Executive Orders
From the very beginning, all of DOGE’s influences and responsibilities have been defined through executive orders. These are directives issued by the President that are meant to apply to the Executive branch agencies. Notably, executive orders do not carry the same weight as laws that have passed both houses of Congress or agency regulations that have followed the process in the Administrative Procedure Act. In this sense, much of DOGE’s mandate and power has rested on bluster and overreach in these executive orders, which is why the administration continues to lose legal challenges in the courts for DOGE’s actions.
This page lists the executive orders that have been applicable to DOGE’s actions.
| EO 14151: Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing |
| Date |
2025-01-20 |
| Directives |
All Agencies |
| Summary |
This order establishes the administration’s targeting of “DEI” as something to be eliminated in the federal government. It includes a directive for the head of the OPM to eliminate DEI in hiring practices and federal employment policies. It also includes directives to agencies to eliminate DEI-related positions as well as contracts, and a monthly meeting with OPM, OMB and agency heads to report on the costs of social justice measures for their agencies. This order does not mention DOGE (and precedes it), but DOGE is heavily involved in writing programs to look for DEI keywords and delete web pages, etc. [full text] |
| EO 14158: Establishing and Implementing the President's "Department of Government Efficiency" |
| Date |
2025-01-20 |
| Directives |
DOGE All Agencies |
| Summary |
Renames the US Digital Service to the US DOGE Service and also defines an entity for Special Government Employees to work within it named the DOGE Temporary Organization. This order also specifies the structure of 4-person DOGE teams that will embed within agencies to implement “the President’s DOGE agenda.” It also states that DOGE will be focused primarily on IT modernization activities within agencies, that they must be granted widespread access and that they will adhere to “rigorous data protection standards.” [full text] |
| EO 14159: Protecting the American People Against Invasion |
| Date |
2025-01-20 |
| Directives |
All Agencies |
| Summary |
This Executive Order has nothing to do directly with DOGE, but it does establish the “emergency” framing that the Trump administration has used around framing and it does lay out the groundwork for the work DOGE will do later to create large data lakes to surveil immigrants. [full text] |
| EO 14169: Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid |
| Date |
2025-01-20 |
| Directives |
Specific Agencies |
| Specified |
State, USAID |
| Summary |
This executive order mandated a 90-day pause on all foreign aid grants from the United States so they could be reviewed and it commanded the OMB to enforce this pause through withholding apportionments as necessary. It also granted the Secretary of State the power to approve funds that had been paused. This EO did not mention DOGE or USAID specifically, but it was the basis for DOGE’s intervention and destruction of that agency. [full text] |
| EO 14179: Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence |
| Date |
2025-01-23 |
| Summary |
This order revoked Biden-era executive orders and memos on how Artificial Intelligence can be utilized within the government. Those established some guardrails to ensure that AI training would not leak data to unauthorized locations, that AI programs would not perpetuate bias, and that AIs would not be used to make decisions or determinations until it had been cleared through a pilot program. This executive order does not mention DOGE, but it enables their widespread use of AI without needing to follow any of the safeguards of the Biden admininstration. [full text] |
| EO 14192: Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation |
| Date |
2025-01-31 |
| Directives |
All Agencies |
| Summary |
This executive order tasked agencies with reducing regulations by putting caps on their ability to new regulations. Specifically, a new regulation could only be proposed if 10 regulations are eliminated, and the projected costs must be zero or negative (by removing other regulations). It’s unclear if these targets were rigidly enforced (for instance, OPM has been ordered to issue multiple new regulations over the last few months), but it does formalize the Project 2025 framing that all regulation is bad with an OKR-style metric for DOGE to enforce. [full text] |
| EO 14210: Implementing the President's "Department of Government Efficiency" Workforce Optimization Initiative |
| Date |
2025-02-11 |
| Directives |
DOGE All Agencies |
| Summary |
This executive order set an benchmark for attrition at various agencies, mandating that agencies can only hire 1 new person if 4 people are removed (ie, a 75% reduction). It also tasked agency heads to work with DOGE leads in their agencies to develop “a data-driven plan” for prioritizing new hires in the areas of highest need. It also granted the local DOGE team lead with the power to determine if any vacancy should be filled and to veto any potential hire into career positions. [full text] |
