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Elon Musk and his men demand budget cuts and layoffs across the federal government, but funding government efficiency has skyrocketed nearly $40 million, Propublica said in its management and budget records. I found it in a review.
Billionaire Investor Musk calls Doge “the biggest transparent.” President Donald Trump said about 100 people work in the group, but his administration refused to release information about Doge’s spending and operations. To give a clearer understanding of the inner workings of Doge, Propublica has gathered the names and backgrounds of the people employed there. We identified about 46 people, including 12 new names that we are adding to our list today.
Trump and Musk defended Doge as a tool to trim fat from what is considered bloated bureaucracy. The impact of these cuts proved unsatisfactory, halting programs providing essential services to vulnerable populations across the nation and around the world.
D-Conn, head Democrat on the House Budget Committee. Rep. Rosa Delauro told Propobrica she does not believe Doge has legal authority over the actions it took. She called it the “Makeup Federal Division,” wasting taxpayer dollars.
“This illegal effort is to steal federal funds from American families and businesses,” Delauro said.
Most of Doge’s money comes in the form of payments from other federal agencies made possible by an almost-first-century law called economic law, records show. To lead these funds into new divisions, the Trump administration treated Doge as if it were a federal agency. Doge also acts as if he has agency level authority by sending members of staff to other agencies and having these staff issue policy and personnel orders.
What we see
During Donald Trump’s second presidency, Propovica will focus on areas that need scrutiny. Below are some of the issues reporters watch, and how to safely communicate with them.
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The use of economic law appears to be in compliance with the same open records laws covering most federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department. However, Doge refuses to respond to requests for Freedom of Information Act and says it will work with executive privileges. Musk also flipped over whether Doge staff were paid. Initially he said that wasn’t the case, but earlier this week he said that some of them are.
The contradictory stance has detained the Trump administration, legal experts say. If Doge is a federal agency, its records cannot be protected from the public. Some argue that if it is not an agency, Doge’s tens of millions of dollars in funding is not legally allocated and should be returned.
“The administration cannot have that in both ways,” said Adam Grogg, former lieutenant governor of OMB, who is currently a central think tank who is the legal director of Governing for Impact. “It’s an agency that has the authority to do what the FOIA is doing, or it’s purely advised the President and cannot direct the agency as it is now.”
A federal judge who primarily sided with one of many Doge-related cases recently burned the administration’s lawyers about its contradictory stance. At a recent hearing, US District Judge John Bates said the government’s position was “We are not agents who don’t want to be agents, but we are agents in one case.” Characterized.
Propublica has confirmed the names of 12 additional government officials who are part of Doge or are associated with the Musk corporate signs and have roles in the new administration. We look at agency records, talk to dozens of sources within the federal government, and confirm names by staring closely at documents challenging Doge’s authority from ongoing lawsuits. did.
Elon Musk’s demolition crew
They are spread throughout the agency. The Ministry of Education is exploring ways to identify potential waste and increase agency reliance on AI to interact with student loan recipients. The EPA reportedly gained access to the contract database. Some staff serve in executive-level roles, while others have vague titles such as “Senior Advisor,” making them unclear about the nature of their work.
One of the new names added to the tracker, Katherine Armstrong Loving is a brother to crypto executive Brian Armstrong, who runs industry leader Coinbase. According to the Wall Street Journal, Coinbase has donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and Armstrong met with Trump to discuss his appointment as a manager.
Some employees work at multiple agencies. No one responded to a request for comment.
Musk celebrates the Doge cut and lightly parades targeted agencies, but Trump officials now say he doesn’t actually run it.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Floodgates Funding
The Trump administration began funding Doge shortly after it took office. It started in late January with a tap of $750,000 from the White House Fund’s Information Technology Initiative.
Since then, funds have been expanding. The latest allocation took place on February 8th, and included $14 million chunks written as part of the “Software Modernization Initiative.” Over $39 million has been allocated to Doge in the first month of the Trump administration, across the entire discovery by ProPublica.
On the perspective, in recent years, Congress has allocated around $50 million a year to IT modernization initiatives that Doge has replaced, budget records show.
The Trump administration has yet to release enough details to track the exact source of funds flowing into Doge, or who is being paid. Money can come from the agency’s budget where the money is being taken for upgrades and other services. It is also not yet clear which time frame the allocation covers and whether it funds the salary.
Experts say it’s not uncommon to provide funding to one agency from another budget. But money cannot be moved around for the purposes the White House wants. It is limited by what is called the “law of purpose.”
The way Doge operates “leaves questions about possible violations of the Act on Purpose,” said Christie Wentworth, along with Christie Watchdog’s citizens, for Washington’s responsibility and ethics. “If Doge uses funds that are only available for IT-related purposes, its use could violate federal law due to initiatives that are not related to it.”
