All the Federal Agencies DOGE Has Broken Into

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CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

DOGE agents have reportedly visited the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters, and it’s not fully clear what they did there. The Washington Post reports that DOGE “has also requested that the CDC provide lists of employees who have less than a year of service and those who are in two-year probationary periods, said the people familiar with the requests.”

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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)

DOGE agents have gained access to IT systems, and are reviewing the organization structure at CMS, which manages about $1.5 trillion in Medicare and Medicaid spending, and two Trump political appointees at the agency have been tasked with coordinating efforts with the DOGE team.

CMS says DOGE doesn’t have full access and they are just hunting for fraud, per Politico:

On Friday, the agency told POLITICO that the DOGE representatives are scrutinizing CMS systems technology and the funds that flow through it with a focus on “fraud and waste.” That access is read only, meaning they cannot make any changes, and does not allow them to see any personal health information for Medicare or Medicaid enrollees. DOGE also does not have access to CMS’ Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System, which contains sensitive financial information about providers and other organizations with financial ties to the entitlement programs.

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Commerce Department

At least one DOGE agent has been to the Commerce Department’s Maryland headquarters where they requested and gained access to the agency’s IT systems in what they apparently said was an effort to root out government DEI efforts. This included accessing NOAA data.

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Defense Department

President Trump said on February 7 that he had instructed Musk and DOGE to dig into spending at the Pentagon. It’s not clear if that is already happening. The Defense Department has annual budget of over $800 billion and employs 3.3 million people. Notes Politico:

Musk holds billions in government contracts, many of them to provide SpaceX and Starlink services to the armed services. Musk in recent months has criticized the multi-billion dollar F-35 fighter program, suggesting that cheaper drones could do the same work. Any attempted cuts to programs like the F-35 or shipbuilding would run headlong into entrenched constituencies on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers with hundreds or thousands of jobs at stake in their districts would likely fight back.

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Education Department

Numerous DOGE agents have received credentials at the DOE, including at least two young engineers with full administrative privileges to the agency’s IT system. The DOGE team has also reportedly used AI to analyze personal and financial data from the DOE. Trump and Musk have called for abolishing the agency entirely.

Per the Associated Press:

The White House is considering an executive order that would tell the education secretary to slash the department as far as possible and urge Congress to fully terminate it. Dozens of employees have been placed on paid leave with little explanation, and workers from DOGE have begun scouring the department’s records as they look to slash spending. Musk’s DOGE team already has gained access to a database housing personal information on millions of students and parents with federal student loans, according to two people with knowledge of the issue.

A federal lawsuit has been filed a student advocacy group to block that access.

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Energy Department

According to a CNN report, a DOGE agent gained access to the Energy Department’s IT system despite security concerns raised by department officials:

[Energy secretary Chris] Wright granted access to DOGE representative Luke Farritor — a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern — even over objections from members of the department’s general counsel and chief information offices, the people told CNN. The DOE chief information office is the department’s IT and cybersecurity office. Members of the general counsel and chief information offices “said this is a bad idea” because Farritor hadn’t had a standard background investigation needed to access the department’s system, one of the people told CNN. “He’s not cleared to be in DOE, on our systems. None of those things have been done.” Farritor was granted access to basic IT including email and Microsoft 365, one of the people said. The chief information office only does a small amount of IT and cybersecurity work for the National Nuclear Security Administration, they said, including providing connectivity and running basic internet services for NNSA’s headquarters. It does not run IT systems for the nuclear agency’s labs controlling the nation’s nuclear stockpile. 

On Friday, department leadership installed a different SpaceX engineer, Ryan Riedel, as chief information officer, three people familiar with the matter told CNN — the department’s top IT official charged with managing tech acquisitions and protecting personnel data across a vast bureaucracy.

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Environmental Protection Agency

One of the young engineers working for DOGE, Gautier Cole Killian, has been listed in an EPA directory as a “Federal Detailee” – which Politico notes is “a designation usually used for someone temporarily working at the agency on assignment from elsewhere in the federal government.” It’s not yet clear what that means regarding DOGE’s access to or plans for the agency.

