Who Is Working for DOGE?

Massive cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting — brought to you by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — moved closer to finality late on Thursday night, with Congress to cancel $9 billion in funding.

DOGE has taken a hatchet to the federal government over the past six months, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs and shuttering entire government agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development.
But even with these devastating slashes to invaluable programs, the administration has deliberately provided scant and confusing information about DOGE, obfuscating details about its structure and even the names of its employees.

This week, we sued 20 government agencies for records about groups of DOGE employees who have been installed at agencies across the federal government.

Our three lawsuits seek records identifying the names and titles of individuals serving on agency DOGE teams, and came after the vast majority of the agencies failed to properly respond to our public records requests or to produce a single responsive document.
We’ve been investigating DOGE’s sweeping power within the Trump administration, having filed public records requests and lawsuits for information about its dismantling of federal agencies, its problematic records preservation practices, its status as an agency, and more.

On his first day back in office, President Trump issued an executive order establishing DOGE and requiring all agencies to set up DOGE teams made up of at least four people. We sent Freedom of Information Act requests to dozens of agencies for records that would identify the people on these teams — but agencies’ responses elicited more questions than answers.

“[T]he CDC does not have a DOGE team, and therefore there are no documents pertaining to your request,” the agency said in response to our request. The Food and Drug Administration and the Department of the Interior answered the same way.
But ProPublica, Politico, and the New York Times have identified DOGE staffers at those agencies, and DOGE itself has boasted of cuts it made to the FDA.

In filings in our lawsuits, DOGE has claimed that its purpose is merely to advise and assist the president, and that it does not exercise any independent authority. It claims that DOGE is not an agency and its records aren’t subject to FOIA or the Federal Records Act.

Despite DOGE’s efforts to evade transparency, we’ve uncovered three individuals working for DOGE whose names were previously unreported.
We also obtained resumes of several political appointees at the Department of Labor who are known DOGE staffers.

DOGE’s evasive and illegal tactics cannot fully bury the truth. As Americans continue to see the impacts of DOGE’s massive cuts, they deserve to know why these decisions were made — and who was involved.

Emil Bove Nomination Moves Forward

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the nomination of Emil Bove — the Justice Department official who allegedly told agency attorneys to tell the courts “f— you” if facing court orders that slowed down deportations — to a lifetime federal judgeship.

Bove’s nomination is a direct attack on our democracy’s system of checks and balances: “Emil Bove didn’t just cross ethical lines,” our Chioma Chukwu said. “He bulldozed them.”
According to recent whistleblower allegations from longtime DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni, who was fired after refusing to lie in court about a deportation error the administration had made, Bove suggested defying court orders so as to expedite deportations.
The allegations describe how the DOJ and the White House engaged in a coordinated effort to ignore facts, mislead judges, and conceal information in the service of the president’s anti-immigration agenda.

This isn’t the only incident in which Bove has demonstrated fealty to Trump’s political goals instead of the rule of law.

Earlier this year, we filed a disciplinary complaint asking authorities in New York, where Bove is a member of the bar, to investigate his potential misconduct for his role overseeing the corrupt dismissal of criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams’ political cooperation on immigration enforcement.

On the Records

DOGE’s Smoke and Mirrors

As we detailed above, DOGE has attempted to shield its actions from scrutiny in several ways — including by keeping the public in the dark about who exactly is working for DOGE, and where.

But even with the obfuscation and agency claims that they have no DOGE teams, other responses to our FOIA requests have shed light on some names.

The Department of Agriculture’s response identified three individuals working for DOGE whose names were previously unreported: Jeremy Lichtman, Timothy Ronan, and Samuel Berry.
We also recently obtained resumes of several political appointees at the Department of Labor who are known DOGE staffers: Miles Collins, Marko Elez, and Aram Moghaddassi.

From public reporting and court filings, we know that DOGE has assigned some members to multiple agencies.

For example, Elez is an employee of the Department of Labor who is detailed to or has been tied to HHS, the Treasury, DHS and its associated agencies, and the Social Security Administration.
Moghaddassi is a DOGE member associated not only with Labor, but with the Treasury, the SSA, the Transportation Security Administration, and several DHS subagencies. Additionally, a response we received from the Small Business Administration to a separate FOIA request lists Moghaddassi as a “Special Advisor” to Administrator Kelly Loeffler, indicating that Moghaddassi may have also done DOGE work at SBA.

On the Records

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