The White House says Elon Musk is not leading the Department of Government Efficiency.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
A recent White House court filing says Elon Musk lacks any "actual or formal authority."
Musk isn't technically DOGE's leader, and his job title is "unlisted," as BI previously reported.
A recent email sent to the newly rebranded DOGE agency didn't identify the leader.
Elon Musk is often called the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency. But a recent White House court filing said the assumed leader of DOGE had "no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself."
"In his role as Senior Advisor to the President, Mr. Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors," Joshua Fisher, the director of the Office of Administration, wrote in the filing. "Like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself."
Fisher wrote that Musk's position was akin to the senior advisor Anita Dunn's role in President Joe Biden's White House.
Later Tuesday afternoon, Trump told reporters that Musk could be called "whatever you want."
"Elon is to me a patriot," Trump said after signing a series of executive orders at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. "You could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want."
Musk's job title, according to a White House record, is "unlisted," as Business Insider previously reported. When Trump created DOGE via executive order, he incorporated it into the White House by turning the US Digital Service into the US DOGE Service. The executive order said an "administrator" would lead DOGE but didn't identify the person in the role.
Monday's court filing leaves little up for debate about Musk's relationship to DOGE.
"He is not an employee of the US DOGE Service or US DOGE Service Temporary Organization," it said. "Mr. Musk is not the US DOGE Service Administrator."
A return-to-work email sent from an email account called "admin" to USDS employees didn't shed any light on who was leading the commission. The email, a copy of which BI reviewed, notified all staffers that they must begin working in person by April 15 but didn't specify who was leading the rebranded USDS. The "admin" email was signed "US DOGE Service."
Early this month, a White House spokesman told BI that Musk was a special government employee, a title that exempts him from the typical ethics and conflict-of-interest rules that federal workers face. He won't be paid and can't serve for more than 130 days in a year.
DOGE's organizational structure carries importance beyond just how Musk and its staffers do their business.
Katie Miller, a spokesperson for DOGE, has said on X that since the group is part of the Executive Office of the President, its records are subject to the Presidential Records Act. By making such a claim, the White House would effectively seal DOGE's records until at least five years after Trump leaves office in 2029.
DOGE is scheduled to complete its work by July 4, 2026, in time for the 250th anniversary of the US's independence.
Representatives for the White House, Musk, and DOGE did not respond to a request for comment from BI.
Jack Newsham contributed reporting.
Do you work at a federal agency? Have a tip about DOGE? Share your experience and thoughts with this reporter at [email protected] or via Signal at alicetecotzky.05.
A memo sent by Matthew J. Vaeth at the Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday, January 29, and addressed to the heads of executive departments and agencies, says that the memorandum is no longer in effect.
"OMB Memorandum M-25-13 is rescinded. If you have questions about implementing the President's Executive Orders, please contact your agency General Counsel," the memo, seen by Business Insider, reads. M-25-13 was the memo that the OMB, which oversees federal agencies and the federal budget, sent out Monday, pausing nearly all federal grants and loans.
On Wednesday afternoon, a federal judge said he intended to block the order after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the freeze was still in effect.
"I'm inclined to grant the restraining order," U.S. District Judge Jack McConnell, a Rhode Island-based appointee of President Barack Obama, said during a court hearing, according to Politico. "I fear that the administration is acting with a distinction without a difference."
Earlier, Leavitt confirmed that the OMB order had been withdrawn. She said Trump's earlier executive orders, which imposed a freeze on new regulations and terminated diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, remain in effect.
"This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze," Leavitt wrote on X. "It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court's injunction. The President's EO's on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented."
Some Democratic lawmakers quickly took a victory lap, celebrating the OMB order's demise.
"This is Trump's first major loss. When we fight, we win," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York wrote on X.
Other Democrats cautioned that just because the OMB order was rescinded does not mean the broader fight is over.
"I think all they know is they got a backlash they didn't expect, and so we're not assuming the rescission is to be taken as a resolution," Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia told reporters at the Capitol. "So we're going to be on the floor tonight raising hell about this. I'm going to meet with my statewide Head Start programs right now. We're expecting that this battle is just beginning."
