DOGE's Projects

Now that we are several months into DOGE’s regime, it’s a little bit easier to see the deliberate goals behind the smash-and-grab antics. Much of the early media coverage focused on DOGE as if it were an independent entity and its actions were attuned to whatever would benefit Elon. That is still true of course, but it’s also now clear that DOGE has been the “boots on the ground” within agencies, there to enforce the political aims of the Trump administration. I personally found it useful to consider the executive branch as a triumvirate composed of Elon Musk, Russell Vought and Stephen Miller (whose wife, Katie Miller was in DOGE from the start). DOGE has embarked on the following major projects to enforce their aims:

Targeting DEI: DOGE has been involved in work to eliminate "pro-DEI activities, content and expenditures at government agencies. This has included activities like scrubbing pages from websites and cancelling grants that match certain keywords.
Attacking Government Personnel: In several executive order, the Trump Administration has sought to dramatically reduce the number of people who work for the federal government, and DOGE has been involved in practically every effort related to that. DOGE staff conceived and executed plans to fire probationary employees. They implemented the famous "five things" email. They swept into small and large agencies to lock people out of their systems and buildings even. They were even given veto power over hiring decisions across the entire executive branch.
Radical Deregulation: The Trump Adminstration has set a goal of removing 50% of all federal regulations, and DOGE has been involved in technical efforts using AI to identify regulations that it feels are not statutorily justified and craft new text for rules.
Acting with Impunity: Citing the Unitary Executive Theory, the Trump Administration has been very aggressive about eliminating existing government organizations that provide oversight over the executive branch and within agencies. DOGE has sometimes been involved in technical efforts to evade oversight by gaining superuser access to systems and bypassing security controls.
Eliminating Agencies: The Trump Administration has repeatedly targeted both large agencies like USAID and the CFPB as well as smaller independent agencies for total destruction. DOGE staff have served as the wreckers driving this, with some staffers repeatedly involved with infiltrating and eliminating agencies.
Looking for Viral Waste and Fraud: Since its start, DOGE has been scouring agencies for evidence of vast "viral waste" and fraud in federal operations and expenditures. Many of these examples have turned out to be DOGE not understanding the complexities of government data, but DOGE teams continue to search in places like Social Security or the Treasury for fraud.
Blocking Grants and Appropriated Funds: Since the start, the Trump Administration and OMB head Russell Vought have sought to prevent the government from distributing grants or spending funds that have been appropriated by Congress. This is called impoundment and DOGE has often been instrumental in seizing control of systems to shut down spending within agencies.
IT Modernization & AI: The executive order that created DOGE stated that its purpose would be "IT Modernization," but this has often been just a mere pretext for DOGE's wreckers to enter an agency in order to fire staff and shut down all spending. However, there have been a few IT Modernization projects. For instance, DOGE has been involved in moving an OPM project to digitize retirement applications forward. DOGE has also been behind several projects to expand AI usage within the federal government. More recently, the National Design Studio has been focused on redesigning federal websites (and launching many of its own) and OPM is hoping a new Tech Force initiative will be able to replace all the internal technical talent lost when DOGE eliminated 18F and much of USDS.
Anti-immigration Technology: Perhaps the most ominous project of DOGE has been their effort to create a large system that aggregates data from multiple agencies like the IRS, CMS and Social Security Administration to build tools for ICE to indentify immigrants for arrest and deportation. This work has also involved an effort to collect data about voting registration to support the administration's claim that millions of immigrants have illegally voted.