Jan 2025

Baris Akis introduces Nate Cavanaugh to Steve Davis, so that he can recruit Nate Cavanaugh to work for DOGE. Vinay Hiremath introduced Mr. Akis to Mr. Cavanagh

The leader of the Trump transition team for the Treasury Department sends an email requesting that Thomas Krause be incuded on the “day 1 team, to lead on Fiscal Services modernization efforts.”

According to his later sworn testimony, Noah Peters meets with Keenan Kmiec to outline his plan on how to use administrative leave to sideline federal employees from being able to do their work and counter or monitor DOGE’s activities at their agencies.

Noah Peters receives a formal job offer to work at OPM. He describes it in a court disposition as being very general and vague.

Noah Peters starts drafting two memos for OPM. One concerns temporary authorities for Schedule C and the other is on how to handle both probationary employees and admininstrative leave. These are to be issued on January 20th.

A report on conservative nonprofit groups doing research for DOGE notes that interviews are being conducted by Marc Andreessen and Shaun Maguire.

The public calendar of Riley Sennott mentions a 30-minute “SGE Ethics Discussion” meeting with other new DOGE members Derek Geissler, Brooks Morgan and Conor Fennessy included on the invitation. SGE stands for Special Government Employee.

Noah Peters recalls that he met with Amanda Scales and Brian Bjelde on this day to plan for their upcoming first day at OPM.

EO 14151: Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing

EO 14158: Establishing and Implementing the President's "Department of Government Efficiency"

EO 14159: Protecting the American People Against Invasion

EO 14169: Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid

EO 14170: Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service

Jordan Wick, Steve Davis, Cole Killian, Katie Miller, Elon Musk, and Brad Smith start at DOGE.

Anthony Armstrong, Riccardo Biasini, Brian Bjelde, Akash Bobba, Clayton Cromer, Greg Hogan, Gavin Kliger, Noah Peters, Noah Peters, Amanda Scales, James Sullivan, and Joanna Wischer start at OPM.

Edward Coristine, Stephen Ehikian, Luke Farritor, Nicole Hollander, Jeremy Lewin, and Ethan Shaotran start at GSA.

Kathryn Armstrong Loving starts as Federal Detailee at EPA.

Peter Marocco and Marco Rubio start at State.

Keith Sonderling starts as Senior Advisor at DOL.

Edward Coristine detailed from GSA to DOGE

Charles Ezell promoted to Acting Director at OPM

Greg Hogan promoted to Acting Chief Information Officer at OPM

An Inauguration Day executive order EO 14158 renames the US Digital Services and establishes the DOGE Temporary Organization within it, staffed with 4-person teams in agencies for “implementing the president’s DOGE agenda”

USDS is transferred out of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and established as a standalone office in the Executive Office of the President.

Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell replaces existing CIO Melvin Brown with DOGE ally Greg Hogan, who will serve as the Acting CIO.

The DOGE team moves into a secure office within OPM, installing sofa beds and armed security to prevent other staff from entry.

IT staff at OPM are pulled into a “911-esque call” requesting that “a political team” of 6 individuals must be given access to OPM systems. These include Charles Ezell, Greg Hogan, and Amanda Scales, as well as unidentified employees OPM-03 (Akash Bobba), OPM-05 (Gavin Kliger) and OPM-07 (Brian Bjelde). These DOGE staffers are granted administrative access to USAJOBS, USA Staffing, and USA Performance systems.

Career IT staff in the Office of the CIO at OPM report that their database access was completely revoked by DOGE staff working at the agency.

President Trump signs executive order EO 14169 that places a 90-day halt on foreign aid, but it’s unclear to USAID staff if that applies to just new disbursements or existing grants.

In Executive Order 14170, Trump declares a government-wide hiring freeze. He also orders that DOGE will work with OMB and OPM to submit a plan to reduce the size of the government within 90 days

Marko Elez starts as Special Advisor (IT&M) at Treas..

Luke Farritor detailed from GSA to HHS

Justin Fox reports that Anthony Armstrong connected with him before he started work at DOGE. Besides Armstrong, Justin Fox was also communicating with other DOGE members via Signal both in group chats and individually. This appears to be a violation of government records laws for those other staffers who were already working in the federal government.

Nikhil Rajpal and Cole Killian start screening all preexisting USDS staff with short interviews, asking them their views of DOGE and to name who they think are underperformers that should be fired.

Nate Cavanaugh starts at GSA.

Nate Cavanaugh testifies he started working formally for DOGE a few days after the inauguration. He says his first project was a team effort to create an org chart of government agencies. This project evetually became live on the DOGE website. He does not identify who else worked on it.

