DOGE Track

The Wreckers

From the start, DOGE has moved aggressively across the federal government to shutter agencies, cancel spending and seize data for itself. To do this, they have relied on a specific type of position that I call “Wreckers” - usually staffed by volunteers young and male, from a technical background, willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done quickly and move on to the next target at that agency or beyond.

The DOGE Teams

In the January 20th Executive Order “Establishing and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’” that established DOGE partially by renaming the US Digital Service, there was a section that described the formation and structure of DOGE teams that would operate at each federal agency

(c) 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.

In this executive order, the DOGE teams were simply tasked with the vague goal of “IT Modernization” to make them seem like a continuation of the work that USDS had already been doing. However, what the DOGE Teams were actually there to do was to implement the “President’s DOGE agenda.” At first, this was left purposefully vague and undefined, but a flurry of various executive orders have made the goals of DOGE more clear.

Home Bases

In some cases, Wreckers have been hired directly into the agencies where they are doing their work, but DOGE has relied heavily on federal detailing arrangements that temporarily transfer staff to other agencies. This is normally a mechanism that allows expert staffers (called detailees) to help as needed on projects. DOGE instead used it as a way to quickly deploy its wreckers across the entire government. So, a DOGE staffer might be detailed to the Department of Education one week and the CFPB the next.

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear at this point, DOGE in its early days hired staff into three different agencies and then formed teams at other agencies by detailing staff from these three starting points. Perhaps it made sense to start staff at both GSA and OPM too because their initial work was to seize control of centralized services and databases there first. It’s also true that DOGE created guarded enclaves at both those agencies where they could work and even live in. Maybe it was just because the DOGE offices at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building weren’t large enough to install sofas and bunks for all.

For a list of all the details that DOGE has used, see the Devils in the Details page.

Since the beginning of March, DOGE has started to hire some of its detailed staff to other agencies. For instance, Amy Gleason was appointed at HHS and Jordan Wick at CFPB on March 5th. This has been a tactical move in response to courts ruling that DOGE isn’t exactly real, but staff like Jordan Wick have continued to be detailed from DOGE despite being on staff at other agencies.

Details from USDS/DOGE

Most of the staff hired at DOGE itself were either working as leadership or support for DOGE operations across the government. However, a few DOGE staffers were detailed to other agencies as well.

Agency Name Start Detailed To
DOGE Adam Ramada   1/28/25
DOGE Brad Smith   2/XX/25
DOGE Cole Killian   2/04/25
DOGE Jennifer Balajadia
DOGE Alexandra Beynon   2/05/25
DOGE Jordan Wick   2/07/25
DOGE Joshua Fox
DOGE Carl Coe   2/XX/25
DOGE Stephanie Holmes   2/24/25
DOGE Jacob Altik   3/18/25
DOGE Adam Hoffman   4/21/25

Since the beginning of March, DOGE has been moving staff to work within agencies themselves, a move at least in part designed to allow the government to evade expedited discovery in the AFL-CIO v. DOL case. For instance, Jordan Wick became an employee of the CFPB on March 4th, the same day that Amy Gleason and Brad Smith officially onboarded at HHS.

Details from the Office of Personnel Management

Many of the early DOGE hires were formally appointed at the Office of Personnel Management. Some technical staff at OPM were supporting the

Agency Name Start Detailed To
OPM Clayton Cromer   1/27/25
OPM Gavin Kliger   1/27/25
OPM Nikhil Rajpal   1/27/25
OPM Justin Monroe   1/29/25
OPM Akash Bobba
OPM Austin Raynor   2/05/25
OPM Chris Young   2/05/25
OPM Jacob Altik   2/21/25
OPM Tarak Makecha c.3/01/25
OPM Christopher Stanley c.4/02/25
OPM Anthony Armstrong   4/10/25
OPM Allan Mangaser   4/XX/25

Details from the General Services Administration

The General Service Administration is an agency that provides shared services and procurement support to other federal agencies. Early on, DOGE focused on using the GSA to force cost reductions across government - e.g., through cancelling building leases or restricting the use of purchase cards - but GSA has also been the home base for a growing number of wreckers, with many recent hires starting there.

Agency Name Start Detailed To
GSA Edward Coristine   1/20/25
GSA Luke Farritor   1/21/25
GSA Jeremy Lewin   1/27/25
GSA Kyle Schutt   1/27/25
GSA Ethan Shaotran   1/27/25
GSA Boris Kizenko
GSA Donald Park   2/03/25
GSA Erica Jehling   2/12/25
GSA Derek Geissler c.2/13/25
GSA Nate Cavanaugh   2/21/25
GSA Justin Aimonetti   3/03/25
GSA Justin Fox c.3/04/25
GSA Alexander Simonpour   3/07/25
GSA Riley Sennott c.3/14/25
GSA Bridget Youngs   3/XX/25
GSA Jack Stein 3/22/25?
GSA Emily Bryant c.3/28/25
GSA Dave Malcher c.4/25/25
GSA Jonathan Mendelson   4/28/25
GSA Marshall Wood   4/28/25
GSA Ryan Shea   5/XX/25
GSA Brian Burroughs
GSA Alexander Tullman   7/XX/25
GSA Nicholas Gallagher   10/XX/25
GSA Micaela Lopez Ballefin

Other Agencies

There are also a fair number of Wreckers who started at other agencies, possibly because agency policy or practices might have made it difficult to detail someone from elsewhere. Or, there might have been explicit direction from agency leadership to hire staff there. For instance, there were four Wreckers hired directly from SpaceX to work at the FAA for the short-term on the direction of the Department of Transportation head, Sean Duffy. Some of these names might also be reclassified if I am able to determine they started at GSA or OPM and were actually detailed to the agency listed below.

{|x| [x.from_agency_id, x.sort_date]} %}

Agency Name Start Detailed To
DOL Marko Elez   2/18/25
DOL Aram Moghaddassi   2/22/25
DOL Bridget Youngs   4/04/25
EOP Sydney Volanski   10/XX/25
Ed. Conor Fennessy   2/20/25
Ed. Brooks Morgan   4/09/25
Ed. Adam Ramada   4/09/25
DOE Seth Cohen   6/XX/25
DOE Ankur Bansal 7/11/25?
DOE Adam Blake 7/11/25?
HHS Rachel Riley   4/14/25
HHS Zach Terrell   4/14/25
NASA Scott Coulter   2/18/25
SSA Payton Rehling
SSA Jon Koval   4/15/25
SSA Akash Bobba   4/29/25
VA Justin Fulcher   3/04/25
Using Details
Agency Heads