SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been tearing through the federal government, slashing budgets, firing staff. It has a mandate from both President Trump and Elon Musk to make federal agencies more efficient and transparent, as they put it. But who is making sure DOGE is efficient and transparent? And more specifically, who is monitoring how DOGE is funded and how much money it actually has? Avi Asher-Shapiro is a reporter from ProPublica, and he and his colleagues are trying to do just that. Welcome to the show.
AVI ASHER-SHAPIRO: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: What have you and your colleagues been able to find out about how much money DOGE is spending, where that money is coming from?
ASHER-SHAPIRO: So we were able to uncover that DOGE began with about a $750,000 infusion, and that quickly grew to about $40 million of money that had been apportioned for DOGE within the first month of the administration. Much of that money is supposedly under the banner of technology modernization work or IT work.
But we don't know if that's the beginning or the end of it. We don't know if it's $40 million a month for the entirety of the initiative, which would be a staggering sum, or if it's $40 million for the entire year. And we don't know if that money is going to salaries, if it's going to equipment, really what it's being spent on. But we do have that number of 40 million that's been apportioned by the administration to DOGE so far.
DETROW: What can you tell about where that money is coming from? - because there's so much conversation about congressional authorization on the downsizing side. Congress hasn't passed a bill to fund DOGE that much more, as far as I can tell.
ASHER-SHAPIRO: The origins of the funds are a bit obscure, and it would be helpful to get some answers from the administration on this. Much of that money has been apportioned under something called the Economy Act, which, you know, experts told us basically allows agencies of the government to reimburse themselves for work that others do. So basically, it looks like agencies are paying DOGE out of their own pocket.
Which agencies, we're not able to see, and we're not exactly sure for what work they're being paid for. So if it's money that's supposed to be set aside, for example, for IT work, but it's actually paying for other kinds of activities like mass layoffs or shuttering buildings, experts tell us that could raise some serious questions.
DETROW: And obviously, you are looking at documents that you can access. You are talking to people throughout the government who are willing to talk to you. How much responses have you gotten to direct questions to DOGE officials? Are they responding to the questions, or are they ignoring them?
ASHER-SHAPIRO: I can tell you that we have tried to reach dozens and dozens of people who we've identified through documents, through sources, through public records, as being part of the DOGE initiative. And we have not been able to get on-the-record answers from a single member of DOGE. I actually saw, for the first time, a member of DOGE announced on Twitter that they were working at DOGE and said what they were working on, which was great and interesting, but we're not seeing that across the board. We're seeing members of DOGE actually erase their online histories, delete their LinkedIn profiles, make it more difficult to figure out who they are. So we're not getting clear answers.
DETROW: Even as they massively reshape federal departments every single day.
ASHER-SHAPIRO: Right.
DETROW: What are legal experts telling you about all of this and about the transparency or lack thereof of where this funding is coming from?
ASHER-SHAPIRO: Yeah, so the Trump administration has said that DOGE is covered by the Presidential Records Act, which means that it wouldn't be subject to the Freedom of Information Act requests immediately. But experts have told us that that might be a problem. If DOGE is dispatching team members to agencies, taking command of those agencies, taking command of significant work inside of those agencies, and it's funding itself with those agencies' budgets, then they may have to really comply with open records laws.
DETROW: Right.
ASHER-SHAPIRO: This is a kind of double bind that they're in.
DETROW: Because, like, if you're the EPA or whatever and reporters request information or anybody requests information, there is a set legal standard of having to disclose that information. And DOGE is getting around that by saying this is executive privilege.
ASHER-SHAPIRO: I mean, there are - experts and judges have even said that it looks like they're trying to have it both ways, right? They want - for the purposes of public records laws, they want to be, you know, within the executive office of the president, but for the purposes of its control - command and control of agencies, they want to be an agency, right? And that's - that exact kind of contradiction has been raised by judges who have been questioning the administration about DOGE's position.
DETROW: That is Avi Asher-Shapiro, a reporter from ProPublica. Thank you so much.
ASHER-SHAPIRO: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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