DOGE Service" and established within the Executive Office of the President (EOP). The executive order also proclaimed that the new USDS would have "full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems and IT systems" to the "maximum extent consistent with law" (E.O. 14158 Sect. 4b).
The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization (USDSTO) was established within the USDS, intended to advance the president's 18-month DOGE agenda (E.O. 14158 Sect. 3b). The temporary organization will terminate on July 4, 2026 (E.O. 14158 Sect. 3b).
"DOGE Teams" will be embedded within all federal agencies, consisting of at least four employees, some of whom may be special government employees, typically including a team lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney. The members of each team will be determined by the agency head in consultation with the USDS administrator (E.O. 14158 Sect. 3c).
New career appointments at each federal agency are to be made in consultation with the agency's DOGE team lead, who also plays a role in determining whether career appointment vacancies will be filled. The team lead provides the USDS administrator with a monthly hiring report (E.O. 14210, 3b).
Executive order 14222 Sect. 3a tasks DOGE teams with assisting agencies in the elaboration of "a centralized technological system" to record every payment issued by the agency, along with justification by the employee who approved it; this system shall also give agency heads a kill switch to override decisions.
There is a USDS administrator who reports to the White House chief of staff. This administrator also heads the USDSTO (E.O. 14158 Sect. 3b). The administrator's work includes heading a government-wide software modernization initiative. Among the foci are working with agency heads both to promote the interoperability of agency systems, and to enable USDS access to unclassified agency records and systems (E.O. 14158 Sect. 4a, b). The administrator is among those tasked with developing a federal hiring plan for agency heads, and will provide advice on its implementation (E.O. 14170 Sect. 2a, d). Within 240 days of February 11, 2025, the administrator is to provide the president with a report about the implementation of his workforce optimization initiative, including "a recommendation as to whether any of its provisions should be extended, modified, or terminated" (E.O. 14210, Sect. 3f).
On November 2, 2024, Musk reiterated on social media a statement he repeatedly made while campaigning with Trump: "There should be no need for FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests. All government data should be default public for maximum transparency." By repurposing DOGE as a temporary organization, Trump has apparently sidestepped FOIA transparency laws that apply to congressionally funded agencies such as its predecessor, the USDS, when the USDS was under the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Special Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields asserted that DOGE "falls under the Presidential Records Act", which would exempt USDS from disclosing its documents, communications and records to the public and in most judicial actions until at least 2034.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) contested this move and filed a complaint against USDS on February, 20, 2025. CREW argues that "The American people have a right to know how USDS is managing their tax dollars and their data, how it is exercising its authority to influence government operations and the extent to which it is operating outside of its slim legal mandate." On March 10, Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled that the unprecedented authority, the unusual secrecy, and the rapid pace of DOGE justified the release of its internal documents. On March 17, 2025, two representatives from the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees filed a FOIA request questioning whether DOGE is operating outside the bounds of federal law and stated "the Administration and Mr. Musk have hidden behind a veil of secrecy as they systematically dismantle the federal government of the United States".
John Yoo has commented that the ambiguity as to who leads DOGE serves as legal insulation so that "Musk cannot be sued for DOGE activities." Judge Theodore D. Chuang still declared that Musk has "played a leading role" in actions taken by DOGE at USAID, by tweeting on February 2 and 3 about events for which there is a trace in the proper chain of command days later.
The concept of DOGE membership has been contested. GSA head Stephen Ehikian stated "there is no DOGE team at GSA" even though Steve Davis has taken up offices at GSA; the equivocation rests on the concept of "DOGE team", which is not implied by what is usually accepted by the concept of DOGE membership. In a legal case involving the Department of Labor, DOGE lawyers objected to the plaintiffs' meanings of "DOGE employee", "sensitive systems", "access", "records", and "authority", which they deemed "vague and ambiguous"; they restricted the concept of DOGE employee to "individuals who have a formal relationship" with USDS.
In a court case involving the "Fork in the road" mass email, government lawyers presented Jacob Altik as coming from OPM whence he's a DOGE member; Altik presented himself as a lawyer from the White House Personal Office when trying to shut down USADF along with other DOGE members.
