DOGE moves to cut costs as US opponents race to fight back

Within less than a week, US President Donald Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force has entered the halls of US government departments and swiftly set about accessing and overhauling federal bureaucratic systems. 

In response, congressional Democrats, unions, civil and non-governmental groups have taken up legal proceedings to curb what they have said is an unchecked unit exceeding its powers.

Ranking house Democrats on Tuesday wrote to Trump expressing deep concern over the conduct of DOGE members in demanding "entry to federal government facilities, including access to classified spaces and sensitive government data and information systems." 

They also cautioned that DOGE's conduct posed "enormous risks to national security and to the privacy and civil liberties of Americans."

Beyond this opposition, and the aftershock of DOGE declaring the end of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), lies another crucial question: What can DOGE actually, and legally, do?

What is DOGE?

While the agency DOGE carries the word "department" in its name, it's not an actual federal department. Instead, it's a task force assigned to Trump's executive office.

It was commissioned amid a flurry of executive orders Trump signed after taking office on January 20 and is a rebadging of the former US Digital Service.

The entity bears several hallmarks of its head, Elon Musk: the acronym "DOGE" references the cryptocurrency "Dogecoin" favored by the world's richest man, its work is first telegraphed via his X social media platform and its approach to cost-cutting bears a striking resemblance to his efficiency-at-all-costs mantra. 

Trump and Musk have stated DOGE's objectives are to drastically reduce federal regulations, spending and workforce size. 

According to the monthly tech magazine Wired, DOGE's staff includes a batch of computer engineers aged in their late teens and early 20s with ties to Musk's companies. Critics have raised the alarm over the lack of transparency about how Musk identified his team and whether appropriate vetting and security clearances were undertaken.

These concerns extend to Musk himself, whose legal mandate to cut federal positions and offer buyout schemes to public servants is now in question.

What has DOGE been doing?

DOGE has been pushing its way through the government, going from the Treasury to the Labor Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and USAID.

The next stop appears to be key health services divisions Medicare and Medicaid, and reportedly the Department of Energy, which is also custodian of the US nuclear weapons and security programs.

The task force has marked more than $1.2 billion (€1.2 billion) in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives for the scrap heap, along with consulting contracts and government overseas programs. It has also issued buyout offers to public servants as part of a new furlough scheme. Reportedly just short of 2% of government workers have accepted the offer. 

Some of these measures are in line with presidential directives, particularly efforts to remove DEI measures from government.

The most significant casualty of Musk's cost-cutting has been USAID, a $50-billion foreign aid service employing more than 10,000 people, including thousands of staff in overseas missions. That agency is seen as an important "soft power" initiative established by former President John F. Kennedy in 1961 that provides economic assistance to other nations.

The entire Department of Education has also been flagged for abolition. 

But while DOGE and other arms of the president's office can identify cost-saving opportunities, legal hurdles are mounting around whether they can implement such measures. 

It's also anticipated that attempts by the president to unilaterally do away with USAID and the Department of Education would be unconstitutional.

"Typically, agencies that are set up and are created by acts of Congress would need a similar statutory act of Congress to completely eliminate them," Roger Nober, director of the George Washington Regulatory Studies Center, told DW.

"It's hard to see that getting, at the moment, given the current climate, through the hurdles that it would have to get through in the Congress."

Legal hurdles mounting for DOGE efforts

"Originally, [DOGE] was to be an advisory committee and [they] have specific requirements in terms of how public their meetings are, what kinds of transparency there has to be," said Nober.

But because DOGE became a recast version of the preexisting government-wide US Digital Service, Nober said there may be greater scope for the team to act.

"At the highest of levels, a president is afforded broad latitude to get advice from different people, particularly government employees, so I don't think at the highest levels what they're doing is prohibited," he said.

That includes the president having discretion to grant access to classified information, according to Scott R. Anderson, a research fellow in governance studies at the US think tank Brookings Institution.

"Classification is mostly a product of executive order. So, if the president wants to give people access to classified information, he can do that," Anderson told DW. "There may be a question as to whether the president actually did that, or whether this was Musk just claiming that they can do whatever they want, because the president has given carte blanche."

Musk and members of the DOGE team are not technically public servants, but special government employees. As such, they can undertake government work for 130 days per year, and are subject to ethics and conflict-of-interest rules. During this time, they are restricted from engaging in political activities.

Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has accused Musk of running a "shadow government," and said Tuesday DOGE "has no authority to make spending decisions, to shut down programs or ignore federal law." This power remains with the US Congress.

Others suspect the in-built checks within government will come into play, but will also require legal challenges.

"What we're seeing is the Trump administration engage in a broad range of measures that push against, and I think arguably, most likely, do go past conventional understandings of legal limits," said Anderson.

"I think a lot of it is unlawful and will be found unlawful once challenged in the courts."

What actions have been taken against DOGE?

Several legal challenges are now before the courts. 

In response to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granting DOGE access to Treasury data, which enabled the task force to view a range of sensitive information relating to federal payments and individual social security information, the American Federation of Government Employees, Service Employees International Union and Alliance for Retired Americans on Monday launched a lawsuit in the Washington DC federal court.

On Thursday, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly limited access to two DOGE staffers on a read-only basis. One of those staff has since departed the unit after evidence surfaced linking him to racist content posted on a now-defunct X account.

On Wednesday, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations along with other unions and the Economic Policy Institute filed a lawsuit to prevent DOGE from accessing information systems of the federal Labor Department.

The American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees on Thursday filed against the administration's "effective dismantling" of USAID. It comes amid reports on Friday that around nine in 10 jobs were earmarked for termination. 

US District Judge George O'Toole Jr. has also blocked the Trump administration's plan to furlough workers across the government as part of its buyout scheme.

Trump — and DOGE — could simply be strong-arming government

Trump and the Republican Party are long-standing advocates for downsizing government. But observers have suggested DOGE's actions could be as much about reshaping the bureaucracy into a more Trump-friendly apparatus, as about trimming excess.

"Rightly or wrongly, I think this administration felt that many of the permanent employees in the government were against many of the initiatives that they had in the last [Trump] administration," said Nober. 

Trump has been clear about wanting to have loyal bureaucrats working to his administration's agenda.

"If your goal is to make federal employees uncomfortable and uneasy about what their long-term job status [is], this administration has achieved that," he added.

If this is the Trump team's strategy through DOGE, Anderson advised caution. While potentially effective in the private sector, it is high-risk when essential public services are on the line.

"The moment those [government] systems break down you often can't just stand them back up. Until you stand them back up, tons of people are going to suffer," he said.

"So it's just a complete unforced error on the part of the Trump administration to let things go about this way."

Edited by: Maren Sass