The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under the questionable leadership of Elon Musk, has quickly become the signature initiative of the second Trump administration. Since Inauguration Day, personnel associated with DOGE have fanned out to virtually every executive branch agency, systematically dismantling them from within by hacking their IT infrastructure, firing thousands of staff, and even attempting to shut down entire agencies.
DOGE’s actions epitomize the administration’s unprecedented cavalier, if not outright hostile, attitude toward the law and the U.S. Constitution. Despite initial assertions that it would act with complete transparency, instead this pseudo-public entity has done so covertly, with little to no checks from the executive or legislative branches.
Effective congressional oversight and curbing of DOGE’s harmful and illegal actions is clearly called for under countless statutes, as well as the U.S. Constitution. Until Congress takes up its legislative oversight duties, however, the best chance the nation has to limit the damage of DOGE is through litigation.
To help congressional leaders, concerned policymakers, and citizens understand the various ways that DOGE’s actions may be unlawful, the Center has established the Unmasking DOGE tool that catalogues the numerous legal infirmities that underlie both DOGE as an institution and the specific actions it is seeking to carry out. The tool also assembles background resources on these legal questions and materials relating to legal challenges raising these questions in court, and it outlines a wide variety of legal and advocacy strategies for responding to DOGE. The tool is distinct from other compilations of executive orders and administrative actions in that we’re simultaneously researching the legal justifications for these orders and actions, evaluating their legal merits, and analyzing their potential weaknesses.
We plan to update this tool on a regular basis to provide a valuable resource for advocates, the press, policymakers, and members of the public interested in tracking DOGE’s efforts to illegally dismantle our democracy. We’ll do so by cataloging ongoing developments in lawsuits, academic think pieces, and information and analyses from other reputable sources.
Contributing to this project are Center for Progressive Reform Board Member and Member Scholar Alejandro Camacho and volunteer law students Serapia Kim, Semmie Lee, Maggie Maser, Rachel Sondkar, and Derek Yeghiazarian. To develop the general parameters of the tool, they consulted with a dozen leading administrative and constitutional law scholars.
