DOGE Track (beta)

The DOGE Timeline

It can be hard to see the patterns in the noise of DOGE’s chaos, but there has been a structure to the destruction. In the initial phase of this site, I am focusing more on the people rather than DOGE’s projects, but this timeline is an overview of DOGE’s activities and shifting focus.

  • Project Kickoff
    A week after his victory, Trump invites both Elon Musk and Larry Ellison to a transition planning meeting in Mar-A-Lago. This kicks off a frenetic planning period with Musk associates like Marc Andreessen, Shaun Maguire, Jared Birchall and Steve Davis laying the groundwork of the DOGE plan.
  • Recruitment Begins
    Early DOGE members Anthony Jancso and Luke Farritor post recruitment messages for DOGE to online forums like a Discord for SpaceX interns or a chat group for Palantir alumni.
  • Getting Ready for Launch
    In the weeks before the Inauguration, DOGE solidifies on its pitch to recruits: six-month stints of 80-hour weeks without pay. The plan to also subvert the US Digital Service and use it as a base for DOGE is also finalized.
  • Inauguration Day
    Donald Trump is formally sworn in as the 47th President of the United States and starts signing a flurry of executive orders, including the ones that establish DOGE’s organizational structure and role in important government operations.
  • Building the Bases
    DOGE moves into its news bases of operation at the White House as well as OPM and GSA. This includes creating walled-off enclaves with couches and even sleeping areas. At OPM, acting director Charles Ezell quickly replaces the CIO with Greg Hogan and Stephen Ehikian and Nicole Hollander start at GSA, with Thomas Shedd named as the new TTS commissioner within days.
  • "We Ask the Questions Here"
    DOGE-affiliated staffers start interviewing US Digital Service staff as well as 18F staffers at GSA. They refuse to identify themselves or answer questions, and they seem to be interested in employee’s feelings towards Trump and Musk more than their technical skills.
  • Detailing Begins
    DOGE begins placing staff in different agencies than their own – this process is called detailing in the federal government – with Luke Farritor setting up shop within HHS and Marko Elez and Tom Krause arriving at Treasury. In the following months, DOGE teams consisting of staff that I call Wreckers detailed from DOGE, OPM and GSA show up at multiple agencies, following a specific offensive playbook against agency operations and personnel.
  • Test Emails
    The DOGE team at OPM sends out a first email to all government personnel using a newly-installed Government Wide Email System (GWES). This is followed by a second test message a few days later.
  • Arrival at USAID
    DOGE representatives first arrive at the agency, with senior staff summoned to a virtual meeting with Gavin Kliger and Luke Farritor later that day. In the coming days, DOGE will trial the methods it uses to destroy other agencies on USAID. This includes placing all staff on administrative leave and locking them out of the building and their computers, cancelling contracts, sending out mass layoff notices and seizing control of the website and freezing agency leadership out of the ability to disburse grants.
  • Education
    DOGE reportedly arrives at the Department of ED. This team is swiftly granted access to sensitive datasets on financial aid recipients and reportedly is feeding sensitive data into an AI system located in Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
  • A Fork in the Road
    Copying a tactic that Elon Musk used at Twitter, all federal employees are sent an email titled “A Fork in the Road” which offered them the chance to resign and be paid for six months of work. Rolled out without any planning or announcements, it is unclear to many recipients if this offer is legal and would be honored by the DOGE team or OPM. It’s also unclear how the enrollment mechanism of replying to the email with a single word “resign” could count legally as a signature.
  • DOGE arrives at SSA
    A random mid-level employee, Leland Dudek, informs the director of facilities and security at the Social Security Administration that DOGE will be onboarding the next day. The following day, Mike Russo is named the new CIO of the agency. advocate for Akash Bobba to be onboarded immediately without a background check.
  • Locked out at OPM
    Federal staff at OPM discover they are now locked out completely from key systems at the agency, due to the actions of DOGE staff and OPM leadership.
  • Feeding USAID into "the wood chipper"
    Elon Musk kicks off a series of tweets against USAID claiming it is “time to die.” Staff receive an email from Gavin Kliger informing them the building is closed indefinitely and that they are all suspended indefinitely the following day.
  • NOAA and the EPA
    One of the wreckers from OPM, Nikhil Rajpal, is spotted visiting the headquarters of NOAA in Silver Spring, MD and is reportedly granted admin access to the agency’s Google Drive. Meanwhile, Cole Killian is spotted in a staff directory at the EPA.
  • "Just Do It"
    DOGE staff (including Adam Ramada) arrive at Department of Labor, where staff have been told by agency leadership that they are to do whatever DOGE asks for, to not push back, and to not ask questions. They were told to provide access to any DOL system they requested access to and not to worry about any security protocols. “Just do it” is the command.
