President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to “further reign in government waste and officially implement” the Department of Government Efficiency’s “cost efficiency initiative.”
The order requires each agency head to work directly with the DOGE team to identify where government contracts and grants can be terminated or modified. The new process, which “shall commence immediately,” aims to reduce federal government spending or “reallocate spending to promote efficiency and advance the policies” of the Trump administration.
Trump signed the order after holding the first cabinet meeting of his new administration, during which his senior adviser, Elon Musk, who influences DOGE’s actions, spoke at length about the department’s goals.
???? NEW: President Trump just signed an executive order to further reign in government waste and officially implement @DOGE's cost efficiency initiative.
Here is the text of the order:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United…
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 26, 2025
“The overall goal here with the DOGE team is to address the enormous deficit,” Musk told a room full of Trump cabinet members on Wednesday. “We simply cannot sustain as a country two-trillion-dollar deficits. Just the interest on the debt now exceeds the Defense Department spending.”
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO later told the president and his cabinet that DOGE is working as “a support function for the president and for the agencies and departments to help achieve those savings to effectively find 15% reduction in fraud and waste.” Trump’s executive order seeks to increase DOGE’s ability to slash federal spending. The order requires “Each Agency Head, in consultation with the agency’s DOGE Team Lead, [to] conduct a comprehensive review of each agency’s contracting policies, procedures, and personnel.”
According to the president’s order, the DOGE team will then give the DOGE administrator “a monthly informational report on contracting activities” that includes “all payment justifications provided pursuant to that process, to the extent consistent with law.”
Earlier this month, the White House said that Musk was not the DOGE administrator and revealed on Monday that the administrator is Amy Gleason, a healthcare executive who worked for the Trump and Biden administrations. From 2018 to 2021, Gleason worked for the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), which became DOGE.
Trump’s new directive for DOGE expands on the executive order he signed earlier this month that required heads of federal agencies to “coordinate and consult” with DOGE in the hiring process and to “limit hiring to essential positions.”
DOGE and Musk’s increasing power and influence on the Trump administration has become concerning for some critics. Asked by a reporter on Wednesday if any members of the cabinet members were “unhappy” with Musk’s work, Trump said that some might “disagree a little bit,” but added, “For the most part, I think everyone is not only happy, but thrilled.”