{"id":841169,"date":"2025-04-15T18:12:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T23:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/15\/whos-running-the-doge-wrecking-machine-the-worlds-richest-man-or-a-little-known-bureaucrat\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T18:12:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T23:12:43","slug":"whos-running-the-doge-wrecking-machine-the-worlds-richest-man-or-a-little-known-bureaucrat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/15\/whos-running-the-doge-wrecking-machine-the-worlds-richest-man-or-a-little-known-bureaucrat\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s Running the DOGE Wrecking Machine: The World\u2019s Richest Man or a Little-Known Bureaucrat?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories<\/a> as soon as they\u2019re published.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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When President Donald Trump announced his marquee government cost-cutting initiative, he left no doubt about whom he intended to run it: Elon Musk. Still, questions about the scope of Musk\u2019s authority have hounded the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency ever since.<\/p>\n

As DOGE began to order massive budget cuts and layoffs, and those affected by the moves began to raise questions in the press and in court about their legality, administration officials equivocated on Musk\u2019s exact role, asserting he was simply a senior adviser to the president and had no official position in DOGE.<\/p>\n

Five weeks after its creation and under pressure from a growing cascade of lawsuits, the White House revealed in late February that an obscure bureaucrat named Amy Gleason had been acting as DOGE\u2019s administrator since nearly day one.<\/p>\n

However, ProPublica has found that she does not appear to be running the budget-slashing group, according to interviews with six current and former government officials. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get the sense that Amy is in the role of scapegoat,\u201d said one source who had been in meetings with Gleason.<\/p>\n

The exact chain of command at DOGE is not clear to most federal employees who brush up against the team. But sources told ProPublica that longtime Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, a former executive of Musk\u2019s Boring Company and SpaceX, appears to be administering day-to-day operations. And at times, Musk himself issues commands from inside the Secretary of War Suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, said a person familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know who Amy Gleason even is,\u201d said one person who\u2019s worked closely with DOGE\u2019s leadership in a federal agency. \u201cDavis runs the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk, Davis and Gleason did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Since DOGE was created by executive order<\/a> on Jan. 20, the Trump administration has gone to great lengths<\/a> to put legal distance between Musk and the entity, saying he is neither an employee nor its head. And even though the order creates the role of an administrator \u2014 someone to coordinate with the White House and help place DOGE teams inside agencies \u2014 the Trump administration deflected questions about who was in that position for over a month.<\/p>\n

The arrangement has confounded judges overseeing challenges to DOGE\u2019s authority. \u201cThe whole operation, it raises questions,\u201d remarked U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang, adding that the lack of clarity was \u201chighly suspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n

This setup could make it more difficult to prove that Musk has violated conflicts of interests laws, which generally bar federal employees from getting involved in government matters that impact their own business interests.<\/p>\n

By denying that Musk is the legal DOGE administrator \u201cit gets him more removed, and it could make it harder to prove a violation,\u201d said Richard Painter, a former top ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Fox News, Musk dismissed<\/a> concerns about conflicts, saying, \u201cI\u2019ll recuse myself\u201d if issues arise.<\/p>\n

The announcement that placed Gleason in between Musk and DOGE\u2019s daily operations appeared haphazard: Gleason was on vacation in Mexico when Trump\u2019s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, named her as acting administrator to a group of reporters in Washington. Gleason told colleagues the White House had not coordinated the announcement with her.<\/p>\n

Other parts of the rollout were equally perplexing: Leavitt asserted Gleason had been the administrator since nearly its inception \u2014 but colleagues said Gleason only began running staff meetings about a month into the administration with a small group of career technologists that predated the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Gleason told her former colleagues back in Nashville, Tennessee \u2014 where she recently worked as a health technology executive \u2014 she was planning on returning there in a few short months.<\/p>\n

One government worker who has been in meetings with Gleason described her as \u201csomeone with little to no actual decision-making\u201d responsibilities.<\/p>\n

