Musk: DOGE team may add employees
Reports say some earn six-figure federal salaries
By: Joey Garrison
and Bart Jansen
USA today
WASHINGTON - As department across the federal government in the Trump administration rapidly downsize their workforce, one office keeps getting bigger.
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Top White House adviser Elon Musk said the Department of Government Efficiency that he oversees has expanded to "pretty much" every department and is set to grow to about 200 employees, up from about 100 federal workers who currently work for DOGE.
..... "We're a little bit over 100 at this point," Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said in an interview Monday [03/10/2025] on Fox News with Larry Kudrow. "We're going to get to 200."
.... With guidance form Musk, the richest man in the world, DPGE has worked aggressively to gut the federal bureaucracy since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Heads of federal departments have until Thursday [03/13/2025] under a Trump order to initiate "large scale reductions of force" as part of a more aggressive phase of workforce cuts that go beyond recently hired or promoted probationary workers targeted to date.
..... Although Musk - who is considered a "special government employee" - does not receive a federal government salary, DOGE employees are paid. Some are earning six-figure federal salaries, according to a recent report from WIRED.
..... The DOGE team, headquarters at the White House campus with Amy Gleason as top administrator, includes computer and software engineers, information technology experts and financial analysts.
..... On Monday, [03/10/2025] a federal judge ordered DOGE to disclose more about what it is doing under the Freedom of Information Act.
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U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that DOGE must provide documents about "mass firings and dramatic disruptions to federal programs" that the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
..... The White House Office of Management and Budget initially agreed to provide documents CREW requested but later reneged. DOGE refused by arguing it wasn't an "agency: subject to FOIA, but rather a free-standing component of the office of the president.
..... Cooper ruled that DOGE "is likely covered by FOIA and that the public would be irreparably harmed by an indefinite delay in unearthing the records CREW seeks." Cooper ordered DOGE to process the request "on an expedited timetable" and "begin producing documents on a rolling base as soon as practicable."
..... Donald Sherman, CREW's executive director and chief counsel, said the group was grateful for Cooper's decision.
..... "Now more than ever, Americans deserve transparency in their government,' Sherman said in a statement. "Despite efforts and claims to the contrary, the government cannot hide the actions of the US DOGE Service. We look forward to the expedited processing of our requests and making all the DOGE documents public."
..... Trump had announced the creation of DOGE in November, [2024] after he won the election, to dismantle the bureaucracy, slash regulations and cut wasteful spending. Musk has aimed to cut as much as $2 trillion from the federal budget.
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Trump's executive order creating DOGE said teams at least four staffers -a leader, an engineer, a human resources specialist and a lawyer - would be sent to targeted agencies.
..... DOGE's recommendations have led to dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Tends of thousands of workers have been laid off across multiple departments.
..... Under a DOGE recommendation, federal workers who offered to resign could be paid through September 30. [2025] Around 75,000 workers- about 3% of the workforce - resigned, Cooper wrote.
..... Trump's executive order didn't delegate any authority to DOGE to carry och its recommendations. But the judge noted that Musk took credit for actions, suck as his February 3 [2025] social media post that said he fed USAID "into the wood chipper."
..... Several other lawsuits sought to prevent DOGE staffers form gaining access to sensitive personnel and payments systems at multiple departments, a move the judge said some viewed "as pernicious."
..... CREW, a nonprofit that aims to educate the public about the government,seeks memos and directives governing DOGE's operations: an organizational chart: ethics waivers and financial disclosures of its personnel; and communications with other agencies outside the president's office regarding staffing levels.
..... Cooper set a March 20 [2025] deadline for DOGE to provide a schedule for when it will produce the documents.
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"Moreover, the authority exercised by USDS (US DOGE Service) across the federal government and the dramatic cuts it has apparently made with no congressional input appear to be unprecedented," Cooper wrote. "All these facts together bolster the Court;s conclusion that a year-long delay in processing the USDS Request would cause irreparable harm."
..... Musk said he believes DOGE is on track of meeting its goal of cutting $1 trillion form the federal government by the start of the next fiscal year at the end of September. [2025] "Unless we're stopped, we will get to a trillion of savings" he said in Monday's [03/10/2025] interview on Fox News.
..... But he pointed to government :entitlements" as the biggest barrier. In 2024, Social Security and health care spending (including Medicare and Medicaid) made up 45% of the overall federal budget, according to the Center on Budget and policy Priorities.
..... "The waste and fraud in entitlement spending - which most of the federal spending is entitlements - that's like the big one to eliminate," Musk said. "That's the, sort of, half trillion, maybe $600 or $700 billion a year."
..... Trump has vowed repeatedly that he won't touch Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in spending cuts. "I'm not going to to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid," Trump said in a Sunday [03/09/2025] interview on Fox News, adding: "Now, we're going to get fraud out of there."