What’s Wrong With DOGE? Its Disregard for the Law

President Donald Trump’s creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in January kicked off a tumultuous period for the federal government. Canceling grants, firing federal employees, forcibly entering office buildings, accessing sensitive data, attempting to shutter entire agencies ― the ethos of these recent months seems to be one popularized by the tech industry, to “move fast and break things.” But the federal government, which touches the lives of over 340 million people living in America and countless others beyond our borders, is not a tech start up. When we move fast, we do so at the expense of our system of checks and balances. And when we break things, real people are harmed. 

POGO has previously written about the challenges of defining the entity that is DOGE. DOGE is an office in the White House, and it’s employees detailed to agencies, and it’s political appointees, as well as full time agency employees with DOGE affiliations or relationships to Elon Musk. That purposeful muddiness serves to shield DOGE and its actions from oversight by Congress, the courts, and the public. An agency head’s powers differ from those of DOGE, but when conversations between DOGE and agency leadership happen behind closed doors, it’s difficult to pinpoint the decision-maker and assess responsibility.

With that ambiguity acknowledged, POGO is in a unique position to assess purported government “reforms” enacted in the name of efficiency. For more than 40 years, we’ve worked with elected officials from across the political spectrum to make the government more effective and accountable. While acknowledging that there was nothing perfect about how our government operated prior to DOGE’s inception, we recognize that in the last few months it has become abundantly clear that the actions undertaken by DOGE and those in its orbit demonstrate a disregard for the rule of law. All of this has taken place in the pursuit of saving $160 billion dollars — a mere fraction of federal spending. 

The Illustrative Case of USAID

An early instance of DOGE’s disregard for the law can be found in its attempt to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a congressionally authorized executive agency. On his first day in office, Trump implemented a 90-day funding freeze on foreign assistance. 

Then DOGE got to work. Over the weekend of February 1-2, DOGE gained access to classified information at the agency, including intelligence reports, after two high-level USAID officials were put on leave when they refused to share the material. DOGE staff took over USAID's website, shut it down, and deactivated agency employee emails. On Monday, February 3, the agency’s headquarters was shuttered and nearly all personnel were placed on leave. Later that week, DOGE officials sought access to a Department of the Treasury payment system to stop USAID payments. 

Some of these activities ― like placing staff on leave ― were directed by agency leadership, not DOGE. But the involvement of DOGE and Elon Musk in the shuttering of USAID is clear; on February 3, Musk announced via X that he “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

Since then, similar actions have taken place in at least 30 agencies, large and small. The pattern is clear: A small DOGE team begins by accessing databases and moves on to placing employees on leave or dismissing them, cutting grants and contracts, and, in some cases, entering office spaces (even forcibly) and attempting to close them entirely. Throughout the process, DOGE fails or refuses to provide public access to its records.

At each step, we can see how DOGE — and by extension the administration — displays a disregard for the separation of powers and rule of law. 

Accessing Databases

DOGE staff accessing data for which they have no clear use and for which they may not have proper clearance has been a constant since the entity’s creation. The New York Times reported that DOGE has attempted to access at least 80 databases across 10 agencies, including systems containing sensitive information. 

DOGE’s attempts to access a wide range of sensitive data held by the government raise issues of both national security and privacy. DOGE’s methods seem to fly in the face of cybersecurity best practices, potentially opening the door to nefarious actors or governments. And some of its actions likely violate the Privacy Act, which governs the collection and use of government data. 

With these concerns in mind, numerous lawsuits have been filed to block DOGE from accessing sensitive data. But decision after decision limiting data access, at least temporarily, has not slowed DOGE’s rapid movement across the federal government. 

DOGE staff have accessed Medicare and Medicaid payment databases, Social Security Administration data, Treasury payment systems, and Department of Education loan information, to name just a handful. A whistleblower from the National Labor Relations Board disclosed to Congress that DOGE may have exfiltrated sensitive labor data. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is reportedly seeking information about efforts by DOGE (and others) to obtain private taxpayer data.

Why does DOGE want all this data? It’s difficult to know for sure, but a few theories have gained prominence. Multiple sources told CNN that DOGE was building a “master database to speed-up immigration enforcement and deportations by combining sensitive data from across the federal government.” The source said DOGE was working with Palantir, an analytics company with ties to Musk. 

In a letter requesting information from the Social Security Administration, one House Democrat raised concerns that “The DOGE team is reportedly engaged in an unprecedented effort to build a massive database using data from SSA and across the federal government, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and other agencies.” 

Several other House Democrats sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget expressing concern that sensitive government data was being used to train private AI models; Musk leads the AI firm xAI. 

If data is being collected to build a “master database,” feed an AI model, or some other purpose yet to be identified, that is a big problem. Using Americans’ data without their permission or knowledge appears to violate the Privacy Act. 

Cutting Personnel, Grants, and Contracts

Once DOGE gains access to an agency’s database, its next move is typically to cut agency staffing and spending. It is not always clear who is making decisions to make these cuts ― the president, DOGE, agency leadership, or some combination thereof. That ambiguity makes determining the legality of these actions difficult. 

