DOGE Executive Order Asks Agency Employees To Justify Their Existence

President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies Tuesday to demonstrate that their employees’ roles are legally required, granting Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) broad new powers to eliminate positions deemed unnecessary.

The executive order requires agencies to defend its workforce against elimination or consolidation, while restricting departments to hiring just one new employee for every four who leave. It also creates a “DOGE team lead” position within each agency to oversee what the order calls “large-scale reductions in force” by identifying which functions aren’t mandated by law.

“Agencies will undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force and determine which agency components (or agencies themselves) may be eliminated or combined because their functions aren’t required by law,” the order reads.

The order expands on Trump’s earlier workforce reduction efforts, which included a federal hiring freeze and offering eight months of paid leave to employees who resign. The cooperation with “team leads” seems to evolve from DOGE’s establishing executive order, which refashioned the Obama administration’s United States Digital Service (USDS) into the United States DOGE Service.

Military personnel and agency employees deemed necessary for national security, immigration enforcement or law enforcement are exempt from the order.

“If bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?” Musk said, standing beside the president as he signed the order in the Oval Office.

“It does not match the will of the people, so it’s just something we’ve got to fix,” he added.

DOGE has already effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and now targets similar cuts in the Department of Education and the Department of Defense. DOGE faces multiple legal challenges from public employee unions over the buyout program and workforce reduction efforts generally, with a federal judge extending the deadline Monday for employees to accept Trump’s offer.

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