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said the White House may have exacerbated the situation.
"What that order may have been designed to do is circumvent the court order," Murphy told reporters. "So everybody read that memo and thought crisis averted. The crisis might have just deepened."
Murphy said the scope of Wednesday's White House order is unclear since OMB may have just rescinded the controversial order but not the underlying funding freeze.
Congressional lawmakers, including some Republicans, expressed confusion over the extent of the initial memo. Popular charities, including Meals on Wheels, were unclear if the federal grants they received would continue to keep money following. Lawyers advised NGOs to ensure they had enough cash to wait out the pause.
The Trump administration, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of Personnel Management did not respond to a request for comment from BI.
Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he would test the extent of presidential power to cut federal spending unilaterally. He and his allies view a Nixon-era law as unconstitutional, and the initial OMB memo appeared to defy the law that leaves the executive branch only narrow grounds to refuse to spend funds approved by Congress.
Trump originally promised Elon Musk's DOGE would operate outside the government.
But his executive order instead renamed the Obama-era US Digital Service, making DOGE part of the federal goverment.
Experts say the approach swats down certain legal challenges while creating issues in other areas.
On November 12, Donald Trump announced Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency," would "provide advice and guidance from outside of government" to help roll back bad regulations and slash government spending.
The DOGE that Trump created via executive order on January 20 looks almost nothing like that: it's officially a part of the White House and reports to chief of staff Susie Wiles, it will have the power to hire government employees, and its stated mission is to update the federal government's software and IT systems — a far cry from the vision Musk outlined of cutting up to $2 trillion in annual spending.
"I was disappointed to see the limited scope that DOGE is now responsible for," said Romina Boccia, the director of budget and entitlements policy at the libertarian Cato Institute. "On the bright side, it may mean that it will be more likely to actually fulfill its mandate because it's more targeted."
Trump's executive order states DOGE will replace the US Digital Service, or USDS — a sort of technical special ops team created during the Obama administration after the meltdown of Healthcare.gov — and encompass a "temporary organization" that makes it easier to hire employees. Every federal department has to create a four-person team to liaise with the new office, which is supposed to wrap up its work by mid-2026.
"I think it's noteworthy that the announcement calls for an HR specialist, an attorney, an IT specialist, and then an overall manager to be placed in each of the applicable agencies," Craig Saperstein, a partner at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman who specializes in government relations, told Business Insider.
DOGE, he said, may still be focused on cutting regulations, changing workforce rules, and streamlining government operations.
The decision to put DOGE inside the federal government is "perhaps the result of the lawyers advising DOGE and the administration realizing that their proposed private structure for the DOGE would be subject to legal challenge," Caleb Burns, a partner at Wiley Rein, told BI of the new structure. "It may be the necessary evil from their perspective, to avoid a court fight."
Now that DOGE is situated inside the government, it is subject to new transparency and ethical rules, Aimee Ghosh, another partner at Pillsbury, said, particularly around public information laws.
"There's more mechanisms to request it or demand it, or for outside groups to file litigation demanding access," she said, while noting it's still unclear how public information statutes will apply to DOGE.
Trump, Musk, and DOGE did not return requests for comment.
Limits on power
Being part of the government means Musk can't use his private fortune to fund DOGE's operations. Tom Schatz, whose group Citizens Against Government Waste criticizes federal spending, said that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The USDS has suffered from mission creep as its headcount has grown to more than 200 people, he said, while Musk's team has been reported to have a staff of about 20.
But Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, said there would be easy ways for Musk to get around those limits. The DOGE temporary organization is allowed to use volunteers and so-called special government employees who may not have to disclose information about their assets and income to ethics officials, he said.
The White House Counsel's Office and the Office of Government Ethics will likely weigh in on whether Musk or any DOGE staff will need to sell any assets or steer clear of discussions about certain agencies to avoid conflicts of interest. But Hedtler-Gaudette said those sign-offs aren't worth much because both offices are subject to political pressure.
"The overall framework of ethics and conflict-of-interest laws, rules, and regs we have on the books are extraordinarily weak," he said.