At the time of its announcement, DOGE's budget was unknown, and several of the employees were expected to be unpaid volunteers. Little from its budget has been disclosed so far.
To cover for DOGE costs until January 29, 2025, $6.75 million had been apportioned to DOGE from the Information Technology Oversight and Reform (ITOR) account that funded the legacy USDS. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) observed that this was "nearly twice the annual salaries and expenses budget of the White House". DOGE also has a Treasury account, separate from ITOR. From January 30 to February 8, DOGE's budget had more than doubled to $14.4 million; filings show that the added $7.7 million was reserved "for anticipated reimbursements from agencies in support of Software Modernization Initiative".
After reviewing Office of Management and Budget records, ProPublica discovered that, by February 20, DOGE budget neared $40 million. DOGE's funding has come from other federal agencies in the form of transfer payments allowed by the Economy Act. This form of payment implies that DOGE has been treated like a federal agency by the Trump administration. John Lewis and Daniel Jacobson underline the dilemma: "The Trump administration's view is untenable. USDS is either an agency or it is not. And if USDS, as seems apparent, is doing more than advising the President and is instead wielding independent authority, then it faces a more fundamental challenge to its existence: no statute created USDS or vested it with the power it now appears to wield".
DOGE has asked the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to pay for 20 full-time DOGE employees at the highest federal pay grade to modernize its information systems; the terms stipulate that OPM must pay each month in advance, and give DOGE access to its data and systems, as well as provide "operational and technical support". At the current employment rates, this would mean $4.1 million for the work between January 20 and July 4, 2026.
Public disclosures forms indicate that at least three DOGE employees are drawing salaries from the General Services Administration (GSA): Jeremy Lewin ($167,000), Kyle Schutt ($195,200), and Nate Cavanaugh ($120,500). According to DOGE's website, the average GSA employee has been at the agency for 13 years and makes $128,565.
Court documents filed on March 31 revealed that Nate Cavanaugh, a DOGE member who acts as the Institute of Peace (USIP) surrogate president, was instructed to transfer USIP's assets—including its real estate—to the GSA. In a letter to Stephen Ehikian of the GSA, Cavanaugh is seeking an exemption from having to reimburse the value of the building, estimated at $500 million, which would entail the GSA receiving the building for free.
DOGE has outlined a plan to purge federal agencies of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that aligns with Trump's order to put DEI workers on leave, and to terminate DEI offices. It also includes removal of any employee deemed DEI-adjacent, and large-scale firing. While executing its plan, DOGE has gained pervasive access to government data. Its takeover of federal infrastructure is such that it holds information about American citizens, public properties, scientific datasets, official websites, financial records, classified material, and federal contracts; it gained the capacity to terminate programs, destroy data, and contact every federal employee, including judges. DOGE has broadcast its actions through their website and their accounts on Musk's social; this online presence is complemented by Musk's media appearances, especially on Fox News where he presents talking points about their next targets. DOGE's plan maps onto Project 2025 goals.
An internal DOGE report obtained by the Washington Post on February 15, 2025, outlined a three phase process by which it would lead a DEI purge within the federal government:
Records show that those who were workshopping the plan include: Stephanie Holmes, former Jones Day lawyer, Anthony Armstrong, who helped Musk acquire Twitter, Brian Bjelde, longtime SpaceX employee, Noah Peters, involved in Project 2025, and Adam Ramada, a venture capitalist turned DOGE Team lead.
After recalling Musk's story whose punchline is that he could trim the government just by gaining its servers passwords, the New York Times investigative team said: "What started as musings at a dinner party evolved into a radical takeover of the federal bureaucracy." Three weeks into the second Trump presidency, TechCrunch observed that DOGE had "gained unprecedented access to a swath of U.S. government departments—including agencies responsible for managing data on millions of federal employees and a system that handles $6 trillion in payments to Americans. As of March 2025, DOGE has secured access to at least seven sensitive federal databases, and it has inserted itself into more than 20 agencies.
