The Department of Government Efficiency is not like other government agencies. Run by tech billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, the newly created DOGE is just getting started and operating with an unusual level of secrecy, power and reach.
Musk and his key lieutenants — many of whom appear to have no government experience — have thrown agencies into turmoil, rapidly trying to cut and reshape the federal bureaucracy despite questions about the legality of their efforts.
NBC News is working to track what DOGE is doing. Here is what we know so far.
We’re looking to hear from federal government workers. If you have more information on DOGE at your agency, please email us at tips@nbcuni.com or contact us through one of these methods.
What is DOGE?
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to establish DOGE — a nod to an internet meme and cryptocurrency. In order to make it a real government agency without going through Congress, Trump renamed an existing agency — the U.S. Digital Service — as the U.S. DOGE Service, giving it an 18-month mission of “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
It’s supposed to wrap up its work by July 4, 2026.
Trump directed each federal agency to put in place a “DOGE Team” of at least four employees: a lead, an engineer, a human resources specialist and an attorney. The executive order also said that agencies must give DOGE “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”
Since then, Trump has signed an additional executive order that has given the initiative even more power. A summary provided by the White House says that the executive order requests for agencies to “coordinate and consult” with DOGE to cut jobs and limit hiring as well as to focus on hiring only for “essential positions.”
Who works for DOGE?
The staffing of DOGE has been hard to fully map out. DOGE has not released a full staff list, and a number of Musk’s aides have been secretive about their role.
In January, Musk announced that he was looking to hire unpaid “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.” On DOGE’s website, it says that they are currently looking to hire paid, full-time “software engineers, InfoSec engineers, and other technology professionals.”
However, it is not clear how much DOGE staffers are currently paid, if all staffers are paid, or whether they are actual government employees.
NBC News has verified at least 13 people involved with DOGE efforts. They are:
- Adam Ramada: A court declaration obtained by NBC News confirmed that Ramada had been involved with DOGE efforts. In the declaration, it states that Ramada is currently employed at the U.S. DOGE Service, where he has been assigned to assist the Department of Labor by “obtaining accurate and complete data to inform policy decisions.” Previously he worked at Spring Tide Capital, a venture capital firm with ties to one of the co-founders of SpaceX.
- Akash Bobba: NBC News verified that Bobba, 22, had obtained an “administrator” Education Department email account, which may allow him to access potentially sensitive information. Bobba has interned at a hedge fund, Meta and Palantir, according to Wired.
- Amanda Scales: NBC News identified that Scales, 34, is working as the chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management. Scales had been named in an OPM memo regarding compliance to Trump’s executive order regarding DEI and was given her own OPM email address. According to her LinkedIn page, Scales previously worked for Musk’s AI company, xAI.
- Christopher Young: Two employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — an agency within the Federal Reserve that enforces consumer finance laws — said that Young was one of the three DOGE employees put into CFPB’s internal system.
- Cole Killian: NBC News identified Killian, 24, as a DOGE staffer and multiple sources have confirmed that Killian’s name is in the Environmental Protection Agency’s directory. Killian studied math and computer science at McGill University, according to the university website, where he said he conducted research into blockchain technology.
- Edward Coristine: Coristine, 19, attracted early attention for his association with DOGE after Wired reported details about his background, including that he went by the nickname “Big Balls” and operated an online services business called Tesla.sexy. Bloomberg reported that Coristine was fired from an internship after he was accused of leaking proprietary company information with a competitor — raising questions about how he will handle sensitive government data. Earlier this week, Coristine announced that he had been placed in a role at the State Department.
- Ethan Shaotran: Shaotran, like Bobba, also has an “administrator” Department of Education email that can grant him access to potentially sensitive information. Two sources employed at the Department of Education also told NBC News that Shaotran had been able to access the back end of the department’s website. Shaotran was a member of a hackathon team that won second place at xAI.
- Gavin Kliger: NBC News has confirmed that Kliger has been involved at least in DOGE’s efforts at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the CFPB. He was the person who sent an email to USAID employees informing them that they would not be able to get into headquarters any longer. He was also one of three DOGE employees incorporated into the CFPB’s internal system. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile.
- Luke Farritor: NBC News confirmed that Farritor, who had previously been an intern at SpaceX, according to his LinkedIn page, has been involved with DOGE efforts.
