The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs, slashed government programs, and amassed unprecedented access to sensitive data. But despite the role it plays in shaping the federal government, it is difficult to understand how DOGE operates — it has taken steps to shield the names of its operatives and the records of its actions.
We are using public records requests and litigation to expose who works for the agency and how it is carrying out its work.
What is DOGE?
DOGE is an agency with enormous power to dismantle federal programs
On President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, he created DOGE by issuing an executive order renaming the U.S. Digital Service the “U.S. DOGE Service” and requiring all federal agencies to create their own DOGE teams of at least four people. Many of DOGE’s employees were young men who had worked for Elon Musk’s companies and had no previous government experience. Trump also moved DOGE from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to the Executive Office of the President (EOP).
In the first months of Trump’s second term, DOGE froze billions of dollars in federal grant funds and led “large-scale reductions in force,” firing or placing on leave tens of thousands of federal employees. With almost no oversight or independent scrutiny, DOGE operatives have dismantled programs that provide essential services for millions of people, including shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), slashing National Institute of Health medical research grants, and cutting funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
DOGE’s structure is designed to avoid transparency and accountability
When the U.S. Digital Service was housed in the OMB, it was subject to the transparency laws that apply to federal agencies: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Federal Records Act (FRA). FOIA requires federal agencies to make records available to the public and bars the destruction of requested records, so that Americans can see what their government is doing and why. The FRA requires agencies to preserve records that they create or receive, ensuring there’s a permanent record of government decisions that belongs to the people.
Since DOGE was moved to the EOP, the Trump administration has claimed that those laws don’t apply. Instead, it says DOGE only needs to adhere to the transparency law that governs presidential records: the Presidential Records Act. The PRA allows the public to request records created by the president and the executive branch, but not until at least five years after the end of an administration. This would mean DOGE records could be kept from the public until at least 2034. Worse, the Trump administration is arguing that the PRA is unconstitutional and that Trump “need not further comply” with it, meaning DOGE might not be following the PRA’s document preservation requirements in the first place.
This is an important distinction: Americans are experiencing the consequences of DOGE’s decisions right now, and can’t wait nearly a decade for the information necessary to hold officials accountable.
American Oversight has already witnessed DOGE deploy these claims to keep information about its work hidden. In response to two separate lawsuits seeking DOGE records, the government has told us that DOGE is not an agency but merely an entity that advises and assists the president. But DOGE’s sweeping and often independent power shows that DOGE is doing far more than that.
Who works for DOGE?
There are at least three people who might have been in charge of DOGE
While Elon Musk is the figure most associated with DOGE, there are at least two other people who might be or have been in charge of DOGE: Amy Gleason, the acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service, and Steve Davis, a longtime aide to Musk and the person reportedly running DOGE’s day-to-day operations.
Trump’s selection of Elon Musk to head DOGE created enormous potential for conflicts of interest. Musk founded, owns, or controls businesses that receive billions of dollars in government contracts. DOGE could (and did) cut contracts to Musk’s competitors. DOGE also gained the power to access records containing trade secrets and other business information that could reportedly give Musk a business advantage for years.
Despite these conflicts of interest, Trump, White House officials, and Musk himself repeatedly and publicly emphasized Musk’s control over DOGE until his departure in May 2025. Simultaneously, the White House claimed in a February 2025 filing in a lawsuit brought by Democratic state attorneys general that Musk was neither the DOGE administrator nor a DOGE employee. Later that month, the White House announced that Gleason is the acting administrator of DOGE, but reporting suggested that Gleason was only in charge on paper.
Instead, some suggested, Davis was really in charge. The New York Times reported in March 2025 that Davis had “effectively become the day-to-day leader of DOGE,” and wielded more authority than Gleason, who was sometimes unaware of Davis’s orders. Davis purportedly left DOGE in 2025, but seemingly continued to play a role.
The vague leadership structure resulted in conflicting reports from DOGE staff about the agency’s chain-of-command. ProPublica reported that the hierarchy was unclear to most federal employees who interacted with DOGE, but that Gleason seemed to be in charge of budget-slashing, while day-to-day operations were run by Davis and sometimes Musk. One source from USAID told the Guardian that the day-to-day operations were “the DOGE dudes just literally on the phone with Musk just getting directions from him.” One former DOGE staffer told PBS that it was unclear who was in charge and that Musk was “not super involved” at Veterans Affairs.
It’s hard to know who is a DOGE employee — and that’s intentional
Despite DOGE’s enormous power and impact, Musk and the Trump administration have deliberately attempted to hide who works for DOGE — including by Musk threatening anyone who revealed individuals’ identities.
Part of the issue is that DOGE has deliberately obscured what it means to work for the agency, hiring staffers through multiple different employment arrangements. Many, like Elon Musk, were hired as “special government employees,” a category that permits them to skirt the ethics and financial disclosures required of most government workers.
There is also no clear definition of what it means to work for DOGE because its members have worked in many different capacities, including being employed by the DOGE unit inside the White House, being detailed to or embedded at various agencies, and being hired as permanent employees of the agencies but still effectively answering to DOGE. Some, like billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, have said they are helping DOGE — but it is not clear how.
