The DOGE Playbook: What to Expect

Based on warnings from workers at other agencies like USAID, this is what we can expect from the DOGE playbook:

Day 0 —  triggering event is installation of a new acting agency head

Day 5 —  First strike, typically on funding.

Day 5-7 — DOGE enters the building. Once inside, DOGE accesses agency internal systems to take our data and make changes.

Day 7 — Fire contractors and put DEIA employees on admin leave. After firing contractors, DOGE uses staff to issue admin leave notices to civil servants who are identified as “DEIA” employees (sometimes at random) and/or to retaliate against civil servants who attempt to assert their legal rights.

Day 6-10 Issue mass admin leave orders. DOGE starts taking classified or unclassified data. E.g. getting access to BFS payments at Treasury, attempts to access classified data, etc. For CFPB, this includes consumers’ confidential information since we are entrusted with that data. DOGE does not explain its need for the data or how it intends to use it. Similarly, there is no transparency around how DOGE intends to protect it. Once it takes the data, DOGE/new leadership issues admin leave memos in large waves.

Lambert here: I would have highlighted data exfiltration and made it a separate step.

• IT & security staff then lock staff out of internal systems
• No due process — no reason for DOGE’s activity is provided, no meetings with employees to announce the admin leave, no investigation is conducted or disclosed to employees.
• Escalation to staff leadership — the staff who signed and carried out the admin leave memos & systems changes are put on admin leave once they are no longer needed and within days.

Day 7-10 — Major illegal changes/disruption of agency functioning, like moving USAID to State dept or stopping Treasury payments.

Lambert here: Did I not get the memo on AFL-CIO centering this in its national campaign to protect Federal workers?