In an apparently publicity stunt, a group of Congressional Democrats attempted to enter the EPA building in Washington, D.C. on February 6 in order to meet with any DOGE representatives working there, but were denied entry. Whether DOGE is involved or not, a shakeup, including layoffs, is already underway at the agency led by new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin.

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FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)

Musk said in a February 5 X post that he and DOGE “will aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system.” His announcement came days after a brief national outage in the FAA’s NOTAM system, which Musk also referenced in his tweet. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy then said on X that he “talked to the DOGE team” and “they are going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.” It however remains unclear if Musk and DOGE have actually gained access to FAA systems, or what they’d actually do if and when that happens.

Musk, whose company SpaceX has clashed with the FAA on multiple occasions, is a longtime critic of the agency. He has also repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the FAA’s DEI efforts have endangered airline passengers.

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FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)

The Washington Post reports that according to current and former FEMA officials, DOGE agents have been visiting the agency and reviewing FEMA’s grant programs to help U.S. communities prepare for and respond to disasters. They have also gained access to sensitive data:

According to the officials, a small team that does not have security clearance has access to FEMA’s network, which contains the private and sensitive information of tens of thousands of disaster victims. For example, FEMA officials said that on Feb. 5, Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old former college student who goes by the moniker “Big Balls” online and now works for Musk, was given a FEMA badge. The officials, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of professional retaliation. …

The agency spends the majority of its budget on grant programs, which are the main vehicles for helping people recover from disasters and rebuild their communities. … The program and its management system, called FEMA Go, has significant data on survivors and communities, which officials say can be sensitive and should be protected.

FEMA is one of the agencies that Trump and his allies have repeatedly criticized and expressed a desire to wholly eliminate.

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Health and Human Services

According to multiple sources who spoke with the Washington Post, DOGE agents have “sought access to payment and contracting systems across the Department of Health and Human Services that control hundreds of billions of dollars in annual payments to health-care providers, and they appear to have gained access to at least some of those systems.”

DOGE representatives have visited the officers of the CDC and the CMS, where they have gained access to the agency’s payment and contracting systems and are reportedly trying to identify fraud and waste.

It’s not clear what other parts of HHS DOGE may have gotten into. The quasi-agency has announced (via one of its countless posts on X) the cancellation of millions of dollars of HHS contracts, but that has not been independently confirmed.

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Labor Department

DOGE representatives met with Labor Department staff on Wednesday, February 5 — but did so virtually after hundreds of people gathered to protest against DOGE outside the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Several labor unions went to court in an attempt to prevent DOGE from accessing what it called “highly sensitive” Labor Department data, but a federal judge denied their request for a restraining order on Friday. U.S. District Court judge John D. Bates said he too had concerns about giving DOGE access to the data, but ruled that the unions hadn’t demonstrated they had sufficient standing.

The Labor Department had agreed to temporarily withhold the data from DOGE until the ruling. It’s not yet clear what DOGE will do next at the agency.

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NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

DOGE agents showed up at NOAA buildings (at the Commerce Department) in Silver Spring, Maryland on Tuesday, February 4, where at least one DOGE engineer gained access to the nonpartisan science agency’s IT system. DOGE was reportedly searching for employees associated with DEI programs. Acting Secretary of Commerce Jeremy Pelter and acting NOAA Administrator Nancy Hann also instructed employees to grant the DOGE agent full access to internal intranet sites, including those of the agency’s employee resource groups.

The NOAA is one of the agencies that Project 2025 called for breaking up, but Trump’s nominees to head Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and the NOAA, Neil Jacobs, have both said they oppose that idea.

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OPM (Office of Personnel Management)

Soon after Trump took office, DOGE quickly began what was essentially a hostile takeover of OPM, which is the equivalent of the federal government’s HR department, and manages over $1 trillion in assets. Amid the upheaval. the DOGE team gained full access to a massive database of restricted information about millions of federal employees and people who have applied for federal government jobs. Reported the Washington Post on February 6:

Records obtained by The Post show that several members of Musk’s DOGE team — some of whom are in their early 20s and come from positions at his private companies — were given “administrative” access to OPM computer systems within days of Trump’s inauguration last month. That gives them sweeping authority to install and modify software on government-supplied equipment and, according to two OPM officials, to alter internal documentation of their own activities.