This has only gotten worse recently. In November, Reuters reported that DOGE had “disbanded,” but top Trump administration officials and DOGE’s X account insisted this was wrong. Government employees told Wired something similar. A source at the Internal Revenue Service said that DOGE was “just transformed.” A U.S. Department of Agriculture staffer said DOGE workers were “in fact burrowed into the agencies like ticks.” As of April 2026, DOGE reportedly has 90 employees across different federal agencies and is still growing.
When we FOIAed for records that could identify DOGE team members within various agencies, the agencies’ responses only sparked more questions. The CDC, FDA, and Department of the Interior directly denied having DOGE teams. Public reporting indicates that this is misleading at best: ProPublica and the New York Times have both identified DOGE staff connected to the CDC and the Department of the Interior, and Politico reported that DOGE employees have at least visited the FDA. DOGE itself has boasted of cuts it made to the agency.
Why this matters
DOGE has taken a hatchet to federal programs that aid people in their most vulnerable moments. It will be harder to tell millions of Americans if and when to evacuate during severe weather events thanks to DOGE’s cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Individuals with cancer, diabetes, and heart conditions could miss out on the newest medical treatments due to the $4 billion in National Institute of Health medical research grants DOGE slashed. There are longer wait times for many government services, including Social Security, the VA, and the IRS — if people are able to access them at all. Those experiencing economic instability and hunger could face shortages at food banks because of the $1 billion excised from the Department of Agriculture. And the cancellation of 83 percent of USAID’s programs could cause 14 million people to die over the next five years.
Hundreds of thousands of people are out of jobs after DOGE eliminated federal positions and the contracts that contributed to local economies across the country. Those families are thrown into economic insecurity, as are their communities. State unemployment insurance costs will go up, and spending in local communities will go down. This will be especially acute in the Washington, DC metro area, where a significant number of federal employees live.
DOGE’s use of people’s personal data also creates huge privacy concerns. Its members gained access to multiple agencies’ most sensitive computer systems containing classified information as well as private health and financial records, which were previously only available to agency employees.
DOGE has even admitted that staff members may have misused Social Security data to help an advocacy group seeking to overturn election results in certain states. The DOGE employees in question may have accessed the data after a court ruled that it was off limits, and then shared it on unapproved servers.
This has all happened with almost no oversight or independent scrutiny. Access to government records and information about the actions taken by individuals within agencies like DOGE is how we guard against corruption and ensure that those in power are acting in the public interest. Without information about what DOGE officials are doing, the American people cannot hold the agency accountable for the deadly results of its work.
What we are doing about it
Figuring out who is actually responsible for DOGE
Through our FOIA requests, we have uncovered previously unreported names of individuals working to further the DOGE agenda. In some instances, we also discovered that known-DOGE affiliates were working with a previously unreported agency.
Department of Agriculture
Previously unreported DOGE workers: Jeremy Lichtman, Timothy Ronan, and Samuel Berry.
Known DOGE workers newly connected to USDA: Akash Bobba, Conor Fennessy, and Joshua Fox.
Department of Labor
Known DOGE workers newly connected to Labor: Bridget Youngs.
We also obtained resumes of several political appointees at the Department of Labor who are known DOGE staffers: Miles Collins, Marko Elez, and Aram Moghaddassi. These records offer more details on the individuals’ previous experience and connections, as well as their pay.
Department of Commerce
Known DOGE workers newly connected to Commerce: Nikhil Rajpal (Detailee), Ethan Shaotran (Detailee), Alexander Simonpour (Detailee).
Securities and Exchange Commission
Previously unreported DOGE workers: Peter Gimbrere (Team Lead, Managing Executive – Office of the Chairman), Kenneth Johnson (Chief Operating Officer – Office of the Chief Operating Officer), Elizabeth McFadden (Deputy General Counsel for General Law – Office of the General Counsel).
Department of Energy
Previously unreported DOGE workers: Alexander Glaubach (Special Advisor).
Department of Defense
We obtained a chart of DOGE team members at the Department of Defense as of September 2025, which shows at least 20 DOGE operatives still working at DOD on that date. The faces and names of all of the employees were redacted, further demonstrating the lack of transparency surrounding the agency.
Forcing DOGE to preserve records
Shortly after we asked a court to order DOGE to preserve documents in March 2025, DOGE unveiled a newly created records retention policy. It requires DOGE employees to “capture and transmit” work-related messages received on personal devices — including through Signal — onto their work devices. Even though DOGE is fighting to avoid FOIA requests, the fact that the agency is requiring employees to preserve these records could allow for future accountability.
Taking the administration to court
In February 2025, after DOGE failed to turn over records we requested, we filed a FOIA lawsuit against the agency.
That April, we sued DOGE again, this time alleging that its use of auto-deleting messaging apps like Signal violated the FRA and opened the door to destroying records documenting how DOGE officials made decisions that impact essential services for millions of Americans.
In June, we sued the Social Security Administration and the Treasury for records related to DOGE’s efforts to access their information.
And in July, we sued more than 20 federal agencies for failing to release records identifying the names and roles of individuals serving on agency DOGE teams.