On February 4, acting OPM director Charles Ezell sent a memo to agencies recommending that the role of chief information officer (CIO) be redesignated as "general" rather than "career reserved", which allows political appointees and DOGE members to control any decision related to information policy. The following CIOs are either connected to Musk or Peter Thiel: OMB has Gregory Barbaccia, from Palantir; OPM has Greg Hogan, from SpaceX; DOE has Ryan Riedel, from SpaceX. SSA has Michael Russo, a DOGE member with Musk ties. Before that memo, Thomas Shedd, from Tesla, became the head of GSA's Technology Transformation Services after Steven Reilly resigned over Shedd's requests for administrative access to more than 20 government systems.
On January 30, DOGE revoked database access to OPM senior staff. According to a document leaked to Wired, DOGE attempted to use White House security credentials to access to GSA's infrastructure, read emails, listen to meetings, and remotely connect into laptops; this led an employee to exclaim: "They are acting like this is a takeover of a tech company". At the SSA, DOGE demanded access to databases with information about any holder of a Social Security number; Michael Russo, along with Steve Davis, pressured top officials to give Akash Bobba access to "everything, including source code". The principal deputy assistant secretary for operations at HHS, Gary Rice, declared in a February 13 sworn statement that DOGE employees grafted to the agency have full access to all unclassified agency records and software and IT systems and are tasked, among other things, with the obligation to destroy or erase copied HHS data or information when no longer needed for official purposes. DOGE has been granted the use of a transfer and remote access freeware at the Labor Department.
DOGE installed a Starlink user terminal at the White House complex which raised conflict of interest concerns. In response the White House said that the terminal was donated by Starlink and approved by legal counsel and the United States Secret Service. GSA has subscribed to Musk's internet service for its Washington offices in mid-February.
On March 31, Wired reported that, for weeks, DOGE operatives Tyler Hassen, Stephanie Holmes, and Katrine Trampe have been seeking "full" access to DOI's payroll, human resources, and credentialing systems, like the Federal Personnel and Payroll System (FPPS); they also sought permission to create, pause, and delete email accounts. The chief information and information security officers and the associate solicitor at DOI were placed on leave on March 28, and told they were being investigated for workplace behavior.
On February 11, 2025, in an Oval Office press conference, Musk claimed that DOGE's actions would be "maximally transparent", and promised to publish them on an official government website. Doge.gov went live the next day: the main page displayed its Twitter feed, a "Follow on X" button, and a few tabs; the About page linked to the first executive order. On the same day, the alternative DOGE website Waste.gov was password protected after it was revealed that its landing page showcased the generic theme of a fictional architecture firm featuring the word "diverse", in violation of Trump's executive orders. A few days later, unauthorized people posted messages on Doge.gov, reading "this is a joke of a .gov site" and "THESE 'EXPERTS' LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro." The Daily News observes that, as of end of February, DOGE's website does not "provide names and contact information for the officials and employees associated with its work, an organizational chart or a calendar of past and upcoming activity."
DOGE promised "receipts" on Valentine's Day; they appeared on the 17th, as search results from the FPDS showing contract terminations. How DOGE calculates savings is left unsubstantiated. Analyses found significant discrepancies in its reporting: roughly one third of canceled contracts did not yield any actual savings or were already obligated; in one case it miscounted the value of a $8 million contract it had canceled as $8 billion; $46.5 billion of its purported $55 billion savings were not linked to any specific items. According to watchdogs, DOGE is redefining fraud to target federal employees and programs to build political support for their cuts; former Republican budget experts said DOGE cuts were driven by political ideology more than frugality. Professional auditors have been asked by Wired to evaluate DOGE's audit, and one of them said: "It's a heist, stealing a vast amount of government data." On March 13, journalists discovered that DOGE removed federal identification numbers from the publicly available source code, making their receipts hard to verify. A White House official invoked security to justify this lack of transparency.
HuffPost reported on February 14 that doge.gov was displaying classified information about the staff of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which designs, launches, and builds American spy satellites. Intelligence community leaders and members were critical of the publication and sharing of this information, calling it a security risk. On February 21, an NRO spokesperson told Reuters that the "data posted to the Department of Government Efficiency's website detailing headcount and total wages for the National Reconnaissance Office is not classified, but was not intended for public release".
