Musk, DOGE see their powers expand while federal staff, remit stay shrouded

By Nancy Cook, Gregory Korte and Dana Hull

 

Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have cracked into closely guarded US government networks, pushed tens of thousands of federal workers to leave their jobs and created a pervasive sense that the rules that once made the bureaucracy function are being torn away.

It’s now clear they are just getting started.

 

President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on Tuesday that makes DOGE even more powerful. Citing a need to root out “waste, bloat and insularity,” Trump ordered a much deeper culling of the federal workforce and granted DOGE broad dominion over agency hiring.

 

 

A beaming Musk, dressed in a black MAGA cap, black overcoat and t-shirt and flanked by his young son, stood next to Trump, seated at the Resolute Desk, and fielded questions about his efforts for roughly 30 minutes in the Oval Office. The billionaire promised that DOGE would hunt down fraud, which he called pervasive across the government, without offering proof.

 

“What we’re talking here, we’re really just talking about adding common sense controls that should be present that haven’t been present,” Musk said.

 

Musk, seemingly enjoying the glow of the lights and the back-and-forth with reporters, went on to vow that DOGE would run transparently, though it has never identified many of its core employees. The group’s government website includes only basic information on its savings targets and links to DOGE-related executive orders.

 

Musk has also declined to publicly lay out any potential conflicts of interest that could arise with his vast business empire, which includes auto giant Tesla Inc., SpaceX, a major government contractor, and the X social-media platform, which has become the default communications portal for large swaths of official Washington. Musk is designated as a “special government employee.”

 

DOGE’s march through the federal government has already seen the group burrow inside more than a dozen federal agencies that oversee everything from health care to weather forecasting to the government’s response to natural disasters. Soon, Trump has said, DOGE will make its way to the Pentagon. 

 

Trump and Musk say they are reducing bureaucracy and government spending, as promised on the campaign trail. Yet it’s unclear how much money they will save, where the potential savings will go, or whether the push impinges on powers that the US Constitution gives to Congress.

 

On Wednesday, Musk called for the US House to remove federal judges who have blocked various moves by DOGE, calling for an “immediate wave of judicial impeachments” that is likely to heighten the sense of constitutional conflict the cost-cutting campaign has already created. 

 

Team Leads 

The continuing aura of mystery around Musk’s venture has also raised questions about how unelected, unknown DOGE staffers will interact with cabinet officials selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate to run government agencies. In the order signed by Trump on Tuesday, the president said that agencies would be directed not to fill any vacancies for career roles that a “DOGE Team Lead” determined shouldn’t be filled.

 

So far, reporting by Bloomberg and other news organizations has identified roughly three dozen individuals who have worked or are working on the DOGE initiative. Many of them have links to Musk’s businesses, and several are young, recent interns with limited work experience. It isn’t clear how many of those people are currently working as DOGE team leads in a US agency.

 

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a question about whether it would release a list of Musk’s team members.

 

DOGE’s incursions into federal databases have also stirred fears that personal data or other highly sensitive information could fall into the wrong hands.

 

“The release of personal information scares the devil out of me,” said Dan Blair, who served as deputy director of the US Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush. “OPM has the personal information on 25 million people — everyone who ever served in the federal government including members of Congress. This is important information that should not be left in the hands of someone who is not accountable.”

 

Musk, 53, first pitched the idea of leading a government efficiency commission in August, when he hosted Trump for a conversation on X. His approach to leading DOGE has recalled tactics he has used in his businesses, including a tendency to make aggressive cutbacks and then reverse any actions he felt went too far.

 

“With respect to government, really the challenge is overcoming bureaucracy,” Musk said at a conference in Germany last month.

 

Canceled Contracts 

Musk arrived in the nation’s capital just before Trump’s inauguration last month and has barely left since, except for a recent weekend at home in Austin, Texas. At the same time, he’s still running his companies: When Tesla reported quarterly earnings Jan. 29, Musk, who has been the CEO of the electric vehicle maker since 2008, led the call with investors.

 

The White House pointed to what it called several cost savings already found by DOGE, including canceling $101 million in contracts at the Department of Education related to history, diversity and inclusion; ending $182 million in Department of Health and Human Services contracts related to administrative tasks, as well as $168,000 for an Anthony Fauci exhibit at NIH; and canceling leases for underutilized buildings at a savings of $44.6 million. 

 

Official US government budget scorekeepers haven’t published any data about any savings related to DOGE.

 

Many longtime government experts say the federal workforce needs an overhaul. Too much paper is still filed by hand and civil-service protections can make it hard to fire low performers. But the style and pace with which Musk is operating has alarmed Democrats on Capitol Hill and organizations that advocate for federal workers.

 

“The chances that something goes wrong in any number of areas are huge, even in places where you would think they would be the most sensitive to, like cybersecurity,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit focused on the effectiveness of the federal workforce.