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 Ed., DOE, DOL, FDIC
DOGE Brad Smith HHS
DOGE Cole Killian EPA, DOL, SSA
DOGE Alexandra Beynon Ed.
DOGE Jordan Wick CFPB, DOL, Ed., FCC, USDA, GSA, SBA
DOGE Joshua Fox NOAA, MCC, USDA
DOGE Carl Coe EPA
DOGE Stephanie Holmes DOI
DOGE Jacob Altik FCC
DOGE Adam Hoffman DOJ

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 USAID
OPM Gavin Kliger USAID, USDA, CFPB, IRS, USAGM, FTC, DHS, GSA
OPM Nikhil Rajpal DOGE, NOAA, CFPB, SSA
OPM Justin Monroe FBI
OPM Akash Bobba SBA, Ed., SSA
OPM Austin Raynor DOGE
OPM Chris Young DOGE, CFPB
OPM Jacob Altik USADF
OPM Tarak Makecha USAGM, FCC, FBI
OPM Christopher Stanley DOJ
OPM Anthony Armstrong FDIC
OPM Allan Mangaser DHS

Details from the General Services Administration

The GSA 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 DOGE, OPM, USAID, SBA, DHS, State, Ed., HHS
GSA Luke Farritor HHS, DOGE, USAID, DOE, CFPB, State, NSF, DOL, DHS
GSA Kyle Schutt DOGE, DHS, HHS
GSA Ethan Shaotran DOGE, Ed., SSA, USADF, IAF, USPS, DFC
GSA Boris Kizenko SBA
GSA Donald Park SBA, EXIM, DOD
GSA Jeremy Lewin CFPB, HHS
GSA Erica Jehling EPA
GSA Derek Geissler DOL
GSA Nate Cavanaugh USADF, IAF, USIP, NEH, MCC, IMLS, Commerce, MBDA, NLRB, DFC, EXIM, MSPB
GSA Alexander Simonpour USPS, NASA
GSA Justin Fox NEH, MCC, WWICS, NLRB
GSA Riley Sennott NASA, SBA
GSA Bridget Youngs DOL
GSA Jack Stein MCC
GSA Emily Bryant FTC
GSA Dave Malcher VA
GSA Jonathan Mendelson DFC, SEC
GSA Marshall Wood DFC
GSA Ryan Shea HHS
GSA Brian Burroughs State, USDA
GSA Alexander Tullman HHS

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 SSA, HHS, DHS
DOL Aram Moghaddassi SSA, HHS, DHS, SBA
DOL Bridget Youngs Peace
Ed. Conor Fennessy HHS, DOI, USDA, SBA
Ed. Brooks Morgan Treas., FDIC
Ed. Adam Ramada Treas.
DOE Ankur Bansal NRC
DOE Adam Blake NRC
HHS Rachel Riley NSF
HHS Zach Terrell NSF
NASA Scott Coulter SSA
SSA Payton Rehling DHS, DOJ
SSA Jon Koval DOJ
SSA Akash Bobba USDA
VA Justin Fulcher DOD
Using Details
Agency Heads