Vice President JD Vance observed that DOGE matters less for saving money than for "making the bureaucracy responsive to the elected president". Vance has a longstanding collaboration with Kevin Roberts, an architect of Project 2025. Russell Vought, who founded the Center for Renewing America (CRA), was on Project 2025's advisory board and has also been described as a key architect of the project. No later than the summer of 2024, the CRA had started drafting executive orders, regulations, and memos consistent with Project 2025's agenda. Vought also developed a 180-day playbook, a set of actions to take in the Trump administration's first six months, which the project described as "a comprehensive concrete transition plan for each agency." Trump disavowed that project during the election, finding some of its ideas "ridiculous and abysmal" and denying any implication.
For Rep. John Rose, only Project 2025 explains the flow of executive orders. CNN analyzed the first 53 and found that 36 followed it; Politico outlined 37 cases where the orders align with it, some nearly verbatim. Nine of the fifteen agencies DOGE first targeted had been identified by Project 2025 for elimination or downsizing; Bill Hoagland, former Republican staffer and director of the Senate Budget Committee for more than 20 years, considers that the DOGE playbook "has not been for the dollar savings, but more for the philosophical and ideological differences conservatives have with the work these agencies do". The BBC suggests that, by unifying decision chains so that Trump controls independent agencies, DOGE implements the unitary executive theory advocated in Project 2025.
On his very first day, Trump restored Schedule F to speed up firing; earlier he nominated its champion, Russ Vought, to lead OMB. In multiple speeches, Vought swore to put career civil servants "in trauma". In Chapter 2 of the Project 2025's manifesto, Vought writes that OMB director's role is to "bring the bureaucracy in line with all budgetary, regulatory, and management decisions", a task he would not fulfill if "he lacks knowledge of what the agencies are doing", and so must acquire "sufficient visibility into the deep caverns of agency decision-making". As Jill Flipovic notes, "the mass firings, the power grabs, and the agency shutterings are not just Musk's doing. They were planned and proposed well before Trump was even elected, right there for everyone to see, in Project 2025."
Ed Kilgore described Vought as the glue that ties Musk and Republicans: "OMB can exchange intel with DOGE on potential targets in the bureaucracy, while OMB will definitely guide congressional Republicans as they put together massive budget-reconciliation and appropriations bills". Wired and The New York Times report that Vought helped Musk find his way into the bureaucracy. Paul Winfree, Trump's director of budget policy during his first administration, characterized the relationship between Musk and Vought: "When Elon Musk says something, everybody responds to it. The government is not like that [...] You need people like Russ and, quite frankly, the people who Russ has been bringing into OMB as well, who are staffers who do know how to, in fact, push changes through government institutions."
Musk and many other DOGE members are "special government employees", an advisory role limited to a 130-day work period that can be paid or unpaid. Those who earn a substantial salary have to disclose it. Unlike federal workers, special employees are allowed to keep outside salaries and may not need to disclose conflicts of interest. In his March 10 interview on Fox News, Musk told Larry Kudlow that DOGE had around 100 employees and that he planned to double his staff. He also confirmed that DOGE was present in almost every agency. Except for the acting DOGE administrator, Amy Gleason, the leadership structure of DOGE has not been published. In a sworn declaration on March 19, Gleason stated that 79 people were employed by DOGE, and another 10 people were detailed to it from elsewhere in the government. She added that there is no formal organizational chart, that "every member of an agency's DOGE Team is an employee of the agency or a detailee to the agency", and that no DOGE Team members report to anyone at USDS. Sources have reported that Gleason is only the nominal leader of DOGE, and in practice Steve Davis is effectively the leader of DOGE and leads the day-to-day work.
In a February 17 affidavit, Office of Administration director Joshua Fischer told Judge Tanya Chutkan that Musk was not the administrator or an employee of DOGE but a special employee with no "authority to make government decisions." Nevertheless, Trump declared two days later to have put "Musk in charge" of DOGE. At a February 24 hearing, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly questioned the constitutionality of USDS and asked the government attorney, Bradley Humphreys, about its structure. He said that he ignored Musk's role beyond that of Trump advisor. On the next day, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Musk is "overseeing DOGE" but refused to identify its administrator after being asked repeatedly.
