Trump brings DOGE inside the White House

• Trump originally promised Elon Musk's DOGE would operate outside the government.
• But his executive order instead renamed the Obama-era US Digital Service, making DOGE part of the federal goverment.
• Experts say the approach swats down certain legal challenges while creating issues in other areas.

On November 12, Donald Trump announced Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency," would "provide advice and guidance from outside of government" to help roll back bad regulations and slash government spending.

The DOGE that Trump created via executive order on January 20 looks almost nothing like that: it's officially a part of the White House and reports to chief of staff Susie Wiles, it will have the power to hire government employees, and its stated mission is to update the federal government's software and IT systems — a far cry from the vision Musk outlined of cutting up to $2 trillion in annual spending.

"I was disappointed to see the limited scope that DOGE is now responsible for," said Romina Boccia, the director of budget and entitlements policy at the libertarian Cato Institute. "On the bright side, it may mean that it will be more likely to actually fulfill its mandate because it's more targeted."

Trump's executive order states DOGE will replace the US Digital Service, or USDS — a sort of technical special ops team created during the Obama administration after the meltdown of Healthcare.gov — and encompass a "temporary organization" that makes it easier to hire employees. Every federal department has to create a four-person team to liaise with the new office, which is supposed to wrap up its work by mid-2026.

"I think it's noteworthy that the announcement calls for an HR specialist, an attorney, an IT specialist, and then an overall manager to be placed in each of the applicable agencies," Craig Saperstein, a partner at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman who specializes in government relations, told Business Insider.

DOGE, he said, may still be focused on cutting regulations, changing workforce rules, and streamlining government operations.

The decision to put DOGE inside the federal government is "perhaps the result of the lawyers advising DOGE and the administration realizing that their proposed private structure for the DOGE would be subject to legal challenge," Caleb Burns, a partner at Wiley Rein, told BI of the new structure. "It may be the necessary evil from their perspective, to avoid a court fight."

Now that DOGE is situated inside the government, it is subject to new transparency and ethical rules, Aimee Ghosh, another partner at Pillsbury, said, particularly around public information laws.

"There's more mechanisms to request it or demand it, or for outside groups to file litigation demanding access," she said, while noting it's still unclear how public information statutes will apply to DOGE.

Trump, Musk, and DOGE did not return requests for comment.

Limits on power

Being part of the government means Musk can't use his private fortune to fund DOGE's operations. Tom Schatz, whose group Citizens Against Government Waste criticizes federal spending, said that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The USDS has suffered from mission creep as its headcount has grown to more than 200 people, he said, while Musk's team has been reported to have a staff of about 20.

But Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, said there would be easy ways for Musk to get around those limits. The DOGE temporary organization is allowed to use volunteers and so-called special government employees who may not have to disclose information about their assets and income to ethics officials, he said.

The White House Counsel's Office and the Office of Government Ethics will likely weigh in on whether Musk or any DOGE staff will need to sell any assets or steer clear of discussions about certain agencies to avoid conflicts of interest. But Hedtler-Gaudette said those sign-offs aren't worth much because both offices are subject to political pressure.

"The overall framework of ethics and conflict-of-interest laws, rules, and regs we have on the books are extraordinarily weak," he said.

Since 2014, USDS has worked with federal agencies to help them improve how they deliver services, said Jen Pahlka, who helped create the office in 2013 and 2014. The agency was created with members of the team brought in to clean up the disastrous launch of Healthcare.gov, and has since helped with tech rollouts like the IRS's widely praised Direct File program.

Congressional allocations for USDS have fluctuated, she said, and some people have criticized ethics waivers that have made it easier for USDS to recruit people from the private sector without forcing them to sell their stakes in venture-backed startups or investment funds. But she said ethics issues under Musk could be more significant than before.

"It does get politicized," she said. "I don't think to the extent that it will be now."

Were the DOGE lawsuits pointless?

At least three lawsuits filed shortly after Trump was sworn in challenged DOGE's compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a 1972 law requiring outside advisory panels to meet publicly and include members from diverse ideological backgrounds. Earlier in January, the New York Times reported that two ethics experts who have criticized Trump, Virginia Canter and Norm Eisen, volunteered to be a part of DOGE, but were rebuffed by the Trump transition team.

It's unclear what will happen to those lawsuits now that DOGE has officially become part of the White House. But at least one group that sued said its lawsuit should still be able to move forward.

Trump's executive order "does not moot our suit," said Nandan Joshi, a lawyer at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, in an email. "Our lawsuit is based on information that the administration will ask a private task force to provide it with recommendations on regulatory and spending cuts without complying with the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Nothing in the EO contradicts that information."

Kel McClanahan, a lawyer for another group that sued over DOGE, raised the possibility that there could be multiple organizations using the DOGE name, saying in an email that the executive order "muddied the waters."

"We don't have any reason to believe that the entity created by the recent Executive Order is the same animal as the advisory committee we are litigating about," he said. "The deciding factor will be what the new US DOGE Service actually does and how."

Another change from the DOGE envisioned in Donald Trump's announcement in November: Vivek Ramasamy isn't a part of it. "It was my honor to help support the creation of DOGE. I'm confident that Elon & team will succeed in streamlining government," Ramaswamy posted on X.

He is reportedly exploring a run for Ohio governor.