James Burnham

A New York Times report on DOGE from just before the Inauguration roughly describes the working arrangements for embedding some staff and detailing others as well as some early participants in the project

James Burnham starts as General Counsel at DOGE.

A report from Business Insider names some of the DOGE staffers who were involved in transition activities and provides an early snapshot of who is in DOGE.

Joshua Fox emails a few NASA administrators to introduce himself as “one of the attorneys at DOGE” and to also inform them “I just spoke to Scott Coulter about this, but I wanted to let you know that he is planning to go over to SSA tomorrow.” He includes several other DOGE leadership personnel in the email chain. It’s unclear from the message who actually made the decision that Scott Coulter would be detailed to the Social Security Administration.

USIP leadership meets with DOGE staffers James Burnham, Jacob Altik and Nate Cavanaugh to explain the history and legal status of the small independent executive branch agency and why it should not need to respond to DOGE’s demands.

The DOGE delegation counters to USIP leadership with their belief that minimum statutory size of agency is “a Board of Directors and a president, reports to Congress and the Executive branch, and expenses incident to the Board of Directors” and says they will regroup and return.

After receiving inquiries from the DOGE staff, the head of USIP security emailed them information about the private security firm that manages access to the HQ building.

Politico publishes a list of 10 lawyers that it says are linked to DOGE.

In the wake of Elon Musk’s departure, Steve Davis, Katie Miller and James Burnham reportedly also leave DOGE. Davis had been widely described as running the day-to-day operations of DOGE, and it’s unclear who will take that over.

In May, Clark Milner, a senior advisor for policy in the White House, organized a meeting between USPS staff, the DOGE representatives at the agency, other DOGE staffers and members of the Domestic Policy Council.

James Burnham leaves role as General Counsel at DOGE (exits govt. service)

DOGE gives a presentation of a “DOGE AI Deregulation Decision Tool” that will use AI to target roughly 50% of federal regulations for elimination, on the argument that they aren’t meeting statutory requirements. The goal is to slash these regulations by January 20, 2026. In their presentation, DOGE claims the tool has already made determinations on 1083 decisions at HUD (using Christopher Sweet’s work) and has also been used for 100% of deregulatory actions at the CFPB. It also states that DOGE lawyers James Burnham, Austin Raynor, Jacob Altik and Ashley Boizelle have vetted and endorsed the tool.