  • "I was racist before it was cool"
    After the Wall Street Journal identified multiple racist tweets that he posted in the September 2024 onwards, Marko Elez suddenly resigned from his post in the Treasury. However, both Elon Musk and JD Vance promise to hire him back and he is appointed to a new (and probably paid) position at the Department of Labor, from where he has since been detailed to multiple agencies to examine many sensitive datasets.
  • "RIP CFPB"
    A wrecking crew including Luke Farritor, Gavin Kliger, Jordan Wick and Chris Young arrives at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where they are onboarded and given access to systems for HR and procurement as part of their “IT modernization” efforts. Once there, Elon Musk tweets “RIP CFPB” and DOGE staff are given superuser admin access by orders of Russell Vought to multiple systems including one that lets them grant themselves access to any system. Using that access, they delete the homepage of the CFPB website. The homepage has not been restored to this day. They also place all employees on administrative leave, close the building and start cancelling contracts.
  • Full Control at USAID
    Gavin Kliger and Luke Farritor completely lock USAID staff out of the payments system used by the agency, letting them freeze spending on all grants. This sudden cessation of funding makes them directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who relied on USAID for food or medical interventions. Elon Musk later denies anybody was harmed.
  • Arrival at DHS and HUD
    Edward Coristine and Kyle Schutt arrive at the Department of Homeland Security, the first of many DOGE staffers who will be detailed to the agency (and spotted within its various subsidiary agencies) in the months ahead. At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, employees receive emails from Scott Langmack asking them to list every contract and review if it is critical or has DEI components.
  • Massacre Averted
    In an attempt to outrace a temporary restraining order from being granted, Jordan Wick orders HR staff to work on an immediate large-scale Reduction in Force (RIF) at the CFPB. They fail at that goal, and the judge later cites this apparent attempt to subvert her ruling to submit a sweeping preliminary injunction against CFPB leadership that prevents layoffs.
  • Massacres Accomplished
    Approximately 50 members (or about a third of the staff that was in USDS before DOGE) are summarily fired, with most of the terminations focused on project managers and designers. Across the government, many probationary workers have received termination notices.
  • Acting Commissioner Dudek
    After a weekend where she placed Leland Dudek on disciplinary leave for inappropriate actions assisting DOGE, the current acting commissioner of SSA is informed by the that she has been terminated and that Leland Dudek is the new acting commissioner.
  • SpaceX at the FAA
    Four engineers from the Musk-owned company SpaceX are granted 4-day ethics waivers to work at the FAA and consult on replacing a communications contract for Verizon with Starlink. It’s unclear if they actually have stopped working at the agency.
  • More Powers for DOGE
    Donald Trump issues two executive orders that expand the involvement of DOGE in government operations. One of them instructs them to work on immigration data collection and the second gives them input and control over deregulatory efforts.
  • Attacking Independent Agencies
    With an executive order mandating that IAF, USADF and the USIP must be reduced to their smallest statutory footprint, Trump kicks off a monthslong effort of DOGE teams (usually led by Nate Cavanaugh) targeting independent agencies to browbeat them into access and then shut them down.
  • Contracting Control
    In another executive order, Trump mandates that the DOGE representative at agencies will have veto power over awarding any contract and also freezes the use of purchase cards (used for small purchases and travel) for 90 days
  • Her?
    After days of sustained questioning both in court cases and by the press, the Trump administration finally reveals that the DOGE Administrator is Amy Gleason, a USDS employee working at HHS and who is also conveniently on vacation in Mexico at the time of the announcement.
  • 18F Eliminated
    Just weeks after praising the talent of the tech team in 18F within the GSA, TTS Administrator Thomas Shedd effectively fires every member of the team and takes the 18F website and its useful guides for civic technology offline.
  • DOGE? Never Heard of It
    As part of its ongoing efforts to avoid FOIA or legally mandated disclosure, DOGE starts hiring staff as full-time employees at individual agencies, with Jordan Wick starting at CFPB and Amy Gleason and Brad Smith at HHS
  • JUST DOGE
    Multiple DOGE staffers are reported at the Department of Justice, joining Justin Monroe who had been at the FBI since early January. Attorney General Pam Bondi announces she is forming a “JUST DOGE” team to restructure the agency.
