How DOGE has tried to embed beyond the executive branch
Source: NPR
May 17, 2025 5:00 AM ET
When the Department of Government Efficiency comes calling, it typically starts with an email. That often includes a request to embed DOGE staffers to learn more about what the agency does and review its inner workings. In response to a DOGE staffer's May 13 message asking "to discuss getting a DOGE team assigned to the agency," the Government Accountability Office's response was straightforward.
"Today, we sent a letter to the Acting Administrator of DOGE stating that GAO is a legislative branch agency that conducts work for the Congress," a spokesperson for the watchdog said on Friday. "As such, we are not subject to DOGE or Executive Orders." It's the latest example of how DOGE is attempting to expand its reach beyond high-profile Cabinet agencies, and in some cases beyond the executive branch and the federal government entirely. NPR has identified close to 40 entities — inside, adjacent to and outside of the government — where DOGE and the Trump administration have turned their attention in recent weeks.
Some of them have already been effectively dismantled by DOGE, like the U.S. Institute of Peace, the site of a dramatic daylong standoff between USIP staffers and representatives of the cost-cutting initiative claiming to be new leadership. Some have been targeted for elimination by the president in his budget proposal for next year, like AmeriCorps and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Some of them aren't government agencies at all and, like GAO, have rebuffed DOGE's requests, such as the independent Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the private nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice.
Nearly all of the meetings have been conducted by a small group of young staffers, including at least one college student, with no federal government experience and little apparent knowledge about what these entities do, according to more than a dozen lawsuits, documents shared with NPR and interviews with employees who were granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly and fear retaliation from the Trump administration.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/17/nx-s1-5401392/doge-federal-agency-nonprofits-cpb-usip-vera-institute