While Elon Musk and its insists demand a budget and federal government reduction, financing for its agency – the Department of Government Effectiveness – has increased to almost $ 40 million that propublica was found in the review office and budget records.
Military Musk’s investor called Dage’s “as transparent as possible”. President Donald Trump said about 100 people were working in the group, but his administration refused to make information about the expenses and operations of Doge. Seeking to get a more accurate understanding of Doge’s internal work, propublica has gathered the names and origin of the people who are busy there. We have identified about 46 people, including 12 new names we are adding to the list today.
Trump and Musk defended Dage as a tool for pruning fat from what they see as a bloated bureaucracy. The effects of these cuts turned out to be crippling by stopping Programs that provided the necessary services vulnerable across the country and the world.
The best Democrat of the House of Representatives, representative of Rosa Delaura, Georgia. She called it a “fictitious federal department”, which spends dollars of taxpayers.
“These illegal efforts are the theft of federal funds in American families and enterprises,” Delaura said.
Most of the money doge, show records, came in the form of payments of other federal agencies, which have become possible for almost centuries of law called the Law on Economics. To send these funds to a new department, the Trump administration was treated by Dage, as if it were a federal agency. And, sending members of his staff to other agencies and forcing these employees to issue instructions on politics and staff, the dozten also behaved as if he had powers at the agency level.
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The use of the economy law seemingly exposing the DOGE law on open records that cover most federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the State Department. However, the coat declined to respond to the requests of the Liberty Information Law by saying this Works with the Executive Privilege. Musk also turned over whether the staff of Dogean paid. Initially, he said they did not, but earlier this week he said that some were.
The conflict position was put by the Trump administration in connection, legal experts say. If Dodge is a federal agency, he cannot protect his entries from the public. If it is not an agency, then tens of millions of Dogean dollars were not legally allocated and should be returned, some claim.
“The administration cannot have this in both directions,” said Adam Grogg, a former deputy lawyer in OMB and now the legal director in Adjusting for impactAnalytical center to the left of the center. “Either this is an agency that covers FOIA with the authorities to do what does, or it is purely advised by the president and cannot manage agencies as it is now.”
The federal judge, who presided over one of the numerous court lawsuits, also recently poured officers of the administration over his conflicting positions. At a recent hearing by the US District Judge John Bates characterized Government position as “We are not an agency where we don’t want to be an agency, but we are an agency where we want to be.”
Propublica confirmed the names of 12 additional state -owned employees who are either included in the DOGE or related to the constellation of Moscow companies and play a role in the new administration. We have confirmed the names of the Crossroads Agency, talking to dozens of sources in the federal government, and overcoming documents from current court proceedings disputed by Dage’s power.
They are distributed to agencies. At the Department of Education Employees DOGE study as needed Expand the agency’s dependence on AI How to identify potential waste and interact with student loans. In the EPA, they reportedly received access to contract databases. Some employees play roles at the executive level, while others have ambiguous names such as “senior advisor”, leaving an incomprehensible nature of their work.
One of the recently added to the tracker, Catherine Armstrong, is the brother of the crystall director Brian Armstrong, who manages the Coinbase leader. Coinbase donated $ 1 million in Trump’s inauguration fund, and Armstrong met with Trump Discuss meetings for administration positions, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Some employees work in more than one agency. Nobody responded to a comment request.
While Musk celebrated the dohega cuts and conquered targeted agencies, Trump officials now say he is Actually don’t run it.
The White House did not respond to a comment request.
Funding of the gateways
The Trump administration began to finance DOGE shortly after taking office. It began with the 750,000 dollars from the White House Fund for information technology in late January.
Since then, the financing has been concluded; The last distribution took place on February 8 and included a piece of $ 14 million described as part of the “Software Modernization Initiative”. In general, he found that more than $ 39 million was recognized in the first month of Trump administration.
From the point of view, in recent years, Congress has allocated about $ 50 million a year on the initiative of IT -Modernization, which demonstrates the elbow, shows budget records.
The Trump administration has not yet published details to trace the exact source of financing coming to Dogel or said to whom to pay. Money can come from agencies that have the money set aside for its modernization or other services. In addition, it is not yet clear what terms the distribution is covered, or the salaries are financed.
Experts note that the financing of one agency from another’s budget is not unusual. But the money cannot be transferred for any purpose that the White House wants is limited by what is called the “target statute”, which requires specially prescribed funds for subjects.
The Doge’s method “leaves questions about the possible violations of this statute,” said Christie Ventworth with ethics citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington. “If DOGE uses the means available only for IT purposes for initiatives that have nothing to do, this use can violate the federal law.”
