By the end of January, DOGE had installed officials of their choosing at the top of agencies controlling critical parts of the government: Access to information systems across the bureaucracy allowed DOGE to trace and sometimes cease flows of money.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. The
Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been auditing DOGE since March over its data handling at various cabinet-level agencies. 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."
Administration of federal databases 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". On March 28,
Wired reported that DOGE was putting together a team to migrate the SSA's base code from
COBOL to a more modern programming language, with the goal of achieving this in a matter of months; most experts said it should take several years to compile and test this safely.
The Washington Post reported that DOGE and the Homeland Security Department had been behind the Social Security Administration's action, on April 8, of falsely listing over 6,000 living immigrants in their database of dead people, after DOGE made efforts to use information from the Social Security Administration against immigrants; two days later, guards escorted out senior SSA executive Greg Pearre, who clashed with DOGE member
Scott Coulter. In response to a court decision that prevented DOGE from accessing SSA systems, Leland Dudek, an SSA top official and 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". At
HHS, DOGE member
Luke Farritor was made administrator of grants.gov on March 29; one week later grant posting permissions were removed from federal officials, who were instructed to send grant notices to a DOGE-managed email address.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) employees have been told that DOGE will review and approve Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFO). The principal deputy assistant secretary for operations declared in a February 13 sworn statement that DOGE employees grafted to the agency have full access to all unclassified agency records 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. At the
Department of Interior (DOI),
Wired has reported that DOGE members
Tyler Hassen, Stephanie Holmes, and
Katrine Trampe have been seeking unfettered 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 the DOI were placed on leave on March 28, and told they were being investigated for workplace behavior. At the
Customs and Border Protection (CBP), DOGE registered trumpcard.gov, and a
Trump card visa has appeared on immigration forms;
Wired reported that DOGE members
Marko Elez and
Edward Coristine worked on the project. In August 2025, a whistleblower filed a complaint that DOGE uploaded a database of Americans' sensitive Social Security information to an unsecured server, compromising the data of millions of people. The report was filed by the chief data officer of the SSA, identifying information, such as actual Social Security numbers issued by the federal government, of over 300 million Americans and accusing CIO
Aram Moghaddassi of violating agency policies. On January 16, 2026, the agency confessed in a notice of corrections that DOGE staffers had access to sensitive information that was previously denied. The information was traded amongst DOGE staffers and transferred to a non-Social Security server, which is now inaccessible to the agency. Furthermore, these transfers occurred while a federal court order barred DOGE from any data access.
Data collection According to
Wired, DOGE shifted focus by April 2025, to data collection and the exfiltration of sensitive information from government agencies to private databases. The
Privacy Act of 1974 has been cited in up to fourteen lawsuits pertaining to DOGE access to data that could contain sensitive personal data. Several of these lawsuits sought restraining orders and some were temporarily successful. Democratic congressional representative
Gerry Connolly stated "I am concerned that DOGE is moving personal information across agencies without the notification required under the Privacy Act or related laws, such that the American people are wholly unaware their data is being manipulated in this way." On June 6, the Supreme Court ruled DOGE access to sensitive data such as Social Security data was legal. At the
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a whistleblower, Daniel Berulis, revealed in April 2025 that the security to prevent access from unauthorized mobile device systems has been momentarily disabled. Temporary superusers transferred NRLB data (including lawyers contact information) and erased their trace afterwards. During extraction, they left the system exposed to public entry. Berulis noticed that DOGE member
Jordan Wick was publicly working on a backdoor software days before entering NLRB; earlier Wick posted to his code repository several tools seemingly related to his DOGE work. At the
Department of Homeland Security, sources told
Wired that DOGE is building a master database that connects SSA data, IRS data, biometric data, and voting records; DOGE members Edward Coristine, Kyle Schutt, Aram Moghaddassi, and Payton Rehling have been granted access to
United States Immigration and Naturalization Service data, which contain information on refugees, asylum seeker, naturalized citizens, and
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients.
The Washington Post reported that DOGE has access to more than seven agency databases containing sensitive trade and contractual information. The scope of DOGE access raises serious conflict‑of‑interest concerns about potential sharing of government information with Musk's companies. In the same week, the Washington Post reported that DOGE has deployed AI at the
Department of Education (ED) to probe for DEI programs and employee spendings; DOGE members at ED include Brooks Morgan, Alexandra Beynon, and Adam Ramada. On March 7, DOGE deployed its proprietary AI chatbot, intended to help workers with daily tasks, to 1,500 workers at GSA. On March 19, GSA acting administrator and DOGE member
Stephen Ehikian showed a demo of the AI to employees. In April,
Christopher Sweet was tasked with rewriting the
Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) rules and regulations using AI; employees were told that the AI model crawls through the Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR), and is refined by the agency to be deployed through the government. EPA employee communications were monitored by AI for DEI terminology, anti-Trump, or anti-Musk sentiment. On May 22,
Wired reported that it viewed materials showing that DOGE members within the OPM reviewed and classified "Fork in the Road" responses using AI.