The Department of Energy rescinds 394 pending job offers as part of Trump’s hiring freeze. It also removes almost all of its job advertisements.

EO 14179: Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence

Tyler Hassen starts at DOI.

Tom Krause starts as Senior Advisor for Technology and Modernization at Treas..

Trent Morse starts as Deputy Assistant to the President / Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel at EOP.

Adam Ramada starts at DOGE.

A GSA employee reports meeting Kyle Schutt and Ethan Shaotran and also bumping into Edward Coristine. They are described as being giddy and interested and curious and then shifting in tone the following week with DOGE staff “frantically running around trying to do impossible shit with no context and no flexibility and no ability to push back.”

OPM sends out a first test email to all federal staff from its new Government-Wide Email System (GWES).

An unnamed USAID official receives an angry late-night phone call from Peter Marocco, the newly appointed Director of Foreign Assistance at the US State Department, accusing employees of trying to subvert the President’s executive order imposing a 90-day pause on all foreign aid.

Jacob Altik and Nikhil Rajpal start at OPM.

Jennifer Balajadia, James Burnham, and Keenan Kmiec start at DOGE.

Josh Gruenbaum and Thomas Shedd start at GSA.

Edward Coristine detailed from GSA to OPM

Luke Farritor detailed from GSA to DOGE

Noah Peters detailed from OPM to DOGE

Senior USAID staff meet to explain to unnamed admininstration officials that the slow way in which USAID payments are processed through other agencies made it seem like funds allocated before the Trump executive order took effect were issued in defiance of the order. The administration officials seem confident they can explain to Peter Marocco.

The State Department issues a memo written by Peter Marocco and signed by Marco Rubio that not only puts a halt to future foreign aid but also insists on stop-work orders for ~6200 current grants and contracts at USAID.

Representing OPM, James Sullivan coordinates in an email to Department of Energy officials on several DOGE-led initiatives. One messages states “as discussed over the phone, when you compile the list of 69 DEI employees placed on admin leave, please share with Amanda and myself.” Energy officials also send a list of 1394 probationary employees to Amanda Scales, all of whom will be fired.

Treasury Chief of Staff Dan Katz sends an email stating that DOGE staff need to be given immediate access to pause USAID payments issued from Treasury.

Elon Musk makes a request for Baris Akis to be allowed to work for DOGE, even though he is a noncitizen and it wouldn’t normally be allowed. His request is denied.

Spurred by rumors there would be a funding freeze, HUD grantees drew their funds early at 5x normal rate, accounting for $1.5 billion in grant expenditures in total.

OPM sends a second test email from its new Government-Wide Email System (GWES) to all government employees.

Anthony Armstrong starts at DOGE.

Greg Barbaccia starts as Federal Chief Information Officer at OMB.

Rachel Riley starts as Senior Advisor at HHS.

Jacob Altik, Riccardo Biasini, Akash Bobba, and Nikhil Rajpal detailed from OPM to DOGE

Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, and Jeremy Lewin detailed from GSA to USAID

Clayton Cromer and Gavin Kliger detailed from OPM to USAID

Kyle Schutt and Ethan Shaotran detailed from GSA to DOGE

Riley Sennott and Brooks Morgan arrive to a meeting/work at GSA before they are officially hired in DOGE. They are signed in and possibly meet with Derek Geissler and Adam Ramada

President Trump illegally fires the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Chair Gwynne Wilcox and General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo from the agency’s board. This leaves the agency without quorum to act.

Charles Ezell sends an email to OPM IT staff stating that OPM-02 (Riccardo Biasini), OPM-04 (Edward Coristine), and OPM-06 (Nikhil Rajpal) “urgently” need access to several sensitive systems within the agency.

A member of the OPM union posts a Reddit message reportedly from an OPM employee which states that the email server is a piece of outside equipment and the its goal is to generate lists of all govt employees in order to send massive firing notices later.

Two anonymous federal employees file a class action lawsuit against OPM for launching the new email system without conducting a Privacy Impact Assessment for the new system

After the arrival of DOGE in the agency, senior staff are summoned to a meeting with Gavin Kliger and Luke Farritor. The DOGE team then presented agency leadership with a list of 57 employees involved with payments to be placed on immediate administrative leave and locked out of system access. The list reportedly made little sense and involved many staff not involved with payments.

Justin Monroe and Christopher Stanley start as Expert at OPM.

Adam Ramada detailed from DOGE to Ed.

