President Donald Trump has signed an executive order intended to give the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) more power to gut federal agencies and slash government spending.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the White House via email on Wednesday night.
Why It Matters
Trump established DOGE by executive order on the first day of his second term and tapped Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the person who originally proposed the department, to spearhead the cost-cutting efforts.
DOGE has been aggressively targeting federal agencies and initiating mass firings in recent weeks, prompting heavy backlash from critics who argue that the savings claims are exaggerated and that DOGE is abusing its power.
What To Know
The White House shared an executive order titled “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Cost Efficiency Initiative” to its website on Wednesday evening. The order instructs federal agency heads to work with “DOGE Team Leads” who are monitoring each agency and to justify spending on government contracts and grants within 30 days.
“Each Agency Head, in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead, shall review all existing covered contracts and grants and, where appropriate and consistent with applicable law, terminate or modify (including through renegotiation) such covered contracts and grants to reduce overall Federal spending or reallocate spending to promote efficiency and advance the policies of my Administration,” the order reads.
“This process shall commence immediately and shall prioritize the review of funds disbursed under covered contracts and grants to educational institutions and foreign entities for waste, fraud, and abuse,” it continues. “Each Agency Head shall complete this review within 30 days of the date of this order.”
The order also demands that agency heads provide “written justification for each payment,” to explain “federally funded travel for conferences and other non-essential purposes” and to identify federal properties that are no longer needed.
Additionally, the order places a 30-day freeze on all agency credit cards, with the exception of charges for “disaster relief or natural disaster response benefits or operations or other critical services.”
The order comes after Musk controversially warned federal workers that they would be submitting their “resignation” if they failed to respond to a DOGE-inspired email demanding that they justify their employment.
While several agency heads have since said that responses to the email are voluntary and will not affect employment, Trump has backed Musk. During a Cabinet meeting that Musk attended at the White House on Wednesday, the president insisted that workers who did not respond to the email were “on the bubble” and may soon “be gone.”
What People Are Saying
Musk, commenting on Trump signing the executive order in a post to X, formerly Twitter: “No more wasting your hard-earned money!”
Writer Justin Glawe, commenting on Trump’s order on X: “Trump just signed an executive order that requires virtually all government contracts, spending, and some travel reimbursements to be approved by DOGE ‘team leads’ within every federal agency. So, uh, who the hell are these ‘teams leads?’ No one really knows.”
A group of 21 government workers who resigned from DOGE in protest on Tuesday, in a letter obtained by the Associated Press: “We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”
What Happens Next
The full impact of Trump’s executive order remains to be seen. Several lawsuits have already been filed over DOGE and Musk’s efforts to gut the federal workforce, block agency spending and access government databases that contain personal information.
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