Wired reported that employees at the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) observed attempts by
Sahil Lavingia to use the AI tool OpenHands to write code for the department's systems. A
ProPublica investigation published June 6, 2025, found that Sahil Lavingia had written, with the assistance of AI, code for an outdated AI model that identified more than 2,000 contracts at the VA as nonessential. According to ProPublica, the AI
hallucinated some flagged contracts to be worth orders of magnitude more than they were. Experts consulted by ProPublica, as well as Lavingia, said the code was flawed. At the time of the investigation, at least two dozen of the flagged contracts had been canceled. Lavingia also said that another DOGE employee was involved in making the AI more "aggressive" in terminating contracts; VA stood behind its AI cutting program. According to digital governance researcher Nai Lee Kalema, AI enables DOGE's streamlining of federal government, and accelerates algorithmic governance. On July 1,
Politico reported that Thomas Shedd was leading AI.gov, a project to accelerate the deployment of AI in the federal government. In August,
Wired reported that DOGE associates at HUD, led by Christopher Sweet, were developing a tool called SweetREX Deregulation AI designed to quicken the process of reviewing and revising regulation. SweetREX can identify regulations that are not required by statute, draft altered regulations, and sort public comments on proposed changes to federal regulations. Sweet said that the tool was primarily built around
Google's
Gemini LLM. The
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has tasked former DOGE employee Scott Langmack with creating custom AI applications to "accelerate the elimination of the excess regulation constraining American business."
Downsizing of the federal workforce Hiring freeze and firing Trump issued a memorandum titled
Hiring Freeze on his first day in office. The memo asks the OMB director 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". The next day, Charles Ezell, the acting administrator of OPM, ordered federal agencies to close their DEI programs by 5 PM EST the following day.
Scott Kupor was nominated to fill Ezell's role on a permanent basis. Ezell 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 indicated that they were ghostwritten by Noah Peters and Thomas Shenk, both with Project 2025 ties; Peters is also a DOGE member. Ezell sent a memo to federal agencies on the first day of Trump's second term reminding them that they can bypass the
Merit System Protection Board rights when terminating new hires. He then gave them the work week to send Amanda Scales a list of all probationary employees. On February 13, 2025, OPM advised agencies to terminate most of an estimated 200,000 probationary workers. Following the guidance, layoffs cascaded across HHS, the
Federal Aviation Administration, and the
National Nuclear Security Administration.
"Fork in the road" and "Five things" emails DOGE used OPM systems to create the hr@opm.gov address and email all federal employees. On January28, OPM introduced the
deferred resignation program, in which federal employees who resigned by February6 would receive salary and benefits until September30. The program was introduced in an email with the same subject line, "Fork in the road" which Musk used shortly after taking over
Twitter. By the deadline, roughly 75,000 employees had taken the offer. A PDF version of the offer added that workers who accept the buyout offer need to waive their right to legal action. 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". A second "Fork in the road" buyout offer has been sent to
Peace Corps employees.
Mass layoffs On January 31,
Brian Bjelde, senior advisor and DOGE member, told career supervisors that the target was to cut 70% of OPM workforce. On March 7, DOGE deployed its proprietary AI chatbot, intended to help workers with daily tasks, to 1,500 workers at GSA. The deployment came 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".
Riccardo Biasini has modified
autorif in OPM's code repository, a program (as the name suggests) intended to automate the
Reduction in Force (RIF) process.
Coordination to shut down operations On February 1, members of DOGE gained access to some of USAID's classified information. Two security chiefs at USAID attempted to deny DOGE members access to the classified material because they did not meet the requirements to access it; however, the security chiefs were then placed on leave. 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 became acting head of the bureau. He ordered all work be stopped and the Washington DC office to be closed. A mass firing in mid April attempted to reduce the bureau's headcount by approximately 86%, but it has been halted in court. Kliger conducted the mass layoffs, which included the ethics lawyers who warned him against holding $715,000 from companies in conflict with CFPB. DOGE entered the
Department of Education in early February and accessed internal databases with student information. Its team used AI to investigate the department's sensitive financial data. It then announced that $900 million worth of contracts were cut. These contracts were mostly from the
Institute of Education Sciences which is responsible for researching education outcomes in public schools. According to anonymous sources in the education department, DOGE members pushed high ranking Department of Education officials out of their own offices and set up white noise machines to muffle their conversations. DOGE's demands were seen as arbitrary such as cutting 80% of the funding for the web infrastructure supporting student loan applications. On February 12, mass firings began;
Linda McMahon, wrestling mogul turned secretary of education, said she would like the Department of Education "to be closed immediately" because it "is a big con job". By March 11, almost half of the Department of Education workforce had been fired. The
United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is a nonprofit created by congress. Trump fired most of USIP's governing board on March 14, and the remaining three members of the board fired
George Moose. On March 17,
Inter-Con Security allowed DOGE to enter the USIP with their police escort. 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 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. 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 sought 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.
Executive branch shakeup 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 were international organizations and educational institutions. Two days later, DOGE put a $1 spending limit on the SmartPay cards of GSA, OPM, CFPB, and USAID employees. Weeks before Trump's executive order, employees from various agencies complained about loss of Wi-Fi, lack of furniture, room, and bathroom products.
