After Donald Trump’s election in November, big-time donor and billionaire adviser Elon Musk began to outline his plans to slash government spending through something called the “department of government efficiency” (DOGE), a name referencing a 2010s dog meme and a cryptocurrency created as a joke in 2013.

But it wasn’t clear exactly what form Musk’s task force would take until Inauguration Day, when Donald Trump issued an executive order repurposing the existing U.S. Digital Service as the “U.S. DOGE Service,” and tasking it with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The order further stated that small DOGE teams would be embedded in various federal departments, where they would have access to “all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”

Legally, this makes DOGE something like an IT task force — and notably, not a real government agency or department. Officially, Musk and DOGE aides are “special government employees,” a designation generally used for part-time expert consultants working no more than 130 days of the year. In fact, in an ongoing court case against Musk, the White House administration alleged on February 17 that “Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” and that “Mr Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.”

But that’s on paper. Over the ensuing weeks, Trump and Musk have continued to demonstrate that they have no respect for rules, laws or the Constitution. Musk is running DOGE as if it were the most powerful part of government — putting officials on leave, accessing private data, shutting down federal agencies and overriding spending authorized by Congress.

On February 10, New York Magazine identified 18 agencies and departments that DOGE has accessed, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Defense Department, the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Social Security Administration (SSA) and Veterans Affairs (VA).

“There is not one single entity holding Musk accountable,” historian Douglas Brinkley told The New York Times. “It’s a harbinger of the destruction of our basic institutions.” A federal official witnessing the DOGE takeover warned the paper: “Before Congress and the courts can respond, Elon Musk will have rolled up the whole government.”

One of DOGE’s most high-profile and terrifying breaches was of the Treasury Department, which manages the country’s finances by collecting taxes, paying bills and producing money.

In late January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent allowed DOGE members to access the Treasury’s payment system, a unit known as the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). This previously little-known but hugely important office processed nearly 1.3 billion payments in fiscal year 2023, totaling $5.4 trillion, including tax returns, Social Security benefits, disability payments and federal salaries. BFS is overseen by........

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