Since 2014, USDS has worked with federal agencies to help them improve how they deliver services, said Jen Pahlka, who helped create the office in 2013 and 2014. The agency was created with members of the team brought in to clean up the disastrous launch of Healthcare.gov, and has since helped with tech rollouts like the IRS's widely praised Direct File program.
Congressional allocations for USDS have fluctuated, she said, and some people have criticized ethics waivers that have made it easier for USDS to recruit people from the private sector without forcing them to sell their stakes in venture-backed startups or investment funds. But she said ethics issues under Musk could be more significant than before.
"It does get politicized," she said. "I don't think to the extent that it will be now."
Were the DOGE lawsuits pointless?
At least three lawsuits filed shortly after Trump was sworn in challenged DOGE's compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a 1972 law requiring outside advisory panels to meet publicly and include members from diverse ideological backgrounds. Earlier in January, the New York Times reported that two ethics experts who have criticized Trump, Virginia Canter and Norm Eisen, volunteered to be a part of DOGE, but were rebuffed by the Trump transition team.
It's unclear what will happen to those lawsuits now that DOGE has officially become part of the White House. But at least one group that sued said its lawsuit should still be able to move forward.
Trump's executive order "does not moot our suit," said Nandan Joshi, a lawyer at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, in an email. "Our lawsuit is based on information that the administration will ask a private task force to provide it with recommendations on regulatory and spending cuts without complying with the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Nothing in the EO contradicts that information."
Kel McClanahan, a lawyer for another group that sued over DOGE, raised the possibility that there could be multiple organizations using the DOGE name, saying in an email that the executive order "muddied the waters."
"We don't have any reason to believe that the entity created by the recent Executive Order is the same animal as the advisory committee we are litigating about," he said. "The deciding factor will be what the new US DOGE Service actually does and how."
Another change from the DOGE envisioned in Donald Trump's announcement in November: Vivek Ramasamy isn't a part of it. "It was my honor to help support the creation of DOGE. I'm confident that Elon & team will succeed in streamlining government," Ramaswamy posted on X.
He is reportedly exploring a run for Ohio governor.
Vivek Ramaswamy is set up to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Trump is pushing Ramaswamy to fill JD Vance's former Senate seat in Ohio, a source familiar with the matter told BI.
Vance resigned the seat on Friday as he gets ready to become vice president.
Ramaswamy is the co-head of DOGE and it's unclear what would happen to his role if he joins the Senate.
President-elect Donald Trump is pushing Vivek Ramaswamy to fill the empty Senate seat in Ohio if the governor offers it to him, a source familiar with the matter told Business Insider.
The seat belonged to Vice President-elect JD Vance, who resigned it on Friday as he prepares to begin his duties at the White House. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine will select someone to fill the seat for two years, before a special election in November of 2026.
"Neither Governor DeWine nor our office has commented on any possible candidates for the pending appointment," DeWine's press secretary Dan Tierney said in a statement to Business Insider.
DeWine has previously said he's not interested in a placeholder. He wants someone who can win a primary and general election next year and then do it all again in 2028 to win a full term.
Ramaswamy is set to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk. Should Ramaswamy be offered and accept the seat, it's unclear what would become of his responsibilities at DOGE.
The Washington Post reported the news earlier on Wednesday. Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.
Elon Musk has made a long string of promises about DOGE, from deleting agencies to slashing the budget
DOGE's leadership, organization, and mission have changed in recent months
Trump has said DOGE will disband by July 4, 2026, leaving fewer than 2 years to enact the changes
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is now a reality.
President Donald Trump formally created DOGE via executive order on January 20, one of the first he signed after returning to the Oval Office. By the next day, Musk's project had its own site, doge.gov. The Tesla CEO now has a government email address, too.
Trump's order looks nothing like the initial plans the then-former president and Musk laid out. Instead of being outside the federal government, DOGE is situated inside the White House, at least for the moment. Under the executive order, DOGE replaced the US Digital Service, an Obama-era agency that helped get Healthcare.gov working after its glitchy rollout. DOGE is now a "temporary organization," making it easier to hire employees.