Personnel

CNN calculated that at least 121,000 federal workers were laid off or targeted for layoffs in the first 100 days of the Trump administration; this number does not include those on administrative leave or who took voluntary buyouts. Employees have been put on leave or fired not only at USAID, but at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the General Services Administration, and other agencies. 

There are guardrails protecting the civil service that even the president and agency leaders must follow when firing employees. The president and agency leaders may not dismantle an agency by firing its employees en masse or pressuring career staff to resign because most federal employees, other than political appointees, are protected by statutes that ensure due process before termination. 

The president and agency leaders do have the power to reduce staff through various means (such as Voluntary Early Retirement Authority or Reductions in Force), but even the White House has recognized that DOGE by itself does not. 

Here again, however, the uncertainty around DOGE’s structure and mission has made it difficult to determine what role, exactly, it is playing in personnel decisions. A memorandum issued the same day DOGE was created ordered the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to consult with the director of the Office of Personnel Management and the administrator of DOGE to “submit a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition.” Other executive orders tasked DOGE with supporting the reshaping of the federal workforce. 

What is clear is that DOGE has become deeply embedded into the Office of Personnel Management. And in March, the president granted that office the power to fire federal employees across the government. 

Numerous lawsuits challenge whether the administration, including DOGE, has stayed within the boundaries of the law when firing federal employees. 

Contracts and Grants

Aided by the administration’s overall efforts to freeze funds, DOGE has been granted wide authority to work with agency heads to examine agency spending, including by canceling or freezing employee credit cards and non-essential travel, ending leases on property, and, of course, cutting grants and contracts. So far, the administration has introduced significant cuts to foreign aid, violence prevention, community services, research, and health care, to name just a few. Top Democratic appropriators in Congress claim the interrupted funds total at least $430 billion. 

Some of these spending cuts, freezes, and delays push or even cross the boundaries of the law. The Constitution grants the power of the purse ― that is, the power to appropriate funds ― solely to Congress. Further, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, enacted in 1974, established restrictions about withholding, canceling, or delaying appropriated funds; permanently delaying or refusing to spend funds requires congressional approval.

The administration has only sought a recission (a formal request required by the Impoundment Control Act from the White House to Congress for permission not to spend appropriated moneys) for about $9.3 billion, a small fraction of the funding it has attempted to freeze.  

Nearly two dozen lawsuits have been filed regarding federal funding matters, and the Government Accountability Office, the agency tasked with enforcing the Impoundment Control Act, has opened 39 investigations into potential violations of the law. 

Dismantling Agencies

This analysis opened with what is perhaps DOGE’s biggest overreach. It simply does not have the power to wholesale dismantle federal agencies. And in instances where DOGE’s specific responsibility is murky, it’s important to point out that neither agency heads nor the president himself have this power either. 

This is because no person or agency in the executive branch — neither DOGE, nor agency heads, nor the president — has unilateral power to undermine the will of Congress by stopping a program or initiative in all but name by, say, dismissing all personnel at an agency tasked with executing a law passed by Congress.

Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the power to enact all laws “necessary and proper” for governing. This includes laws establishing executive agencies. The power to create an agency and the power to dissolve one are both generally reserved to Congress, unless it delegates this authority to the president. 

Trump has challenged this fact to an unprecedented degree, including through DOGE, and numerous lawsuits have been filed as a result. 

Record Keeping

As DOGE continues to access and dismantle offices and agencies across the federal government, one thing it fails to do is make its records public. POGO filed a suit in February arguing that DOGE should be subject to the Federal Records Act, which would make its records available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.

But the administration claims that DOGE is only subject to the Presidential Record Act since it is a component of the White House. This designation would shield DOGE’s records from the public for up to twelve years after the president leaves office.

In the meantime, the administration directs those seeking more information to DOGE’s public website, its “wall of receipts.” That site is notorious for its errors and omissions and is not a replacement for transparent record keeping. 

Conclusion

DOGE has demonstrated a pattern of disregard for the law as it injects confusion and chaos into agency after agency. Litigation takes time and resources, and independent oversight within the executive branch has never been weaker. In the first month of his term, Trump fired 18 inspectors general. Also in February, Trump fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel (which enforces federal whistleblower laws and the Hatch Act) and the head of the Office of Government Ethics (an independent agency that oversees financial disclosures and ethics rules for the executive branch). 

The public needs Congress to aggressively push back against DOGE and its disregard for the law. Congress must continue to investigate DOGE’s actions using its full powers, such as its authority to issue subpoenas, and it must make the results of those investigations public. It must pass legislation and spending bills that reaffirm its power of the purse, hold more hearings and oversight panels, and continue to engage with their constituents. 

Our democracy is built on the foundation of separation of powers, with each branch of government checking the others. Despite the lack of clarity around DOGE’s structure, it’s clearly seated within the executive branch — and it’s clearly in need of oversight. The administration has defanged internal watchdogs, so that oversight now falls to Congress. It cannot take a pass on holding DOGE accountable. 

Alyssa Negvesky, Grace Horton, and Lewis Schwartz of the Federal Legislation Clinic at Georgetown Law contributed research to this analysis.