CDC managers receive a directive from OPM to classify probationary hires as “mission critical”, working on “strategic priorities” or neither. When one of the CDC’s ten centres responded that all their staff were “mission critical”, higher-ups told set explicit target percentages for each category.

Two DOGE staffers – Tyler Hassen and Bryton Shang – show up an Army Corp of Engineers dam in California and attempt to turn on water pumps to drain more wate one of California’s reservoirs to help fight fires in LA. This dam fed water to central California, far away from the LA wildfires the water was supposed to help.

Marko Elez is provided with a laptop from Treasury with with copies of the source code for the PAM, SPS, and ASAP systems in a separate, secure coding environment known as a “secure code repository” or “sandbox.”

OPM sends out the “Fork in the Road” email to all federal employees offering them a chance to resign, in exchange for six month of administrative leave and protection from termination.

OPM grants OPM-02 (Riccardo Biasini), OPM-04 (Edward Coristine), and OPM-06 (Nikhil Rajpal) full administrative access to the systems USAJOBS, USA Staffing, USA Performance, eOPF, and EHRI. This access included “[c]ode read and write permissions.”

The White House press secretary reports the astounding statistic that USAID spent $50 million on condoms for the Gaza Strip. This figure was actually for a variety of family planning services (largely birth control medication) and, more importantly, it was for the Gaza province in Mozambique.

Gavin Kliger detailed from OPM to USDA

Justin Monroe detailed from OPM to FBI

An unidentified former SpaceX employee [later confirmed to be Justin Monroe] is reported to be working as an advisor to the Director of the FBI

A team of high-ranking GSA employees meets with Nicole Hollander to discuss building special “resting rooms” for DOGE and other A-suite staff.

GSA regional managers receive instructions from HQ that “lease terminations are the clear priority at this time.”

The Smithsonian Institution announces it is closing a diversity office and freezing all federal hiring. It is not a federal agency, but most of its funding comes from Congressional appropriaions and two-thirds of its staff are federal workers.

Austin Raynor and Chris Young start at OPM.

Tyler Hassen conducts a review of every single contract and grant from DOI and sends action items for review directly to Secretary Burgum.

Luke Farritor is granted read-only access to the CDC’s Integrated Contract Expert (ICE) system for contracts.

Joe Gebbia arrives at GSA for a meeting with unnamed staff. This is likely to interview for a position at DOGE.

Jordan Wick and Nate Cavanaugh visit GSA to meet with Thomas Shedd and possibly others.

Elon Musk reportedly visits GSA to meet with staff, several of whom are identified from their appearances in the internal directory for the agency. These include Steve Davis, Nicole Hollander, Thomas Shedd, Stephen Ehikian and Luke Farritor.

Leland Dudek reaches out to Tiffany Flick, the Associate Director of Budget, Facilities and Security to inform her that Mike Russo and Scott Coulter would be onboarding for DOGE. He was a mid-level employee at the time who would not normally be coordinating inter-agency details like this.

DOGE presents their evidence that the employees should be placed on leave based on a single email analysis made by Luke Farritor and sent to other DOGE members. “I could be wrong. My numbers could be off.” he writes, but the conclusions are not questioned or checked.

After USAID’s director of labor relations pushed back against the push to suspend and fire the employees, he threatens to report it to the Office of Special Counsel and emails the employees saying he has no grounds to keep them on leave. As a result, Clayton Cromer commands security staff to forcibly remove him from the building.

Jeremy Lewin and Elon Musk order the acting head of USAID to comply with orders to lock every USAID employee worldwide out of all email and other communication systems. He refuses, stating that a sudden loss of access could get aid workers killed.

Luke Farritor and Gavin Kliger demand that all senior managers at USAID be stripped of their power to authorize payments - and that they alone become the only authorizers.

EO 14192: Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation

Conor Fennessy starts as Senior Advisor at Ed..

Mike Russo starts as Chief Information Officer at SSA.

Christopher Stanley starts as Senior Advisor of Technology and Efficiency at DOGE.

Brian Bjelde converted to permanent position as Expert at OPM

Luke Farritor is granted read access to the Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System (HIGLAS) which centralizes payments for CMS medical claims

Federal employees at OPM report they are locked out of access to key systems by DOGE and OPM leadership.

The Department of Energy consults with DOGE staff at OPM about return-to-office mandates. Clayton Cromer handles the exchange from OPM’s side.

Derek Geissler and Frank Schuler start as at GSA.

Kenneth Jackson and Tarak Makecha start at State.

Mattieu Gamache-Asselin leaves role as Senior Advisor - DOGE at HHS (exits govt. service)