It also clarifies how some aspects of staffing will work: there will be an "Agency Head" that leads the group and every federal department must create a four-person DOGE team. The executive order puts the agency squarely under White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, the veteran Republican operative who co-led Trump's successful 2024 run.
Some key details still remain uncertain, including whether Musk will serve as the agency head and potentially formally enter the administration.
Musk was originally set to lead DOGE alongside former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has since left the group ahead of reported plans to run for governor of Ohio. In November, Musk and Ramaswamy co-wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that outlined DOGE's structure and plans.
The two originally promised to significantly reduce the federal budget, with Musk saying in October he wanted to cut $2 trillion. He scaled back his estimate during a broadcast on X in January, saying that $2 trillion was a "best-case outcome" and that he thinks DOGE has a "good shot" of saving $1 trillion. Trump's executive order establishing DOGE further limited its scope to "modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity."
Federal spending reached $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, with nine-tenths going to federal programs. President-elect Donald Trump has long sworn not to touch Social Security or Medicare benefits, which comprise a significant chunk of the budget.
As DOGE's mission and structure continue to evolve, here's a running list of things Musk has said DOGE will do.
Representatives for Musk and Trump didn't respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Reduce the federal workforce
Musk and Ramaswamy have said they want to significantly reduce the size of the federal workforce, though haven't specified precisely how many employees should be cut. There were more than 2 million federal employees as of 2023, according to the nonpartisan group the Partnership for Public Service.
Civil-service workers benefit from job protections that make it difficult to fire them, but the DOGE co-leaders said in their Journal article that Trump could implement "reductions in force" that aren't directed at individual employees.
In their op-ed, the pair said that after eliminating federal regulations, "mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy" would follow. They plan to determine the minimum number of employees needed at each department and said they might enact policies that lead some staffers to voluntarily resign, such as return-to-office mandates, early retirement offers, and severance packages.
Some of their initial visions are already becoming reality: during his first hours in office, Trump signed a return-to-office order for federal workers. He also issued a federal hiring freeze.
Federal employee salaries don't comprise a big chunk of the budget — not including military personnel, their annual salaries and benefits total about $305 billion, or 4% of spending, The Washington Post reported. If Musk got rid of 25% of the federal workforce, government spending would fall by about 1%.
Slash regulations
Musk and Ramaswamy previously said they would suggest regulations for Trump to cut, and a source told BI that Ramaswamy would lead the charge on that effort when he was still a part of the group. The president would then use executive actions to pause the regulations and begin the removal process, the former co-heads said.
In their joint op-ed, the duo said they planned to lean on two recent US Supreme Court rulings, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The cases, they said, "suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law."
Some legal experts previously told BI that the DOGE leaders were misinterpreting the lawsuits, which they said didn't add to the executive branch's ability to curb regulations. Under the rulings, agencies still need to comply with a lengthy administrative process to change or overturn rules, the experts said.
Hire employees
In addition to Musk, DOGE has announced two official hires: William Joseph McGinley as the commission's counsel and Katie Miller in an unspecified role. The commission is actively recruiting employees, according to its X account, though their identities have not yet been shared and the hiring process remains unclear.
In a post on X from November, the commission said it was seeking "super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week" and that thousands have indicated interest. Applicants should message the account their CV and the former co-leaders would review top contenders, the post said.
Musk said in his own post from that month that the jobs will be unpaid. Yet in late December and early January, DOGE's account said in two separate posts that the commission was looking for people to fill a "very small" amount of "full-time salaried HR, IT, and Finance positions" and "full-time salaried Software Engineers and InfoSec Engineers." Again, interested applicants were instructed to send their qualifications and reasons for interest in a direct message, with the instructions varying slightly per role.
Trump's executive order mentioned that the four-person DOGE agency teams would include a lead, an engineer, a human resources specialist, and an attorney. It also said that the teams may include special government employees, a category of federal workers who work for a limited time and can be paid for their services.