Later the same day, the White House named Amy Gleason as the acting DOGE administrator; Gleason worked from 2018 through 2021 at US Digital Service. On February 28, Justice Department lawyer Joshua Gardner told Judge Theodore D. Chuang that he was unable to identify the administrator of DOGE before Gleason. In a filing submitted under seal but partly released in March, the Trump administration recognized that Gleason has been working at Health and Human Services at the same time that she said having worked full-time as an administrator of USDS.
In his March 4 joint address to Congress, Trump repeated that DOGE "is headed by Elon Musk". After being quoted in lawsuits days later, Trump reportedly told members of his Cabinet that they rather than Musk and DOGE were to make staffing decisions for their departments, but a few hours later remonstrated "If they don't cut, then Elon will do the cutting." On March 18, the court determined that Musk was "the leader of DOGE" and that his actions in dismantling USAID violated the Appointments Clause. In a separate lawsuit involving Musk's company X, his own lawyers stated that he is "in charge of" DOGE.
On February 2, 2025, Wired reported that DOGE hired software engineers aged 19–24 with no experience in government, including Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Marko Elez, Gautier Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. There are reports of 15-minute video interviews DOGE members conducted without identifying themselves, with queries such as "whom they would choose to fire from their teams if they had to pick one person", and surprise code reviews, silently supervised by "extremely young men". The team has been called "Doge Kids" by officials, reporters, and social media users.
According to Brian Krebs, Coristine's past deeds pose security risks: The 19-year-old son of the LesserEvil owner leaked information from the data-security company where he was interning, mingled with 'The Com', a cybercriminal network, and owns web domains registered in Russia. His online footprint also makes security clearance tough, according to security experts interviewed by Wired. As of February 19, Coristine is a staff member at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. On March 27, documents resurfaced showing that Coristine has provided tech support to EGodly, a cybercrime group.
Amplification of extremism also raises questions: Kliger, 25, has an edgelord past, crediting Ron Unz for his political awakening and reposting the likes of Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, along with white supremacist memes. Elez has shared similar viewpoints, with posts such as "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity" or "Normalize Indian hate".
On February 24, the Washington Post reported that Farritor and Kliger manually blocked multiple times payments for life critical programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had approved by decree. Court documents filed on March 14 have revealed that DOGE staffer Marko Elez violated U.S. Treasury Department policy by mishandling personal information.
After the February 2 Wired article, names of DOGE members started to circulate; Musk accused those who did so on his social of committing a crime. The next day, interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin released a statement on Musk's social saying that certain individuals and/or groups have committed acts that appear to violate the law in targeting DOGE employees. Musk quoted that statement, adding "Don't mess with DOGE". On February 7, Martin sent Musk and his deputy Steve Davis a letter (also posted on his social) announcing that he had opened an investigation into government employees Musk accused of stealing property and making threats. According to New York Times reporter Ken Bensinger, Musk was attempting to describe traditional journalism as "doxxing" in order to invalidate the role of the media in government accountability.
After the names of DOGE employees began circulating on Reddit—and some users suggested violence—site administrators posted that Reddit had "seen an increase in content in several communities that violate Reddit Rules. Debate and dissent are welcome on Reddit—threats and doxing are not." The popular subreddit r/WhitePeopleTwitter was subsequently banned for three days, and a small subreddit called r/IsElonDeadYet was permanently removed.
On February 11, Musk reshared a post by Laura Loomer with screenshots that identified Judge John J. McConnell Jr.'s daughter, along with her financial disclosure forms from the department. This reshare followed McConnell's order to unfreeze federal grants. On February 12, Rep. Andrew Clyde announced that he was drafting "articles" of impeachment against McConnell, echoing Musk's claim that there "needs to be an immediate wave of judicial impeachments, not just one".
TechCrunch sorts DOGE members as inner circle, senior figures, worker bees, or aides. The New York Times divides them into leadership, staffers, and allies. Wired maps three network types: conservative law, Trump administrations, and Silicon Valley. DOGE membership extends beyond employee status: many Musk allies are venture capitalists and startup founders, and many DOGE members are embedded in other government units. Few have a known contractual status; some have tried to conceal their roles. Whether any given employee belongs to the permanent (USDS) or temporary (USDSTO) unit remains unclear.
