Event: Investigating the Department of Government Efficiency

As President Donald Trump dismantles the federal government one agency at a time, he has handed Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, unprecedented power to cut and reshape the U.S. bureaucracy.

Trump and Musk have defended DOGE as a tool for trimming fat from what they see as a bloated bureaucracy. In the spirit of public accountability, ProPublica is identifying the staffers working for this highly secretive group. By late March, we profiled 66 staffers helping the Department of Government Efficiency, which has cut humanitarian programs domestically and abroad and fired tens of thousands of federal workers.

Our reporters have also written on the department’s ambiguous leadership structure and its recruitment of attorneys, including former Supreme Court clerks, who have been brought onto the DOGE team as it undertakes significant initiatives across various government agencies — challenges to which may escalate to the Supreme Court. 

During this virtual event, ProPublica’s reporting team will review what they’ve learned about the inner workings of DOGE and answer your presubmitted questions. 

The maximum value of an ICE contract awarded to logistics company Deployed Resources to operate a migrant detention camp on Fort Bliss. It is the largest contract the company has received and the first time ICE is moving ahead with plans to detain thousands of people arrested in the U.S. on military bases in tents before they are deported. The plan for a potentially 5,000-bed camp on Fort Bliss is “a recipe for disaster,” says Eunice Hyunhye Cho, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Reporters Jeff Ernsthausen, Mica Rosenberg and Avi Asher-Schapiro profiled how Deployed Resources went from a small-time business, which had helped support outdoor festivals like Lollapalooza, into a contracting giant by building camps for a completely different use: detaining immigrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. The company did not respond to requests for comment.