'Delete' entire agencies, or at least vastly change them
A key part of DOGE's cost-cutting agenda has to do with scaling back government agencies, and Musk has written about deleting entire agencies he doesn't like.
Political scientists and fellows at Washington think tanks previously told BI that deleting departments outright almost always requires congressional approval, making DOGE's goal seem unrealistic to some. Musk has said he wants to trim the number of federal agencies down to no more than 99.
Here are some of the agencies DOGE plans to target:
Planned Parenthood and public media may be impacted
In their op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy criticized the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and "progressive groups like Planned Parenthood." They said DOGE would try to curb federal spending "by taking aim" at the funds appropriated for those services, among others.
TheCPB is the largest funding source for public radio, television, and online services, primarily for local public media — in the fiscal year 2024, it had a budget of $535 million. Congress created the CPB and authorizes the budget. Between 2019 and 2021, American affiliates of Planned Parenthood received about $148 million in federal grants, according to the Government Accounting Office.
PBS exacerbated these tensions when it wrote on X on January 20 that Musk had given what appeared to be a "fascist salute" at a Trump inaugural event. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who leads a House DOGE subcommittee, responded by saying that she would force PBS representatives to testify to her House panel on DOGE.
As the Chairwoman of the Oversight Subcommittee on DOGE, I look forward to PBS @NewsHour coming before my committee and explaining why lying and spreading propaganda to serve the Democrat party and attack Republicans is a good use of taxpayer funds.
On X, Ramaswamy has floated a range of places that could see cuts.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Musk and Ramaswamy said in their op-ed that they planned to go after expired federal expenditures. According to the Congressional Budget Office, $516 billion worth of federal appropriations in 2024 have expired, with the largest programs in terms of spending relating to veterans' healthcare, drug development, and NASA. Musk hasn't specified which expired authorizations they'd target.
Relocate some federal agencies and reform building use
Musk has vowed to get rid of entire agencies.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Musk and Ramaswamy raised the possibility of relocating federal agencies outside Washington in their op-ed.
A 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office found that 17 of the agencies reviewed used about 25% or less of their buildings' space. The federal government spends about $2 billion each year to maintain federal office buildings and $5 billion to lease space to agencies, the report found.
Conduct audits of agencies
In their opinion piece, Musk and Ramaswamy said audits conducted during temporary payment suspensions could bring big savings. They called out the Pentagon and wrote that the agency failed its seventh consecutive audit. Support for the proposal came from an unlikely place: progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders. In a post on X, Sanders said that "Elon Musk is right," adding that the Pentagon had "lost track of billions."
Musk has stayed by Trump's side since the election.
ANGELA WEISS / AFP
Publicize all the changes the commission makes
Musk said in a post on X that he'd publish all of DOGE's actions online for "maximum transparency."
"Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!" he wrote. In the same post, he said DOGE would create a "leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending."
Information access remains a point of contention — before the executive order restructuring DOGE, the group was hit with at least three lawsuits alleging that the group violated transparency rules as outlined in a 1972 law. It's unclear what will happen to the suits now that DOGE is part of the White House.
They've hinted at abolishing daylight-saving time and getting rid of the penny
Though posts on X don't equate to an official DOGE plan, Musk and previously Ramaswamy have both posted about other things they may tackle in their roles, some of which would require congressional approval.
DOGE's X account took aim at the penny and has posted repeatedly about publicly funded infrastructure projects, including the California High Speed Rail project, which aims to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. First approved in 2008, the project's timeline and budget have grown in the years since. Though DOGE's posts on X don't specify precise plans for existing infrastructure projects, they criticize the permitting and regulation process.
Disband DOGE no later than July 4, 2026
When Trump announced the creation of DOGE, he said the committee would disband by July 4, 2026. The committee's leaders, though, have said they think their work could be done earlier.
Trump's executive order also lays out that DOGE will end by the 250th anniversary of the nation's independence.
Have you applied or considered applying to work at DOGE? Share your experience and thoughts with this reporter at [email protected].
Correction: December 13, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the end date for DOGE; it is set to end July 4, 2026, not June 4, 2026. The story also overstated the number of existing federal agencies.