Staff roles follow the DOGE teams mentioned in the first executive order: "at least four employees" with one "Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney". On February 2, 2025, Musk said on X that DOGE workers were putting in 120 hours a week. This was questioned for leaving dangerously little time to sleep.
On February 18, 2025, CNN sent FOIA requests for security clearance records of DOGE team members who were granted access to sensitive or classified government networks; the response, from an OPM email address, was: "Good luck with that they just got rid of the entire privacy team". Sources told CNN that employees from the communications staff and those who handle FOIA requests were also dismissed.
By the end of January, DOGE had installed Musk acolytes at the top of agencies controlling critical parts of the government: the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the United States Digital Service (USDS), and the General Services Administration (GSA). As it was forcing its way into federal headquarters, many heads with whom they clashed have been replaced by DOGE members. Access to information systems across the bureaucracy allowed DOGE to trace money flows and determine how to choke it off: it had coordinated with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to dismantle government units, such as Agency for International Development (USAID), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the Department of Education (ED). Their bigger targets remain the Treasury (USDT), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and Health and Human Services (HHS): spendings by HHS amount to 31%, by SSA to 16%, and by USDT to 15% of the federal budget—almost two thirds of all government expenses. In a lawsuit featuring DOGE's culture of secrecy, Judge Christopher R. Cooper found that it has "obtained unprecedented access to sensitive personal and classified data and payment systems across federal agencies", and that it "appears to have the power [...] to drastically reshape and even eliminate them wholesale" without congressional input.
Before Trump's first day in office, Musk acolyte Amanda Scales was already chief of staff at OPM, which handles human resources. On the evening of January 20, the acting administrator of OPM, Charles Ezell, sent a memo to federal agencies reminding them that new hires can be terminated while bypassing Merit System Protection Board rights, and giving them the work week to send Scales a list of all probationary employees. Ezell will be replaced by Scott Kupor, tied to Musk ally Marc Andreessen. OPM manages more than $1 trillion in assets, retirement funds, health and life insurance benefits for federal employees and their spouses. It provides custody to service records of 2.1 million workers and citizens who have applied for federal jobs; it also maintains an email list of nearly every federal employee.
Since around the time Trump was sworn in, Musk lieutenant Steve Davis and his family have been sleeping at the GSA headquarters. The agency holds data about federal real estate, procurement, and information infrastructure; according to a former director, it holds "incredible amounts of sensitive or proprietary business information that [businesses] had to share with the government in order to get a contract or take some action". It manages the SmartPay system, the largest government charge card and commercial payment program in the world. It also oversees the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), which details every contract action over $3,000; DOGE has had the power to modify its records before February 14, the day they promised "receipts".
On January 21, David Lebryk denied DOGE access to USDT systems. Newly confirmed Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, overruled that decision later that day, and Lebryk resigned. He was replaced by Tom Krause, a DOGE member who kept his role of CEO at the Cloud Software Group. On February 13, DOGE entered the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and two days later DOGE was seeking access to the Integrated Data Retrieval System. USDT (through IRS) has names, addresses, social security numbers from tax payers, their income and net worth, bank information for direct deposits, itemization detail such as charitable donations, bankruptcy history or identity theft.
On February 18, Michelle King either stepped down from her role at the SSA or was fired, to be replaced by Leland Dudek, a move Musk celebrated on his social; after a belligerent LinkedIn post in which he has bragged about having "bullied agency executives" to facilitate DOGE's work, Dudek has been signing off DOGE's decisions. Chief of staff Tiffany Flick has also retired, after having "witnessed a disregard for critical processes—like providing the 'least privileged' access based on a 'need to know'—and lack of interest in understanding our systems and programs", and accusing DOGE member Michael Russo of supporting Musk's fantastical claims about dead people receiving benefits. Its systems contain: records of lifetime wages and earnings; social security and bank account numbers, the type and amount of benefits individuals received; citizenship status; disability and medical information.
Tapping into OPM systems allowed DOGE to create the hr@opm.gov address, get a list of federal employees, and contact them. On January 28, the OPM offered workers a "deferred resignation" program, stating that those who resigned by February 6 would receive salary and benefits until September 30. Echoing the playbook Musk used against Twitter employees, the same subject line has been emailed: "Fork in the road" By the deadline, roughly 75,000 employees had taken the offer. Randolph Daniel Moss, overseeing a lawsuit aimed at blocking such offer, received it, even if federal judges have life tenure.
