Of the many changes President Donald Trump has introduced since returning to the Oval Office, few have brought as much intrigue as the Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE was conceived by Trump and his billionaire benefactor, Elon Musk, to slash the size of the federal government. Musk has sought to put DOGE to that purpose from his new perch in the Executive Office of the President, orchestrating power grabs across the federal bureaucracy.
Yet DOGE’s actions extend well beyond the formal mandate laid out in Trump’s executive order establishing it as an official federal agency. Here’s what to know about the initiative and its brazen interventions.
What is the Department of Government Efficiency?
Despite its name, it’s not a department. A department can only be created — or disbanded — by Congress. (Musk came up with “Department of Government Efficiency” as a cheeky “backronym” derived from “doge,” a meme that consists of a picture of a Shiba Inu dog, which served as the inspiration for the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, an object of his obsession.)
Trump’s executive order launching DOGE does so by reorganizing one existing entity in government and creating another, closely related one. First, the order stipulates that the US Digital Service, a small agency in the Executive Office of the President tasked with improving the online tools the public uses to access government services, will be rechristened the US DOGE Service, or USDS.
Second, the order creates what’s known as a “temporary organization” — a short-term form of federal agency created for a specific study or project. This structure has never before been used outside the realm of national security, and it allows Trump to bypass certain laws governing hiring and the ban on using volunteers. The “US DOGE Service Temporary Organization” disbands on July 4, 2026, the original deadline Trump set for DOGE to fulfill its advisory duties. It’s unclear how the responsibilities of the temporary organization will differ from those of USDS.
The order also establishes “DOGE teams” of at least four staffers embedded at each executive agency who will report to Musk and implement “the President’s DOGE Agenda.”
Trump’s order establishes that both the USDS and the temporary organization are led by the USDS administrator, who reports to the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. It’s unclear whether Musk himself is the administrator, or if that person will effectively run the day-to-day operations on Musk’s behalf.
What are DOGE’s responsibilities?
As originally envisaged by Trump, DOGE would have a mission to “pave the way” for his administration to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” as he put it in November.
However, Trump’s executive order establishing DOGE gives it a much narrower formal remit: implementing “the President’s DOGE agenda” by “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The order doesn’t explicitly task the entities with auditing the federal bureaucracy or identifying waste.
Why did Trump narrow DOGE’s scope?
Trump hasn’t explained the change in direction, and the lawyer who helped to draft the executive order, former White House Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley, has left DOGE. But the more focused remit may be intended to help Musk duck ethical scrutiny. A cost-cutting mission for DOGE would have implicated the government’s multi-billion dollar contracts with SpaceX, Musk’s rocket-building company, and cutting regulations would have raised unwelcome questions about Musk’s businesses that are regulated by federal agencies overseeing highway safety, aviation and medical devices.
Is DOGE constrained by this limited scope?
It’s already clear that Musk and Trump will seek to use DOGE to advance the more ambitious goals they originally established for the group.
Trump has already expanded DOGE’s mission beyond the initial executive order. Minutes after signing the order giving DOGE a limited mandate, Trump signed a separate order that appears to broaden it by establishing that DOGE will also have a role in ensuring that the federal government hires “only highly skilled Americans dedicated to the furtherance of American ideals, values, and interests.”
Musk has already used DOGE to assert influence over federal agencies in ways that bear little resemblance to “modernizing Federal technology.” On Jan. 31, newly-appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave DOGE staffers access to the payment system used to manage the money flow of the entire US government, and Musk said DOGE planned to shut down government payments to certain contractors. (Trump later told reporters that Musk does not have this power without White House approval.)
On Feb. 1, a group of DOGE staff members entered the building that houses the United States Agency for International Development, the agency responsible for distributing humanitarian and development assistance around the world, and demanded access to highly classified information. After they met resistance, the White House placed top ranking USAID officials on leave. “USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk posted on X. “Time for it to die.”
Is the use of DOGE for anything not mentioned in Trump’s narrow executive order legal?
Executive orders are legally binding within the executive branch. But that also means that it’s up to the president to enforce them. Like most executive orders, the DOGE order contains legal boilerplate language declaring that it does not create any right or benefit enforceable in court. In short: Trump is free to disregard his own executive order.
However, advocacy groups, public employee unions and individuals have brought lawsuits challenging DOGE’s structure and its access to Treasury and personnel data.
What is Musk’s official role in government?
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Musk is what’s called a special government employee, or SGE. SGEs are a hybrid type of short-term employee traditionally used to meet temporary demands for specific expertise. They may be paid or unpaid, and ordinarily work 130 days or fewer in any one-year span. Such employees are subject to the same conflict-of-interest laws as regular employees, but with key distinctions of interest to Musk: Their financial disclosure reports do not have to be made public, and they’re not required to divest their assets.
What are the ethical implications of Musk’s leadership of DOGE?
On his first day in office, Trump revoked former President Joe Biden’s executive order imposing restrictions on White House staff accepting gifts from lobbyists, and has yet to replace it with a new ethics code. But Trump can’t waive the conflicts-of-interest provisions of law contained in the criminal code.
Those laws apply to everyone at DOGE, whether they’re regular or special employees or volunteers. Under those laws, Musk cannot participate “personally and substantially” in any “decision, approval, disapproval, recommendation, the rendering of advice, investigation, or otherwise” in which he or his companies have a financial interest.
He’s also prohibited from financing a lawsuit against the US government, serving as an agent of any foreign government, or using his position to influence the hiring and firing decisions of a private company.
But the law did not anticipate Musk’s unique position: The executive order gives DOGE – and therefore Musk – “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records.”
“That gives this government contractor who has billions in federal contracts access to sensitive procurement data” that could include trade secrets and enforcement actions against Musk’s companies and its competitors, Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University of St. Louis who studies government ethics, said. In other words, Trump has handed Musk “the keys to the candy store.”
Why did Vivek Ramaswamy leave DOGE?
Ramaswamy, Trump’s presidential rival-turned-ally, was initially tapped to co-lead DOGE alongside Musk, but abandoned the effort to explore a run for Ohio governor instead. Just hours after the inauguration, the White House said the structure of the executive order “requires him to remain outside of DOGE.” Under the Hatch Act, a 1939 civil service law, all executive branch employees except the president and vice president are prohibited from engaging in partisan politics.
Written by: Gregory Korte @Bloomberg
The post “How Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Reshaping the US Government” first appeared on Bloomberg