DOGE
2024 November
2024-11-12 Trump selected Elon Musk and Ramaswamy to lead DOGE. Three months later in February the White House claimed Musk was not part of DOGE, then in March the White House claimed Musk was leading DOGE. All the while Musk was sending out his “What did you do last week” emails.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277463/gov.uscourts.dcd.277463.24.1.pdf
2025 February
2025-02-17 The Trump administration stated Elon Musk was not the leader of DOGE and issue a document calling Musk a “non-career Special Government Employee” who holds no formal authority to make government decisions himself.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/17/doge-administrator-elon-musk-00204639
2025 June
2025-06-24 The Trump administration scrambled to rehire key federal workers after the sweeping and unscrupulous DOGE firings. Estimates suggest the actions by DOGE between firings and rehiring had cost American taxpayers roughly $135B.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/24/politics/doge-fired-workers-rehired
2025 July
2025-07-15 The Trump administration defunded CISA – the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – claiming the organization spread misinformation and had been trying to counter online foreign disinformation campaigns. For context, the former director Chris Krebs was one of Trump’s direct targets when he announced the 2020 presidential election was conducted securely and without significant voter fraud.
https://www.meritalk.com/articles/trump-budget-slashes-cisa-science-funding-boosts-space-mission/
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366625236/US-cyber-agency-CISA-faces-stiff-budget-cuts#
2025 August
2025-08-05 Trump stated that DOGE cuts would be “surgical”. Instead, the Trump administration made indiscriminate cuts to a wide chunk of agricultural, educational, scientific, research, environmental, and civil engineering services designed to help millions of Americans thrive. After Elon Musk left DOGE, the Trump administration continued to make slashing cuts across the board, primarily in Democrat-led cities as a retaliatory measure.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/doge-cuts-by-city-state-and-congressional-district/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_federal_agencies_targeted_by_DOGE
2025 September
2025-09-24 The Trump administration continued to rehire many federal workers formerly let go by DOGE but only gave them until the end of October to return. The rehiring would cost taxpayers. The fact that the Trump administration had to rehire crucial workers back to federal positions goes against their previous claim August 5th that their firings would be done with “surgical precision”.
[https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/politics/federal-fallout/trump-administration-moves-rehire-laid-off-federal-workers/65-4b677119-5100-4709-9ae9-4d5f217c71e5](https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/politics/federal-fallout/trump-administration-moves-rehire-laid-off-federal-workers/65-4b677119-5100-4709-9ae9-4d5f217c71e5/)
2026 January
2026-01-27 A whistleblower reported in an interview that members of DOGE shared sensitive data such as personally identifiable information of 1000 people via email, shared third-party data on cloud servers outside security protocols, and other data concerns. A complaint for these violations had been filed the previous summer, then that person – Chuck Borges – involuntarily resigned in August and filed a retaliation complaint after.
2026 March
2026-03-16 Leaked DOGE deposition videos went viral, revealing that DOGE employees used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to determine which agencies and grants to cut, starting with any that referenced DEI. They used AI to indiscriminately take jobs away from dedicated and hard-working people.
https://fortune.com/2026/03/16/doge-employee-deposition-lawsuit-federal-deficit-elon-musk-spending/
https://abcnews.com/Politics/2-doge-staffers-regrets-people-losing-income-reduce/story?id=131050170
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/nyregion/doge-depositions-musk-lawsuit.html