- Marko Elez: Elez, 25, resigned from his DOGE role in the Treasury Department on Feb. 6, after The Wall Street Journal reported that he had made comments online that included supporting racism — “Normalize Indian hate” — and eugenics. The following day, Musk said he would give him his job back after receiving support for doing so from both Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Elez worked for X and SpaceX, according to the Journal.
- Nikhil Rajpal: Rajpal was one of the three DOGE employees going into the CFPB, according to two employees who spoke with NBC News. Wired also reported that Rajpal was representing DOGE at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He previously worked at Twitter, according to ProPublica.
- Scott Langmack: NBC News verified that Longmack, the new secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Department, is currently working as a senior adviser at DOGE. Earlier this week, Langmack sent an email out to HUD employees saying that DOGE would be conducting a “comprehensive contract review” across the agency.
- Tom Krause: Krause is currently working as the Treasury Department’s fiscal assistant secretary. The New York Times reported on Krause’s affiliation with DOGE. Krause is the CEO of the tech company Cloud Software Group, according to LinkedIn.
Musk has at least one DOGE representative responsible for monitoring government spending in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. There are also three DOGE employees staffed at the Department of Energy, but Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC that these employees do not have access to the department’s nuclear secrets.
What is DOGE doing?
Workforce reduction
DOGE and Musk have been put in charge of overseeing workforce reduction across the government.
In January, the Trump administration began offering federal workers the opportunity to accept “deferred resignation” offers, which means federal employees would have to resign now but continue to get paid until September. The resignation period began on Jan. 28 and was extended by a federal judge earlier this week.
To accept the offer, federal workers have to simply respond with the word “resign” to an email that was sent out to all federal employees. The email’s subject line, “Fork in the Road,” has been used by Musk in a past email to Twitter employees when he bought the app. He also had an art piece commissioned during that time titled, “A Fork in the Road” which he recently posted onto his X account.
The email was sent out to around 2 million federal employees, with DOGE members hoping for around 5-10% of workers to resign. The White House announced that 75,000 people accepted the “deferred resignation” offer — which is significantly below the typical annual attrition rate in the federal government.
Shutting down USAID
One of the first agencies that DOGE hit was the U.S. Agency for International Development, an agency that delivers billions of dollars of food and medicine to over 100 countries around the world. Musk said that he and Trump were planning on shutting down the agency entirely, despite lacking congressional approval for the decision.
Musk’s DOGE employees attempted to access USAID’s personnel files and security systems, despite pushback from the agency’s leaders. Since DOGE’s USAID infiltration, multiple security leaders at the agency have been put on administrative leave and more than 1,000 employees have been fired or discharged.
“USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk wrote in a post on X. “Time for it to die.”
At USAID, DOGE employees were successful in accessing some information systems, but it is unclear what information they were able to obtain from doing so.
After Trump had signed an executive order that placed a freeze of U.S. foreign aid on inauguration day, USAID has been on the brink of shutting down, with hundreds of agency employees being fired and signs at USAID’s headquarters in Washington being removed. Its webpage also stopped working.
Since Feb. 7, thousands of USAID employees have been put on administrative leave. Two sources familiar with USAID’s plans told NBC News that the agency is expected to be reduced to 290 workers, out of the 5,000 employees who currently work there.
On Feb. 11, USAID’s inspector general since 2023, Paul Martin, was fired after he released a report documenting the negative impacts of downsizing the agency.
Treasury Department data
In early February, DOGE accessed the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s payment system, which stores Social Security numbers and other confidential financial information. The DOGE staff at the Treasury included Tom Krause, who will become the department’s new financial assistant secretary, according to The Washington Post, and Marko Elez.
A handful of lawsuits were then filed claiming that DOGE employees’ access to Treasury Department’s data was violating federal privacy laws, and attorneys for the Department of Justice agreed to temporarily restrict DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s systems.
The Trump administration requested that DOGE representatives Elez and Krause still be able to access the systems and only interact with sensitive data, “as needed … provided that such access to payment records will be ‘read only.’”
A judge later disallowed all special government employees and political appointees, which includes members of DOGE, from accessing the Treasury Department’s sensitive data.
“Grandstanding government efficiency speaks volumes about those who’d rather delay much-needed change with legal shenanigans than work with the Trump Administration of ridding the government of waste, fraud, and abuse,” White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields previously told NBC News in response to the judge’s decision.
Infiltrating CFPB
On Feb. 8, the CFPB’s new acting Director Russell Vought notified employees of a number of directives that he would be putting in place that have effectively stopped the CFPB’s operations.
