Executive Orders

From the very beginning, all of DOGE’s influences and responsibilities have been defined through executive orders. These are directives issued by the President that are meant to apply to the Executive branch agencies and do not carry the same weight as laws that have passed both houses of Congress or even agency regulations that have followed the process in the Administrative Procedure Act. In this sense, much of DOGE’s mandate and power has rested on bluster and overreach, which is why the administration continues to lose legal challenges in the courts for DOGE’s actions.

Inauguration Day Orders

Trump signed two Executive Orders on January 20 that defined the initial structure of DOGE. The first of these, Establishing and Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency”, is an order that created DOGE by placing it inside (and renaming) the US Digital Service. This order also specified the creation of the DOGE Temporary Organization (DOGE TO) as a separate entity inside of the new US DOGE Service. As the first order, it’s an important one to examine for how it described some of DOGE’s practices. One of these was the concept of embedding DOGE teams within agencies

DOGE Teams. In consultation with USDS, each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees, which may include Special Government Employees, hired or assigned within thirty days of the date of this Order. Agency Heads shall select the DOGE Team members in consultation with the USDS Administrator. Each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney. Agency Heads shall ensure that DOGE Team Leads coordinate their work with USDS and advise their respective Agency Heads on implementing the President’s DOGE Agenda.

Implementing the “DOGE agenda” is the purpose of these teams, but that was never defined in the initial executive orders. Rather, the initial task for DOGE teams was to work with agencies on “IT modernization” as a cover for taking any data they wanted:

Sec. 4. Modernizing Federal Technology and Software to Maximize Efficiency and Productivity. (a) The USDS Administrator shall commence a Software Modernization Initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems. Among other things, the USDS Administrator shall work with Agency Heads to promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization.

(b) Agency Heads shall take all necessary steps, in coordination with the USDS Administrator and to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure USDS has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems. USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards.

This IT modernization clause frequently appears as the motivation and justification for DOGE’s involvement in agencies. You will see it cited in sworn testimony by DOGE representatives and it typically appears as a clause in Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) that allow DOGE staff to be embedded in other agencies. It sounds impressive, but it’s essentially the equivalent of DOGE declaring they are here to perform necessary wallet inspection, and they have a paper from the President saying your cooperation is mandatory. Trump signed another executive order on the first day that expanded DOGE’s power beyond IT modernization. Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service defined many of the Project 2025 goals for reshaping the federal bureaucracy by undermining civil service protections, but it suggested some additional responsibilities for DOGE:

Sec. 2. Federal Hiring Plan. (a) Within 120 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, in consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, and the Administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), shall develop and send to agency heads a Federal Hiring Plan that brings to the Federal workforce only highly skilled Americans dedicated to the furtherance of American ideals, values, and interests.

Expanding DOGE’s Control

From the start of the administration, DOGE staffed a team with the Office of Personnel Management focused on radically reshaping the federal bureaucracy through mass firings and messing with federal regulations. I call them the support team for their relation to DOGE staff in the field, but they have been the opposite of supportive for federal staff. These are the people who brought you such innovations as “let’s fire everybody who has less than a year of experience in their current role because that’s easier to do.” Almost all of them have been based in OPM, but an executive order issued on February 11 and titled “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative” defined some additional responsibilities for DOGE that gave them control over agency hiring:

(b) Hiring Approval. Each Agency Head shall develop a data-driven plan, in consultation with its DOGE Team Lead, to ensure new career appointment hires are in highest-need areas.

(i) This hiring plan shall include that new career appointment hiring decisions shall be made in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead, consistent with applicable law.

(ii) The agency shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled.

(iii) Each DOGE Team Lead shall provide the United States DOGE Service (USDS) Administrator with a monthly hiring report for the agency.

Similarly, another executive order issued on February 19th and titled “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Initiative” gave DOGE team leads in each agency control over regulatory processes that normally would be just left to agency heads and the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB):

Agency heads shall, in coordination with their DOGE Team Leads and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, initiate a process to review all regulations subject to their sole or joint jurisdiction for consistency with law and Administration policy… Additionally, agency heads shall consult with their DOGE Team Leads and the Administrator of OIRA on potential new regulations as soon as practicable. In evaluating potential new regulations, agency heads, DOGE Team Leads, and the Administrator of OIRA shall consider, in addition to the factors set out in Executive Order 12866, the factors set out in section 2(a) of this order.

Cementing Control of Spending

An executive order issued on February 26 (“Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Cost Efficiency Initiative”) granted DOGE with huge veto powers over procurement and spending at many agencies. This executive order mandated the following:

1. Agencies must build a single centralized technical system to process and record all payments at the agency. This system should allow agency heads to pause and review any payments which do not have a written justification.
2. Agency heads are required to consult with DOGE leads and issue guidance mandating that all expenditures must include a written justification.
3. Agency heads must also work with DOGE leads to review all exiting contracts and grants within 30 days of the order, with spending directed to foreign entities or educational institutions receiving extra scrutiny.
4. Agency heads must work with DOGE to also review contracting policies and personnel within 30 days and agencies must stop any new contract issuance during that time.
5. The DOGE teams are expected to provide the DOGE Administrator with monthly reports on contracting activities at their agencies, including the text of any written payment justifications.
6. Similarly, agencies must also construct a central system for travel bookings and all travel must require a written justification. These justifications will also be collected by the DOGE team leads and will be posted publicly.
7. All credit cards used for micro-purchases and travel should be frozen for the next 30 days (this order was made effective by DOGE actions at the GSA).
8. Agency heads should review and terminate any leases held by the agency where possible. [this measure was to enforce actions taken by Nicole Hollander] at the GSA.

In the following weeks, Trump issued two other executive orders designed to centralize payments processing. The first of these ordered Treasury to move to a new model where agencies should process all spending through Treasury rather than disbursing funds directly. Relatedly, a separate executive order ordered that software procurement must flow through the GSA. While these orders are ostensibly about detecting fraud or controlling costs - and admittedly, they could help with that in some ways - they also radically increase the control that both the Treasury and GSA have over how all agencies can spend their budgets. It’s probably not a coincidence that these changes were both proposed when DOGE had extensive control over spending at both of these agencies.

Building an Immigration Surveillance systems

Another Feb 19th Executive Order (Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders)expanded the scope of DOGE’s involvement in building a modern surveillance and harassment mechanism for immigration by declaring that DOGE would be involved in rescinding funding

(b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Administrator of the United States DOGE Service, in coordination with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, shall further: (i) identify all other sources of Federal funding for illegal aliens; and (ii) recommend additional agency actions to align Federal spending with the purposes of this order, and, where relevant, enhance eligibility verification systems.

Since then, DOGE has been involved with a large project to build a large survillance system to identify targets for arrest by ICE. This system is designed to combine data from the IRS, DHS, and Social Security Administration in probably-illegal ways and I personally fear the damage that will ensue from trying to jam together datasets that weren’t meant to be combined and how tempting this system will be as a target for hackers looking to steal personal data. It already has irreperably damaged the trust that the public once had for giving sensitive data to the government without worrying that it might be misused.

Targeting Independent Agencies

Trump’s biggest successes have been acts of destruction and not creation. Nothing has exemplified this more than when DOGE have been deployed to shut down independent agencies. They started this with the destruction of USAID, continued it with the shuttering of the CFPB, and expanded it at scale with targeted harrassment against independent agencies. For instance, the language in these executive orders specifically named agencies:

• “Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy”
• “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy”

DOGE was not specifically mentioned in these executive orders, but they have provided legal justifications for DOGE’s activities, even if these arguments have failed to sway the courts.