christiefan915
Catalyst
This is a long article but worth reading.
"The DOGE effort helmed by Elon Musk appears to be focusing on technology and personnel in its stated goal to cut government spending. Staffers connected to DOGE and often to Musk's companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, are fanning out across federal agencies, where they are gaining access to sensitive systems and information on government payments and employees. The scope of DOGE's work and the identities of the people carrying it out isn't fully clear — leaving agencies in chaos and government workers alarmed.
"One of the reasons we can't tell what's going on and what power they have is because they haven't really made what they're doing public at all," said Deborah Pearlstein, a constitutional scholar who directs the program in law and public policy at Princeton University...
...At the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages federal real estate and technology, DOGE-connected individuals have interviewed software engineers about their work. In some cases, they have only provided their first names to the federal employees they spoke to, according to GSA staffers who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to speak publicly and fear retaliation in their jobs.
Much of the early work, especially with DOGE-affiliated employees in the Office of Personnel Management, has focused on efforts to reduce the headcount of federal workers, whose salaries typically comprise about 5% of the overall budget, and on cutting programs and priorities that Trump and Musk disagree with, like USAID...
"The DOGE effort helmed by Elon Musk appears to be focusing on technology and personnel in its stated goal to cut government spending. Staffers connected to DOGE and often to Musk's companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, are fanning out across federal agencies, where they are gaining access to sensitive systems and information on government payments and employees. The scope of DOGE's work and the identities of the people carrying it out isn't fully clear — leaving agencies in chaos and government workers alarmed.
"One of the reasons we can't tell what's going on and what power they have is because they haven't really made what they're doing public at all," said Deborah Pearlstein, a constitutional scholar who directs the program in law and public policy at Princeton University...
...At the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages federal real estate and technology, DOGE-connected individuals have interviewed software engineers about their work. In some cases, they have only provided their first names to the federal employees they spoke to, according to GSA staffers who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to speak publicly and fear retaliation in their jobs.
Much of the early work, especially with DOGE-affiliated employees in the Office of Personnel Management, has focused on efforts to reduce the headcount of federal workers, whose salaries typically comprise about 5% of the overall budget, and on cutting programs and priorities that Trump and Musk disagree with, like USAID...