On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump used an executive order to create the Department of Government Efficiency, commonly known as DOGE — an initiative aimed at reducing federal spending and eliminating government waste.
Here’s everything you need to know about DOGE as it sweeps through Washington, D.C.:
Where did DOGE come from, and who’s in charge?
Then-Trump transition team co-chairman Howard Lutnick said he was the first to propose the Department of Government Efficiency to Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk, purposefully catering to the acronym for Musk’s amusement. The prospect amused the South African billionaire, leading to Trump quickly adopting it.
Doge is one of the internet’s most popular memes, based on the real-life Shiba Inu dog Kabosu. The meme has garnered a real-life impact, with software designers creating the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. According to Coin Gecko, the cryptocurrency is valued at a market cap of over $60.5 billion. Its value shot up after Trump’s election in November.
Trump originally tapped entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE alongside Musk. In November, the then-president-elect said in a statement announcing the DOGE initiative that it would “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the ‘Save America” Movement.’”
But Ramaswamy parted ways with the government efficiency commission in January after a “mutual discussion,” he said in a Fox News interview at the time. Ramaswamy has since announced a gubernatorial run in Ohio.
“I focused more on a constitutional law, legislative-based approach. [Musk] focused more on a technology approach, which is the future approach. No better person to lead that technology, digital approach, than Elon Musk,” Ramaswamy told Fox in January.
By all indications, Musk has been heading up DOGE since the start of Trump’s second term — but the White House has insisted that its actual administrator is Amy Gleason. Gleason has been a senior adviser to the U.S. Digital Service, the organization that the Trump administration transformed into DOGE, since January.
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What is DOGE working on?
Back in November, Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy would “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies — Essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement.”
According to the then-president-elect, the department would work outside of government, but work in close coordination with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. He said it would institute large-scale structural reform with its entrepreneurial approach to government.
Trump went so far as to call DOGE the “‘Manhattan Project’ of our time.” He gave a cut-off date of July 4, 2026, for the agency to accomplish its goals, “the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.”
HAS DOGE REALLY SAVED $55 BILLION?
Within a number of weeks, DOGE said it cut about $900 million worth of contracts at the Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences and at least $182 million worth of contracts in the Department of Health of Human Services. The commission is aiming to cut the General Services Administration’s budget in half and to completely dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
DOGE is also targeting the Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Office of Personnel Management, Department of Defense, Department of the Treasury, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Veterans Affairs.
DOGE is performing the opposite of cuts regarding the Federal Aviation Administration, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying the DOGE team was “going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.”
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Is there a precedent for DOGE?
Despite the name, the Department of Government Efficiency isn’t a federal department. Trump used an executive order to create the advisory board, as approved through the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act.
DOGE has a ready precedent in former President Ronald Reagan’s 1982 Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, otherwise known as the Grace Commission. Reagan created the Grace Commission through Executive Order 12369.
Reagan was credited with debuting the term “drain the swamp” in assigning the commission to root out government waste. He tasked the “outstanding experts from the private sector” with an in-depth examination of the Executive Branch, and put industrialist J. Peter Grace in charge.
While the scope of DOGE is continuously changing, the Grace Commission featured over 150 prominent business leaders working as part of 36 different task forces.
Trump mass layoffs could cost government billions of dollars in unemployment benefits
The work of the commission, originally planned to be six months, ballooned to one and a half years. The final report presented to Congress in January 1984 contained over 2,500 recommendations, which it estimated would save trillions of dollars over decades.
The overwhelming majority of recommendations were not implemented, however, and government debt quickly ballooned.
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What are the criticisms of DOGE?
A number of criticisms have surrounded DOGE since its inception: potential conflicts of interest, given Musk’s contracts with the government through Starlink and SpaceX; Musk wielding significant authority without being nominated to his position; and the cutting of possibly valuable programs and personnel.
“Well, there it is. The man who received more than $15 billion in government contracts over the past decade has been selected to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),” Cambridge professor Jostein Hauge said in a November post on X after the commission was announced. “I can’t think of a larger conflict of interest.”
However during an interview Trump and Musk gave to Sean Hannity, both addressed the concern. In response to a question of if a conflict arose, Musk said, “I’ll recuse myself if it is a conflict.”
“If there’s a conflict, he won’t be involved,” Trump continued.
DOGE has also come under scrutiny for its large-scale cuts across several agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Trump administration laid off most of USAID’s employees, cutting nearly all its programs, and transferred the few that remained to the State Department.
Critics alleged that the move jeopardized U.S. soft power globally and harmed humanitarian efforts in the third world.
The cutting of personnel perceived as unproductive or unnecessary has earned heavy criticism from elected Democrats, who have effectively accused DOGE of cruelty. Democrats have highlighted the complaints of many of the over 10,000 federal workers fired by DOGE.
Republicans’ frustration with DOGE cuts heightened by lack of answers
Democrats have also raised fears of DOGE violating the privacy of Americans through its access to sensitive information.
A email from DOGE was sent to all federal employees, demanding they detail five accomplishments from the week prior. The move was criticized for being unorthodox, and also jeopardizing national security by risking the release of sensitive information from certain agencies, requiring the intervention of some agency heads.
Even some elected Republicans have leveled criticisms against DOGE and Musk, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME), Katie Britt (R-AL), Jerry Moran (R-KS), James Lankford (R-OK), and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). Their criticisms include sloppiness in firings, a lack of transparency, and the accidental freezing of funds for crucial health research.
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) urged Musk to slow down DOGE’s pace of cuts after he was confronted by angry town hall attendees back home in Georgia.
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What legal battles is DOGE facing?
DOGE’s blitz against the federal government has drawn lawsuits nearly every step of the way, beginning with a 30-page lawsuit alleging violations of federal transparency rules filed just moments after Trump took office.
California college students sued the Department of Education over DOGE’s access to financial aid data, while a separate lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers, other unions, and several military veterans pushed a judge to bar DOGE from access to sensitive information in the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management.
A lawsuit from 14 states argued that Musk was overstepping his authority, seeking to bar him from canceling government contracts, ordering spending changes, and other major actions.
A collection of groups, including two government employee unions, the Center for Taxpayer Rights, and Main Street Alliance, filed a lawsuit seeking to block DOGE’s access to the Internal Revenue Service’s tax records, arguing that its “unfettered and lawless access to personal data at levels that far exceed those experienced since Watergate” that could “endanger the privacy of hundreds of millions of Americans.”
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What’s going on at the state level?
States’ responses to DOGE have varied widely, with a handful of Red states enthusiastically seeking to replicate its moves and Blue states seeking to hit back or dampen its effects.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) unveiled the Florida’s DOGE task force to cut spending and waste at the state and local level. Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) said he would create a Division of Government Efficiency under the Oklahoma’s Office of Management and Enterprise Services for similar purposes. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) said she would launch a “state DOGE” to improve government efficiency in Iowa.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) announced a DOGE-like effort but changed up the name, saying the Commission on Government Efficiency will “develop proposals to streamline government, cut inefficient spending, and find the most efficient ways to serve the people of New Hampshire.”
Missouri and Georgia debuted similar efforts.
The primary response of Democrat-run states has been to use their legal authority to undermine and combat DOGE.
“This level of access for unauthorized individuals is unlawful, unprecedented and unacceptable,” the statement from the group of Democratic attorneys general said. “DOGE has no authority to access this information, which they explicitly sought in order to block critical payments that millions of Americans rely on – payments that support health care, childcare and other essential programs.”
Democratic and Republican states have sought to support those laid off by DOGE, with Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) debuting their own efforts to encourage fired federal workers to take advantage of the states’ job markets.
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