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When President Donald Trump announced the Marquee government’s cost-cutting initiative, he left Elon Musk undoubtedly who is planning to run it. Still, questions about the scope of Musk’s authority have since struck the efficiency of the newly formed government.
Doge began ordering massive budget cuts and layoffs, and those affected by the move began to raise questions about their legality in the press and courts.
Five weeks after its founding, under pressure from the growth of the lawsuit, the White House revealed in late February that an ambiguous bureaucrat named Amy Gleason had been acting as the manager of the Doge since almost a day.
However, Propublica found that it did not appear to run a budget violation group, according to interviews with six current and former government officials. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.
“It gives you a sense that Amy is playing the role of a scapegoat,” said one source who was meeting Gleason.
Doge’s exact command chain is not clear to most federal employees opposed to the team. However, sources told Propoblica that Musk’s boring company and former SpaceX executive Steve Davis appear to be managing their daily business. And sometimes Musk himself issued commands from inside the War Suite Chief, located in the Eisenhower executive office building next to the White House, said someone familiar with the matter.
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“I don’t know who Amy Gleason is,” said one of those who worked closely with Doge’s leadership in federal agencies. “Davis runs the show.”
Musk, Davis and Gleason did not respond to requests for comment.
Since Doge was created by an executive order on January 20th, the Trump administration has put a considerable effort into keeping a legitimate distance between masks and groups. And even if the order creates the role of managers, those who will coordinate with the White House and help place Doge teams inside agents — the Trump administration biased questions about who is in that position for more than a month.
The arrangement disrupts the judges overseeing the challenges to Doge’s authority. “The whole operation, that raises doubts,” US District Judge Theodore Chuan added that the lack of clarity is “very suspicious.”
This setup can make it more difficult to prove that masks are violating the Conflict of Interest Act.
Richard Painter, a former top ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush administration, said:
In an interview with Fox News, Musk dismissed concerns about the conflict and stated that he would “reject himself” if issues arise.
The announcement that placed Gleason between Mask and Doge’s day-to-day operations came by accident. Gleason was on vacation in Mexico by Trump’s spokesman Caroline Leavitt, who has appointed her as acting manager for a group of reporters in Washington. Gleeson told her colleagues that the White House has not coordinated the announcement with her.
The rest of the rollout was equally perplexed. Leavitt claimed that Gleeson was the administrator since its inception, but his colleagues said Gleeson began holding a nearly one-month staff meeting in the administration along with a handful of career engineers who preceded the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, Gleason told a former colleague returning to Nashville, Tennessee that he had recently worked as a health technology executive. She had planned to return there in a few months.
One government worker holding a meeting with Gleason described her as “someone who has little or no actual decisions.”
She similarly revealed to her colleagues during meetings over the past few weeks. She revealed she was not deeply involved in Doge’s budget cuts, which put humanitarian programs at risk and forced thousands of employees out of work.
One of the reasons why it’s so difficult to pin down the person responsible for Doge is that it includes two separate teams almost entirely surrounded by walls.
In forming Doge, Trump folded the entity into existing US digital services, a small unit of technology experts housed within the White House, focusing on improving government software platforms. Although Doge has a similar mission, the real work of Musk’s group has expanded much more, including cutting funding for programs and gaining access to sensitive institutional data systems.
In recent weeks, many holdover digital service workers have been resigned or fired, leaving only a small group of dozens of federal engineers. Gleason is only responsible for this small group, sources said.
Officials who worked with Gleason, who worked in digital services in Trump and Biden’s previous administrations, praised her dedication to her mission. She pointed out that she helped upgrade her health technology across the government, including digitalising Covid-19 test results during the pandemic.
“My sense of her initial expectations was that USDS was to have a synergistic effect with Doge… and improve government work,” the former colleague said. “She didn’t expect Doge to come and dismantle the USDS.”
The secrets surrounding Gleason’s appointment range from all Doges. The Trump administration provides scarce information about employees, except when forced by lawsuits. ProPublica spent weeks identifying and profiling staff to give them a clearer understanding of how the group operates.
Among them are engineers, lawyers, technical executives and consultants. Many have been recruited from Musk’s businesses, including SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink, or from companies owned by his business associates. Today, Propublica adds 20 names to its running list, totaling 66. No one responded to a request for comment.
Some enlisted to oversee cuts at the very institution that monitored the industry they previously worked for.
Doge has assigned energy industry executive Tyler Hassen to the interior division. Scott Langmack and Michael Alexander Mirsky (two executives of the real estate company) were seen at the Housing and Urban Development Bureau. Daniel Abrahamson, a former Tesla lawyer, has worked for the Department of Transportation Doge. The agency reportedly is in the middle of several investigations into Teslas safety. Tesla is defending the safety of its vehicles.
None of the Doge staff responded to requests for comment. The Ministry of Home Affairs did not comment on the person in charge, adding that the Ministry of Transport did not respond to requests for comment as the agency had no “doge staff.”
Three names, named Propublica, are SpaceX engineers at Musk, a SpaceX engineer at Trump, who has been issued an ethics exemption by Trump administration lawyers to do work that could benefit one of Musk’s companies. SpaceX and Verizon, which include internet satellite service Starlink, are reportedly competing to manage their $2.4 billion Federal Aviation Administration contract, according to the Washington Post.
SpaceX responded to the report with X’s post. “Recent media reports about SpaceX and the FAA are false,” he wrote. “Starlink has no effort or intention to “take over” existing contracts. ” The FAA did not respond to requests for comment.
Publicly, Musk continues to defend Doge’s mission. “People voted for a massive government reform,” he said, “that’s what people are trying to get.”
Elon Musk’s demolition crew
Kirsten Berg, Al Shaw and Andy Kroll contributed the report.