  • Disruption at IRS
    After weeks of rebuffing efforts by DOGE to share highly sensitive IRS data with other agencies, the Acting Counsel of the IRS is removed from his office and replaced by an acting counsel who is seen as more sympathetic to DOGE
  • DOGE? Never Heard of It (reprise)
    During a town-hall at GSA, the acting administrator Stephen Ehikian claims there is nobody from DOGE working at the agency. At the time, there are at least a dozen affiliated DOGE staffers employed by GSA and they have a special floor allocated to them in the building.
  • Unfettered Access
    Trump issues several executive orders demanding that DOGE be provided completely unfettered access to any agency datasets, which includes an explicit instruction for the DOL Inspector General to provide access to a highly confidential dataset on Unemployment Insurance records at DOL that DOGE wants to use for its data warehouse of information about immigrants.
  • Free Building
    After getting himself declared the head of the agency and forcing everybody into administrative leave, Nate Cavanaugh (as the newly declared President of the USIP) gets in contact with Stephen Ehikian, the head of GSA (which, coincidentally, employs Nate Cavanaugh) about transferring ownership of their building to the GSA. This action is later struck down by a judge in court, but the sheer audacity of it is really something.
  • DOGE control of payments
    Trump issues an executive order which mandates that all agencies must make payments through the Treasury (rather than directly) and that they must also treat data sharing with Treasury as “routine use” and not acknowledge any privacy implications of it.
  • Voting Control
    In another executive order, Trump demands that every state must share its voter registration lists and other records with DOGE for their use. This order is possibly in violation of the Tenth Amendment.
  • DOGE Control of Payroll
    After a protracted internal struggle which includes the suspension of the agency’s CIO, Deputy CIO and Chief Counsel, the acting Head of Human Capital and DOGE member Stephanie Holmes is granted admin control over FPPS, a shared system managed by the Department of the Interior that handles payroll for approximately half of the federal government.
  • Data Sharing from SSA
    After expressing some qualms about its content, Leland Dudek signs two memos that authorize data sharing of highly sensitive social security information with DHS and instance.
  • A "Mega API"
    A week after eliminating a large number of senior technical staff at the IRS, DOGE assembles the remaining to kick off a week-long hackathon to create a “Mega API” for other agencies to access tax information. The legality of a real system for this is highly dubious.
  • Weaponizing the Death File
    Over the strong objections of agency staff at SSA who were immediately sidelined, Aram Mohgaddassi runs a script to add the names of 6300 living immigrants to the Master Death Records, with the idea that it would make their lives so difficult that they would “self-deport.” The list include 7 children.
  • Immigration Task Force
    Politico reveals the existence of a DOGE-directed immigration task force that is located within DHS but collects data from other agencies like the IRS and SSA and is assembling a large surveillance system for that end.
  • DOGE Control of Grants
    Luke Farritor is granted admin control of Grants.gov, a system hosted at HHS and used by multiple agencies for managing grants programs. This lets him unilaterally cancel any grants without opposition or direction from government staff and leadership.
  • A Gold Card Visa
    Reports identify that DOGE staffers Edward Coristine, Marko Elez and Joe Gebbia are working on an interagency effort of DHS, USCIS and the State Department to rush out an application form for a $5 Million “Gold Card” immigration visa.
  • Massacre Retried
    After an appeals court ruling allowed for the possibility of some staffing reductions at the CFPB, agency leadership under Russell Vought attempts to fire all but ~200 people of the ~1400 who work at the agency. This is immediately revoked by the judge who granted the initial preliminary injunction. In court testimony, one HR representative describes being forced to work for 36 straight hours while being screamed at by Gavin Kliger.
  • Grants at Interior
    After being granted increasingly important roles at the Department of Interior, oil executive and DOGE member Tyler Hassen starts reviewing all grants given by the agency.
  • Nope to Science from Farritor
    Luke Farritor arrives at the National Science Foundation with a team of other DOGE staffers to put all grants through a secondary round of review. He is granted a high-level clearance that allows him to view and modify the agency’s grants data.
  • "National Garden of American Heroes"
    Two weeks after DOGE took over the agency, placed all staff on leave and cancelled a large number of existing grants to humanities organizations, the agency posts a massive single solicitation of grants for artists to contribute sculptures for a “National Garden of American Heroes”
  • Stay in Your Lane
    After having harrassed a large number of small independent federal agencies, DOGE reaches out to the Government Accountability Office to request they meet about assigning a DOGE team to oversee their operations. One small problem though: GAO is a legislative branch agency. Their request is denied.
  • Leadership Exodus?
    After Elon Musk discloses that he is leaving government to return to his struggling companies, there is an exodus of DOGE leadership with Katie Miller and James Burnham departing from DOGE itself, and married partners Steve Davis and Nicole Hollander leaving GSA.
Major Projects
Who's in DOGE?