| EO 14215: Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies |
| Date |
2025-02-18 |
| Directives |
All Agencies |
| Summary |
This executive order laid out the concept that independent agencies that were created as such by Congress are not allowed to be independent and must instead report to the President. Furthermore, any regulations they propose must be cleared by the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within OMB first. It also claims that Federal employees are not allowed to use their own interpretations to determine what actions are legal or illegal; instead, the law is what the President or the Attorney General says it is (and since the Trump DOJ had already rejected the independence of the AG, this means the law is what the President alone says it is). Needless to say, this has been heavily litigated in court, but it serves as the administration’s justification for cracking down on independent agencies. [full text] |
| EO 14218: Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders |
| Date |
2025-02-19 |
| Directives |
DOGE All Agencies |
| Summary |
Another executive order focused on immigration. This one is focused on the fear that immigrants might be illegally accessing government resources and using public funds. To that end, it directs various public programs to use automated eligibility verification systems before providing services. It also commands for OMB and DOGE to examine all possible sources of federal funding for agencies and to issue a report and recommendation within 30 days. In essence, it augments DOGE’s generic permit to rifle through agency expenditures to give them an additional anti-immigration support. [full text] |
| EO 14222: Implementing the President's "Department of Government Efficiency" Cost Efficiency Initiative |
| Date |
2025-02-26 |
| Directives |
DOGE All Agencies |
| Summary |
This executive order directed all agencies to work with their DOGE teams to build a single centralized system to record all payments made by the agency with the requirement that every requested payment must include a brief written justification for the services. It also grants the authority to DOGE teams to review all contracts and grants at the agencies and terminate at their discretion any grants they feel don’t serve the administration or should have their costs recovered. This executive order gave DOGE the justification to demand access to grants in all agencies and set a 30-day deadline to support their practice of demanding emergency powers to do so. This order also placed a 30-day freeze on all spending cards (implemented by the GSA setting a $1 limit for them) and elimination of all non-essential travel. Finally, this EO commanded all agencies to follow the GSA’s lead and terminate any unnecessary building leases within 30 days. [full text] |
| EO 14238: Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy |
| Date |
2025-03-14 |
| Directives |
All Agencies Specific Agencies |
| Specified |
FMCS, Global Media, Wilson Ctr., IMLS, USICH, CDFI Fund, MBDA |
| Summary |
This order built on the methods outlined in EO 14217, and expanded the list of agencies that must be immediately wound down to a bare minimum to include the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the United States Agency for Global Media (parent of VOA, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and the Minority Business Development Agency. These agencies were given only 7 days to comply and some were immediately visited by Nate Cavanaugh to ensure their destruction. [full text] |
| EO 14240: Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement |
| Date |
2025-03-20 |
| Directives |
All Agencies Specific Agencies |
| Specified |
GSA |
| Summary |
This executive order directed agencies to submit plans within 60 days of how their procurement could instead be conducted by GSA instead of by the agency itself. It also designated the Administrator of the GSA as the executive agent for any government-wide acquisition contracts (GWAC) for IT. This means that the GSA becomes the sole entity to negotiate and/or continue IT contracts for software and services at various agencies. Although this order does not explicitly mention DOGE, the GSA’s technology division is heavily controlled by DOGE and the GSA Administrator, Stephen Ehikian, is considered a DOGE associate. [full text] |
| EO 14243: Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos |
| Date |
2025-03-20 |
| Directives |
All Agencies Specific Agencies |
| Specified |
DOL |
| Summary |
This order was designed to formalize the widespread data access that DOGE has already demanded from agencies. Claiming it is motivated by a desire to eliminate information silos, it ordered that agencies must make all efforts to ensure that agency heads or their designees (i.e., DOGE) must have full access to any unclassified data that they request. Furthermore, they must be given access to any data provided by states that participate in federal programs. It also included a specific instruction that the Secretary Labor (or his designee) should have access to unemployment records that belonged to their Inspector General, a direct granting of access to a dataset that DOGE had been coveting. [full text] |