On February 22, Musk posted on X ordering federal workers to summarize their weekly accomplishments, warning that noncompliance would be seen as resignation. Shortly after, OPM emailed employees requesting five bullet point summaries. The Department of Defense ordered staff and the United States Armed Forces to ignore Musk's request; the FBI and State Department told their employees not to respond; NASA employees were advised to delay their response; HHS explicitly warned employees not to participate in the email request, due to the fact that replies might be "read by malign foreign actors." Two days later, OPM stated that responding to the initial email was voluntary; however, Musk tweeted that if employees still refused to respond, it would "result in termination". The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) vowed to challenge any terminations, arguing OPM lacked the authority to send these emails.
On January 20, Trump issued a memorandum simply called Hiring Freeze, in which he asked the director of OMB to submit a plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce, in consultation with the director of OPM and "the Administrator of the United States DOGE Service". On January 21, Ezell sent agencies directives to close "DEI offices by 5 PM EST on Wednesday, January 22". and also asked employees to report those who would hide programs "by using coded or imprecise language". On January 27, a memo was sent instructing OPM employees to work on-site full-time. Investigative journalist Molly White found that metadata on some of these memos indicate that they were ghostwritten by Noah Peters and Thomas Shenk, both with Project 2025 ties; Peters is also a DOGE member. On January 31, Brian Bjelde, senior advisor and DOGE member, has told career supervisors that the target was to cut 70% of OPM workforce.
On February 13, OPM advised agencies to terminate most of an estimated 200,000 probationary workers (federal workers who have under one year in their current position). Following the guidance, layoffs cascaded including 1,000 employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, 5,200 employees across U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and 1,300 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Included in the probationary cuts were several Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees hired for radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) employees who are responsible for designing, building, and overseeing the US nuclear weapons stockpile. Riccardo Biasini has been modifying autorif in OPM's code repository; as the name suggests, the program is intended to automatize the RIF process.
On February 24, GSA acting administrator and DOGE member Stephen Ehikian warned that he would apply RIF measures to the agency. On March 7, DOGE has deployed its proprietary AI chatbot, intended to help workers with daily tasks, to 1,500 workers at GSA. The deployment comes after Thomas Shedd fired around 90 technologists and announced that the GSA branch he supervises would shrink by 50 percent. Among them was the 18F team, which Shedd deemed "non-essential".
On April 3, Challenger, Gray & Christmas has reported 216,670 job cuts due to DOGE actions in March 2025.
On February 1, members of DOGE gained access to classified information of USAID without sufficient security clearances. DOGE personnel asked to be let into USAID headquarters and threatened to call the US Marshals, which by law receive their direction from the attorney general and the director of the United States Marshals Service. Two security chiefs at USAID attempted to deny DOGE access to the classified material, as they claimed they were "legally obligated" to do; however, they were then placed on leave by the Trump administration. On March 18, Jeremy Lewin was appointed as a deputy administrator in USAID; Lewin wrote a memo on March 28 to discontinue USAID's mission, after a judge explicitly ordered that he and DOGE should be barred from making further cuts at the agency.
On February 6, CFPB staff were told by email that DOGE members (including Nikhil Rajpal, Gavin Kliger, and Chris Young) entered the agency building and would require access to CFPB data, systems, and equipment. The next evening, Russ Vought nominated himself head of it, DOGE deleted its X account, and Musk tweeted "CFPB RIP".
DOGE entered ED in early February and got access to internal databases with student information shortly after. One week later, after having fed the department's financial data (including sensitive one) into a cloud-based AI, DOGE announced that it slashed $900 million from the Institute of Education Sciences. By that time, DOGE members had been pushing high ranking ED officials out of their offices and had set up white noise machines to muffle their voices; according to employees, they had been competing with one another to make the biggest budget cuts headlines while making arbitrary demands, such as cutting 80% of the funding for student loan applications websites and services. On the next day, mass firings began; Linda McMahon, wrestling mogul turned secretary of education, said she would like ED "to be closed immediately" because it "is a big con job". By March 11, almost half of the ED workforce had been fired.