The DOGE team’s demand for access to OPM files and networks came as Musk deputies arrived at the agency promising to wipe out 70 percent of its staff, officials said. A senior OPM official, during a team meeting Wednesday, said that core units focused on modernizing the agency’s network and improving accountability are “likely to go away,” according to a recording of the session obtained by The Post. Those who have been reassigned at the agency include the chief information officer and the chief financial officer.

The DOGE-controlled OPM also sent out the now-notorious “fork in the road” emails offering buyouts (or “deferred resignation”) to virtually every federal employee. A federal judge later barred OPM from enforcing its initial deadline for the offer. The agency then delayed the deadline until 11:59 p.m. on Monday, but first there is another hearing on Monday afternoon.

So far, at least 65,000 federal employees have accepted the offer, according to the White House, but that is just a tiny fraction of the total federal workforce.

The OPM has also instructed all federal departments to provide lists of all underperforming employees ahead of what are expected to be widespread layoffs.

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Social Security Administration

Semafor reported on February 6 that the SSA is “an upcoming focus of the Department of Government Efficiency, a source with knowledge of its work told Semafor, and one person involved in DOGE is currently preparing to work with the agency.”

The next day, President Trump insisted that DOGE will not touch Social Security. He also said that DOGE may be given access to the SSA in order to take undocumented immigrants off federal benefits list — despite the fact that while undocumented immigrants often pay into the system, they are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits, and the Trump team has not put forward evidence that any are.

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Treasury Department

One of DOGE’s highest profile incursions into the federal government has been the Treasury Department, where it pressed for and eventually gained access to critical computer systems, including the federal government’s massive payments system, after a career official at the agency who refused to grant that access was ousted.

The Trump administration has insisted that two DOGE agents were given “read-only” access to the payment system, but one of them, DOGE representative Marko Elez (who has since left DOGE after racist tweets he posted came to light) reportedly did have “read-write” access to the system for days, reports Wired.

After 19 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the matter, and on Saturday a federal judge temporarily halted DOGE’s access to the payment system and ordered anyone who had obtained data from the system to delete it.

ProPublica and Bloomberg report that Musk is sending a DOGE team to the security Treasury facility in West Virginia which houses the Bureau of Fiscal Service and department’s accounting data. Per ProPublica:

The new target, the sources said, is a database that tracks the flow of money across the government, from the Treasury to specific agencies and then to the ultimate destination of the funds. The data in the system, known as the Central Accounting Reporting System, or CARS, is considered sensitive. Many transactions flowing to the same place, for example, can suggest a new national security priority for the U.S. government. People who work with the system have in the past been briefed that the database may be of interest to foreign intelligence agencies, said a third source who has familiarity with the system.

Musk’s affiliates are expected to arrive at Treasury offices in Parkersburg, West Virginia, next week, according to two sources, prompting concern among the staff there.

Bloomberg adds that there is other sensitive data there, too:

The secure Parkersburg facility also houses what used to be known as the Bureau of the Public Debt, which conducts a daily accounting of the $28.9 trillion national debt, and some back-office functions for other federal agencies. All employees are subject to background, credit and security checks — including fingerprinting — every three to five years.

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USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development)

Musk and DOGE have led the effectively snuff out USAID, which is the humanitarian arm of the U.S. government abroad. It may not have been legal, but in a matter of days, the DOGE-led effort abruptly froze USAID’s spending and shut down most of the agency’s operations, placed thousands of staff on administrative leave and folded what little was left into the State Department. The moves left numerous foreign partners high and dry, in some cases with reportedly deadly consequences. All the while, Musk was attacking the agency in X posts, promoting conspiracy theories about it, and calling it “evil” and a criminal enterprise.

On Friday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking DOGE and the White House from placing USAID staff on administrative leave and reinstating hundreds who had already placed on leave.

There have also reportedly been attempts to restart at least some USAID funding abroad, but it’s not yet clear whether that has actually happened, nor the full extent of the damage the chaos has already wrought.

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Veterans Affairs

VA officials have confirmed they have been working with DOGE representatives, but insist that the DOGE agent they’re coordinating with “is specifically focused on identifying wasteful contracts, improving VA operations and strengthening management of the department’s IT projects.” The officials also insist that no medical or benefits data is being shared with DOGE.