Elon Musk May Be Gone but DOGE Isn't Done Remaking the Federal Government

Far from it ending, the Trump administration views DOGE’s work as central to its vision of remaking the federal bureaucracy in the president’s image.

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget and himself a proponent of slashing government spending and bureaucracy, told a House Appropriations Committee hearing earlier this month that a goal would be to have DOGE “far more institutionalized at the actual agency” level moving forward.

“Many DOGE employees and [full-time employees] are at the agencies, working almost as in-house consultants as a part of the agency’s leadership,” he said. “And I think, you know, the leadership of DOGE is now much more decentralized.”

Now, many of them have been converted to permanent jobs within the government, and agencies are embracing DOGE’s mission, according to NPR’s review of personnel movements and interviews with federal employees who requested anonymity because they fear retaliation from the Trump administration for speaking about internal matters.

New hires are being subjected to loyalty tests that entrench some of the DOGE vision into the hiring process. The administration has issued new guidance aimed at “prioritiz[ing] recruitment of individuals committed to improving the efficiency of the Federal government,” among other characteristics. The hiring plan includes requiring federal job applicants to write essays describing how they will help advance Trump’s policy goals.

A number of the young software engineers who were among DOGE’s earliest recruits have recently converted from “special government employees” — a time-limited role — to full-time federal workers. That includes Luke Farritor and Ethan Shaotran, who became regular staffers at the General Services Administration this spring, according to internal GSA records seen by NPR.

More than three dozen DOGE-affiliated individuals are based at GSA, according to the records, including Nate Cavanaugh, Justin Fox, Justin Aimonetti, Jack Stein, Jonathan Mendelson and Marshall Wood — a small crew of staffers who have been primarily responsible for efforts to embed DOGE at more than three dozen small entities inside, adjacent to and outside of the federal government.

According to multiple current and former GSA staffers in and outside Washington, DOGE staffers have completely taken over parts of GSA’s downtown Washington, D.C., office, including the gym and the roof.

Other individuals, many connected to Musk and his companies, who joined the Trump administration as part of the DOGE effort remain in senior agency roles.

That includes Thomas Shedd, a Tesla software engineer who since January has been running the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services unit, which develops tech for the government, and in March was also named chief information officer at the Labor Department.

A lawyer who previously represented Musk’s SpaceX, Catherine Eschbach, continues working to downsize a federal contracting watchdog at the Labor Department.

At the Department of the Interior, Secretary Doug Burgum has put DOGE representative and former oil executive Tyler Hassen in charge of efforts to cut costs and “create significant efficiencies” at the agency.