| EO 14248: Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections |
| Date |
2025-03-25 |
| Directives |
DOGE All Agencies Specific Agencies |
| Specified |
SSA, FEC |
| Summary |
This order attempts to assert greater federal control over the voter registration process for each state towards verifying that only citizens are voting (a frequent trope in anti-immigrant rhetoric on the right wing despite the lack of any evidence it happens regularly). To that end, it lays out some requirements for states that have triggered lawsuits for overreach``. It also directs that the Social Security Administration to make available to state and local officials the “Social Security Number Verification Service, the Death Master File, and any other Federal databases” for use in verifying individuals. It also directs DHS to work with DOGE on reviewing the voter registration lists for each state against immigration records in the idea that they will be able to identify patterns of illegal voting. And it threatens to withhold election funds from the FEC for any state that refuses to comply. [full text] |
| EO 14271: Ensuring Commercial, Cost-Effective Solutions in Federal Contracts |
| Date |
2025-04-15 |
| Directives |
All Agencies |
| Summary |
This executive order specifically constrains the ability of the federal government to create custom software, by mandating that any proposed procurement for custom development work must include a justification for why it couldn’t be handled by an off-the-shelf product and must get explicit approval from agency leadership (and probably DOGE staff) to proceed. This would be a boon to Silicon Valley firms like Oracle, Salesforce or Palantir while also diminishing the ability of agencies to own the systems they operate, restoring the perpetual licensing-fee treadmill that has plagued many agency IT operations. [full text] |
| EO 14275: Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement |
| Date |
2025-04-15 |
| Summary |
This order calls for significant revisions to the Federal Acquisition Register (FAR) – the complicated rules that govern how the US procures goods and services. While there is a real need to streamline aspects of the FAR, this effort could also serve as a cover to the executive branch to influence how contracts are awarded. Noting it here because DOGE has been linked to efforts within the FAA to redirect contracts to use Starlink. [full text] |
| EO 14284: Strengthening Probationary Periods in the Federal Service |
| Date |
2025-04-24 |
| Summary |
Issued in the wake of preliminary injunctions that found OPM radically overstepped its bounds demanding the indiscriminate termination of probationary employees, this executive order proposes a new regulation that would require agencies and employees in probationary periods (ie, in the first year of a role, whether as a new hire or promotion) affirm why they should continue to be hired or be automatically terminated. As a result of this ruling, federal staff could find themselves promoted into new responsibilities and then fired because their their case for continued employment was not considered adequate or the administration wants to reduce headcount. [full text] |
| EO 14290: Ending Taxpayer Subsidization Of Biased Media |
| Date |
2025-05-01 |
| Directives |
Specific Agencies |
| Specified |
CPB |
| Summary |
This executive order commanded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) board of directors to cease any funding and support for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) TV network and National Public Radio (NPR). As an independent agency, the CPB is not obliged to listen to the President, but this administration has already asserted its right for absolute executive control in EO 14215. The main purpose of this EO was to coordinate its efforts with an attack on the CPB by DOGE and as an angry response to CPB seeking a restraining order against the Trump administration for trying to fire its board a few days prior. [full text] |
| EO 14300: Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission |
| Date |
2025-05-23 |
| Directives |
DOGE Specific Agencies |
| Specified |
NRC, DOGE |
| Summary |
This executive order commands the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reduce its regulatory oversight over the nuclear energy sector, with the goal of radically increasing the number of nuclear reactors in America. This would be just another example of the Trump Administration/Project 2025 insistence that industry can regulate itself, but it does explicitly direct that the NRC must consult with a DOGE team assigned to the agency both on how to streamline the regulatory process for nuclear reactors and to conduct a reduction-in-force to layoff an unstated number of staff. [full text] |