Real assets selloff On March 4, the GSA published a list of 443 properties to be sold, including headquarters, courthouses, and 47 SSA offices. That list was edited the same day to remove about 120 properties and then taken off the GSA website the next day. The public list included a previously undisclosed "highly sensitive federal complex in Springfield, Virginia" where the CIA conducts clandestine operations.
Recontracting At the
Department of the Treasury (USDT), DOGE member
Sam Corcos will lead the creation of an
Application Programming Interface (API) for
IRS data, using Foundry, a platform developed by
Palantir. Earlier,
Wired revealed that two DOGE members, Corcos and
Gavin Kliger, were planning to run a
hackathon with the goal of creating an
API to interconnect all IRS databases. In March, DOGE installed a
Starlink user terminal at the White House complex, raising conflict of interest concerns due to Starlink being a subsidiary of Musk-owned
SpaceX. 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 subscribed to Starlink for its Washington offices in mid-February. In the same week, Musk confirmed that SpaceX had a lease agreement with the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Outsourcing On April 17, ProPublica reported multiple meetings between GSA and
Ramp to outsource the SmartPay credit card program; Ramp's backers include Peter Thiel and Jared Kushner. Ramp has confirmed to TechCrunch it was participating in a
Request for information process.
Privatization During a
Morgan Stanley conference, Musk said that "we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized", naming USPS and
Amtrak as examples. During a private meeting, DOGE member
Leland Dudek proposed to outsource Social Security customer service. Facing difficulties processing federal retirement applications and reductions in force while laying off personnel, OPM has awarded a one-year contract to
Workday, Inc. Deregulation On June 27,
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) staffers told the
Washington Post that a DOGE team was dispatched to the agency with the goal of revising or eliminating 47 regulations by July 4. The
Washington Post revealed a July 1 internal presentation outlining an "AI Deregulation Decision Tool" to analyze more than 200,000 federal regulations, with the objective of eliminating half of them by January 2026.
Savings announcements was located;
Tom's Restaurant below. DOGE announced contracts, grants and leases termination on its website. Federal government contracts are often awarded as
cost-plus contracts where the total price will be determined at a later date. To estimate its savings, DOGE uses the total potential value of these contracts, which federal contracting experts say is an unrealistic overestimate of planned spending. Former Republican budget experts said the cuts were driven by political ideology more than frugality. This contract has already been paid in full. • Three $15 million contracts by the
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) totaling $45 million. • An $8 million contract between the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and D&G Support Services, LLC for "Equal Employment Opportunity". DOGE originally and falsely claimed this contract saved $8 billion, which was subsequently corrected down to $8 million. • A lease for the "Allowance to Former Presidents Office" for the
Carter Center. DOGE announced the lease's annual cost was $128,233 and by terminating it, they saved $544,991, yet benefits under the
Former Presidents Act expired upon Carter's death in December 2024. • On April 4, DOGE claimed having saved $1M by replacing magnetic tapes with digital backups, despite the risks of doing so. Experts noted that no cost and benefit analysis was presented to justify the savings estimate, and that tape remains the cheapest medium to save data. • A lease for the
Risk Management Agency (RMA), a branch of the
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), located in
Topeka, Kansas. DOGE announced the lease's annual cost was $121,818 and by terminating it, they saved $964,396. • A $22 million contract for "research and development in the physical, engineering, and life sciences" for the NOAA
Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). On January 30, 2025, NOAA, at the recommendation of DOGE, modified the contract to "add funding" and "add to increase travel funding" by 4%. On February 6, 2025, the contract was again modified at DOGE's recommendation, to "partially terminate" the contract, with the contract's conclusion date being changed from May 31, 2026, to May 31, 2025. Many terminated contracts have not been disclosed by DOGE. 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 DOGE's opacity. On March 26, DOGE has removed USAID contract details due to "legal reason"; about 45% of the items disappeared from their website, according to CBS News. By May 13, DOGE removed 31 contracts from its Savings tracker one week after the
New York Times reported that 43 of the contracts they audited have been restored. DOGE's initial reported savings was inaccurate due to 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.
Richard Revesz noted that DOGE's "Agency Deregulation Leaderboard" savings ignored the additional costs deregulating health care, finance and energy would put on citizens, especially low income people. DOGE reported approximately $660 million in savings from lease cancellations and non-renewals nationwide as of March 2025. Researchers estimate that lease cancellations in Washington, D.C. alone generated office property value losses of $575 million. Compared to the $76 million in savings for D.C. reported on the DOGE website as of mid-March 2025, the cancellations fail a simple cost-benefit analysis. According to an August analysis of $32.7B in contract savings it could verify,
Politico estimated DOGE saved $1.4B. In deposition,
Nate Cavanaugh admitted that DOGE did not reduce federal deficit; the
Hamilton Project tracker indicated that in 2025 government spending went from $7.1T to $7.558T. == Actions outside of the federal government ==