On March 17, Inter-Con security allowed DOGE to enter the Institute for Peace (USIP); Inter-Con vice president Derrick Hanna informed USIP that DOGE had contacted them and "threatened all of their federal contracts if they did not permit entry for DOGE". USIP has filed a lawsuit against DOGE, claiming that they "have plundered the offices in an effort to access and gain control of the Institute's infrastructure, including sensitive computer systems"; the filing showed photos of financial documents placed in a bin labeled "shred", and an USIP logo ripped down from the wall.
On February 26, Trump issued an executive order that includes the immediate disposal of surplus federal property and reduce non-essential travel. The first agencies to be targeted are international organizations or overseas and educational institutions. DOGE has put a $1 spending limit to the SmartPay cards of GSA, OPM, CFPB, and USAID employees, with plans to extend the limits to other administrations. On March 4, the GSA published a list of 443 properties to be sold, including headquarters and courthouses. That list was edited the same day to remove about 120 properties and then taken off the GSA website the next day. Wired subsequently reported that the list included a previously undisclosed "highly sensitive federal complex in Springfield, Virginia" where the CIA conducts clandestine operations.
GSA listed 47 SSA office closures, 26 planned for 2025. The announcement has come at the same time that SSA declared its intention to shutdown phone authentication. This policy would make services less accessible to children, people without a driver's license, disabled persons, and the elderly. In response to a court decision that prevented DOGE to access SSA systems, SSA top official, Leland Dudek, a DOGE member, has been threatening to shut down the agency: “Really, I want to turn it off and let the courts figure out how they want to run a federal agency”.
On December 12, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump team and officials from DOGE had inquired about abolishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It also reported on several differing plans to combine and restructure the FDIC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Reserve. USDT cuts involve the closure of many IRS Taxpayer Assistance Centers.
On February 17, 2025, DOGE released the names of 1,127 federal contracts spanning 39 federal departments and agencies that DOGE says had been terminated. Only 300 of these have been formally terminated.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of these contracts found inaccuracies of DOGE's reported savings, including counting contracts multiple times, listing contracts that have already been paid as savings, and misrepresenting potential savings based on contract limits rather than actual spending. On February 24, 2025, DOGE released more documents, with the total nearing 2,300 contracts released. The Associated Press found that "nearly 40%" of the terminated contracts would not save the government any money.
Terminated contracts and leases announced by DOGE in February 2025 include:
DOGE is the subject of intense litigation. There are multiple lawsuits concerning its downsizing of USAID, privacy and security concerns related to its accessing of computer systems and records across the government, its refusal to make its own records public, and Musk's authority.
The establishment of the DOGE has garnered attention for its goals of reducing government spending and bureaucracy. While supporters advocate for increased efficiency and fiscal responsibility, critics express skepticism regarding the feasibility of achieving significant budget cuts without affecting essential services. Concerns have also been raised about potential conflicts of interest, given the private sector backgrounds of key figures involved in DOGE.
As of December 2024, most Republicans had shown support for DOGE. On the contrary, federal workers and supporters have stated during protests that DOGE is conducting a "corporate coup" and a "hostile takeover" of the government. Protestors across the United States have demonstrated against Musk, DOGE, Tesla, and the Office of Personnel Management.
In February 2025, Florida governor Ron DeSantis established the Florida Department of Government Efficiency, the first state-level equivalent of DOGE.
Government organization and management experts noted that the DOGE effort "appears to go beyond IT and HR initiatives to include areas such as procurement, real property, and substantive agency operations". Some experts warn that the actions could negatively impact the economy and markets and may be "leaving taxpayers with an enormous bill and federal agencies in operational disarray".
On March 25, 2025, there were reports that services at the Social Security Administration (SSA) were already breaking down: multiple website crashes, call waiting times two times longer than the previous year's, a 24% answer rate, and an increase in scams; the attrition rate at the Portland field office was described as "off the charts".
Treasury Department and IRS officials have predicted a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline—more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue; they noted that "DOGE-driven workforce reductions" were a factor.
As of April 6, Dr. Brooke Nichols' Impact Counter estimates that there have been more than 170,000 deaths associated with the freeze on foreign aid.