“They’re pulling hundreds of examiners out of the field — the people who make sure your grandmother isn’t getting ripped off by scammers and your kid isn’t being deceived by predatory student lenders,” a CFPB employee had previously said.
Back in November, Musk had posted on X, “Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.” More recently, Musk posted again about the CFPB, adding, “They did above zero good things, but still need to go.”
The CFPB’s homepage displays “404: Page not found” following Vought’s directives. Its X account has been deleted, too.
CFPB employees also told NBC News that three DOGE employees — Rajpal, Young and Klinger — had gone into the CFPB’s office in Washington.
FEMA data
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Feb. 9 that Trump had authorized Musk to have access to FEMA disaster data, which could include sensitive personal data about disaster victims.
This comes after Trump had talked about the idea of potentially getting rid of FEMA, a sentiment that Musk echoed on X, writing, “FEMA is broken.”
On Monday, Musk wrote an X post that alleged FEMA had “sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.”
Cameron Hamilton, who is currently acting as FEMA’s administrator, responded to Musk’s post writing, “I want to thank the @DOGE team for making me aware of this. Effective yesterday these payments have all been suspended from FEMA. Personnel will be held accountable.”
The next day, four FEMA officials were fired for having ties to funding hotels for immigrants in New York City.
Entering various agency headquarters
The Guardian reported last Tuesday that Musk had begun to send DOGE employees to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. DOGE efforts have also started taking place in the U.S. Department of Education — a department that Trump hopes to abolish with an executive order.
Two sources confirmed to NBC News that DOGE staffers, including Klinger, were at the Department of State in the last few days. In a Monday X post, Coristine said that he had begun working at the Department of State. A Department of State spokesperson previously told NBC News that it “does not comment on internal personnel matters. Any personnel questions pertaining DOGE employees should be directed to their headquarters.”
The Washington Post reported that similar efforts have been taking place at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Labor Department and the Office of Personnel Management.
Terminating government contracts and grants
On its X account, DOGE has continuously posted about the number of contracts that agencies have terminated during the second Trump administration. DOGE has claimed that hundreds of contracts with billions of dollars have been canceled in the last month.
What legal challenges has DOGE faced?
DOGE has been the subject of 12 different lawsuits.
Transparency claims
Three lawsuits filed on Inauguration Day allege that DOGE has violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act — a law that ensures that information from advisory committees is objective and publicly accessible.
In another lawsuit filed that same day, the Center for Biological Diversity argues that the Office of Management and Budget failed to comply with the Freedom of Information Act — a law that lets the public request records from the government — by not providing documents regarding “the presidential transition and interactions between the DOGE, Mr. Elon Musk, Mr. Vivek Ramaswamy, or any others acting on their behalf…”
Treasury Department data
The Treasury Department has been hit with four different lawsuits that allege that granting DOGE members access to their systems, which contains sensitive information, violated several laws.
All four lawsuits allege that the Treasury Department violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a federal law that governs the creation of agencies and how they operate. All the lawsuits also mentioned the Privacy Act, a law that protects personal information in government records.
Privacy claims
Nineteen state attorneys general recently sued the Trump administration arguing that DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s payment systems and sensitive data was unconstitutional.
A similar lawsuit was filed by members of three different federal employee groups — the American Federation of Government Employees, the Service Employees International Union and the Alliance for Retired Americans — alleging that Musk and his staffers had engaged in a data breach. The American Federation of Government Employees was also involved in another suit with several other plaintiffs against Musk, OPM and DOGE. That lawsuit was filed on Tuesday and argues for the defendants to be restricted from accessing sensitive and personal data.
The National Treasury Employees Union also filed a lawsuit against Vought, the CFPB’s acting director, alleging that he told employees to give DOGE staffers “access to all non-classified CFPB systems.” The suit also identifies Young, Rajpal, and Kliger as members of DOGE.
The Education Department was also sued by the University of California Student Association, which looked to restrain DOGE’s ability to access the department’s sensitive information.
Overstepping
A lawsuit filed by labor groups against the Labor Department, DOGE and several others alleges that DOGE lacks “statutory authority” to access the Labor Department’s internal systems. The suit also alleges the defendants violated various privacy laws.
On Feb. 7, Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia allowed for DOGE to continue to access the Labor Department data, saying that the plaintiffs would have to prove that, “at least one particular member is substantially likely to suffer an injury at the hands of the defendant.”
