Trump signs executive order expanding power of Elon Musk’s Doge agency

Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order meant to expand the power of Elon Musk’s governmental cost-cutting program, the so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.

The new order calls for a “transformation” in federal spending on contracts, grants and loans by requiring agencies to create a centralized system to record and justify payments, which may be made public for transparency – an initiative that would be monitored by Musk’s team.

“This order commences a transformation in Federal spending on contracts, grants, and loans to ensure Government spending is transparent and Government employees are accountable to the American public,” it states.

The order instructs each agency’s Doge team lead to provide monthly reports on contracting activities, including payment and travel justifications. Law enforcement, the military, immigration agencies and national security-related activities are excluded from the new requirements.

The order is part of a much broader effort by the White House to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce, which the Trump administration has cast as an impediment to realizing his sprawling agenda. On Wednesday, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management sent a seven-page memo directing agency leaders to develop plans to implement “large-scale reductions” by 13 March, according to the Associated Press.

“We’re cutting down the size of government. We have to,” Trump said earlier on Wednesday during the first cabinet meeting of his second term. “We’re bloated. We’re sloppy. We have a lot of people that aren’t doing their job.”

The administration already moved to fire thousands of probationary employees who were not yet entitled to civil service protections. The president on Wednesday said that the Environmental Protection Agency plans to cut up to 65% of its employees. Employees at the labor department and the Social Security Administration are also reportedly bracing for dramatic downsizings.

Addressing the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Musk conceded that Doge had made some mistakes in its rapid-fire approach to shrinking and in some cases attempting to entirely eliminate agencies. He conceded that Doge “won’t be perfect”, including when it “accidentally” cancelled an Ebola-prevention effort that the tech billionaire insisted had been restored “immediately” and with “no interruption”.

An official with the US Agency for International Development (USAid), one of Doge’s first targets, disputed Musk’s claim, telling the AP that agency funds for Ebola response had not been released since Trump froze foreign aid last month.

Under the new Doge-related executive order, the General Services Administration has 60 days to submit a plan for offloading any government real estate “deemed by the agency as no longer needed”.

The directive also places a 30-day freeze on all government-issued credit cards, effective immediately, unless they are used for disaster relief and other critical services, or an exception is made by a supervisor. Federally funded travel for conferences and other “non-essential purposes” will be subject to new reporting requirements.