The Department of Government Efficiency, which carried out the most transformative restructuring of the federal government in a generation, has formally ended — with no public accounting of its actions. Despite touting itself as the most transparent administration in history, the Trump White House is working to ensure that no DOGE records ever see the light of day.
This is a dangerous antidemocratic precedent, especially since DOGE took direction from Elon Musk, who was famously not a regular government employee. By handing over essential government functions to members of the ultrawealthy who happen to be friends with the president, while systematically dismantling America’s transparency infrastructure, the administration is effectively hiding that public policy is being dictated at an oligarch’s request. The threat is the privatization of government power, with no chance of oversight or public input.
If the DOGE model succeeds, there’s no telling how many shadow agencies may follow — and how many government decisions taxpayers could be locked out of.
To date, what little the public knows about DOGE has mostly come from whistleblowers. The mechanics behind this information blackout are twofold.
Almost from its inception, the Trump administration argued that DOGE was not an agency with independent authority and therefore was not subject to the real-time scrutiny of Freedom of Information Act (or FOIA) requests. Rather, the administration said that DOGE’s sole legal function was to advise and assist the president, and that political appointees at federal agencies — not DOGE personnel — held the ultimate authority to implement its recommended mass firings and agency liquidations.
If the DOGE model succeeds, there’s no telling how many shadow agencies may follow — and how many government decisions taxpayers could be locked out of.
Taken at face value, this would mean that DOGE’s records fall under the Presidential Records Act. This is a critical distinction from federal agency records: Presidential records don’t become subject to FOIA until five years after an administration leaves office. This multiyear delay makes it functionally impossible for the public to verify that these files are being preserved.
The dangers are already playing out. A Wired investigation published Thursday found that last year the National Labor Relations Board, which investigates reports of unfair labor practices and holds sensitive whistleblower files, deleted DOGE team accounts before investigators could audit them. This deletion followed a high-profile whistleblower complaint alleging that the DOGE team at the labor board had been granted unrestricted access to alter and copy sensitive data.
Erasing DOGE’s digital footprints appears to have compromised a federal investigation and violated the Federal Records Act, which compels agencies to keep records for the length of their retention schedule. It also means that our current primary mechanism for DOGE transparency — submitting FOIA requests to federal agencies — has already been sabotaged.
Dual lawsuits brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and American Oversight are among those actively challenging the administration’s stance that DOGE isn’t subject to FOIA. The groups argue that because DOGE wielded substantial independent government power, including implementing policy and personnel changes, it cannot hide behind an advisory label. While these cases are still winding through the courts, judges have ruled that DOGE must preserve its records in the interim.
The outcome of these cases is all the more consequential in light of the Trump administration’s recent adoption of a radical Office of Legal Counsel opinion declaring that the Presidential Records Act itself is unconstitutional. The memo — which the White House requested — argues that presidential papers are no longer public property but the president’s personal property to do with as he wishes. This effectively gives the president a green light to destroy or delete official files at will.
The legal reasoning behind this memo is as dangerous as it is absurd. No president, not even Donald Trump during his first term, has argued that the Presidential Records Act was unconstitutional. Treating government records as personal trophies (to be hoarded, incinerated or anything else) is a clear affront to democratic accountability.
My organization, Freedom of the Press Foundation, joined with CREW in a lawsuit to force the administration to comply with the presidential recordkeeping law. In late May, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the White House to comply with the Presidential Records Act as the case proceeds.