She revealed as much to colleagues in meetings in recent weeks, where she made clear she was not deeply involved in the DOGE budget cutting that has put humanitarian programs in peril and forced thousands of employees out of work, sources who were in those meetings told ProPublica.<\/p>\n

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One reason it\u2019s so difficult to pin down who is in charge of DOGE: It contains two separate teams that are almost entirely walled-off from each other.<\/p>\n

In forming DOGE, Trump folded the entity<\/a> into the existing U.S. Digital Service, a small unit of tech experts housed within the White House focused on improving government software platforms. While DOGE, on paper, has a similar mission, the actual work of Musk\u2019s group has been far more expansive, such as cutting funding<\/a> to programs and gaining access<\/a> to sensitive agency data systems, as ProPublica and other<\/a> media<\/a> have reported.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, many holdover digital service workers have resigned<\/a> or been laid off, and only a small group of a few dozen federal technologists remain. Gleason is only in charge of this smaller group, the sources said.<\/p>\n

Officials who worked with Gleason, who served in the Digital Service during the prior Trump and Biden administrations, spoke highly of her dedication to the mission. One noted she helped upgrade health care technology across government, such as digitizing COVID-19 test results during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sense of her initial expectations was that USDS was going to have a synergy with DOGE \u2026 while also making government work better,\u201d a former colleague said. \u201cShe was not expecting DOGE to come in and dismantle USDS.\u201d<\/p>\n

The secrecy surrounding Gleason\u2019s appointment extends to all of DOGE. The Trump administration has offered scant information about its employees \u2014 except when compelled by lawsuits. In an effort to gain a clearer understanding of how the group operates, ProPublica has spent weeks identifying and profiling its staff.<\/p>\n

Among them are engineers, lawyers, technology executives and consultants. Many were recruited from Musk\u2019s businesses, including SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink, or from firms owned by his business associates. Today ProPublica is adding 20 names to our running list, bringing the total to 66. None have responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Some have been enlisted to oversee cuts at the very agencies that conducted oversight of the industries where they\u2019d previously worked.<\/p>\n

DOGE assigned Tyler Hassen, an energy industry executive, to the Department of the Interior. Scott Langmack and Michael Alexander Mirski \u2014 two executives from real estate firms \u2014 have been seen at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And former Tesla lawyer Daniel Abrahamson has worked for DOGE at the Department of Transportation \u2014 an agency reportedly in the midst of several investigations<\/a> over the safety of Teslas. Tesla has defended<\/a> the safety of its vehicles.<\/p>\n

None of the DOGE staffers replied to requests for comment. The Interior Department said it doesn\u2019t comment on personnel, adding that there were no \u201cDOGE staffers\u201d at the agency, and the Transportation Department did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Three of the names ProPublica is adding to our tracker are engineers from Musk\u2019s SpaceX who have been issued ethics waivers by Trump administration lawyers to do work that could potentially benefit one of Musk\u2019s companies. SpaceX, which includes internet satellite service Starlink, and Verizon are reportedly competing for control<\/a> of a $2.4 billion Federal Aviation Administration contract, according to The Washington Post.<\/p>\n

SpaceX responded<\/a> to that reporting in a post on X. \u201cRecent media reports about SpaceX and the FAA are false,\u201d it wrote. \u201cThere is no effort or intent for Starlink to \u2018take over\u2019 any existing contract.\u201d The FAA did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Publicly, Musk continues to champion DOGE\u2019s mission. \u201cThe people voted for major government reform,\u201d he said, \u201cand that\u2019s what the people are going to get.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kirsten Berg<\/a>, Al Shaw<\/a> and Andy Kroll<\/a> contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they\u2019re published. When President Donald Trump announced his marquee government cost-cutting initiative, he left no doubt about whom he intended to run it: Elon Musk. Still, questions about the scope of Musk\u2019s authority have hounded<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":841170,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,23756],"tags":[5661,11071],"class_list":{"0":"post-841169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-running","8":"category-whos","9":"tag-running","10":"tag-whos"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}