DOGE isn’t dead. Many of its original members are in full-time roles at various government agencies, and the new National Design Studio (NDS) is headed by Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, a close ally of Musk’s.
Even if DOGE doesn’t survive another year, or until the US semiquincentennial—its original expiration date, per the executive order establishing it—the organization’s larger project will continue. DOGE from its inception was used for two things, both of which have continued apace: the destruction of the administrative state and the wholesale consolidation of data in service of concentrating power in the executive branch. It is a pattern that experts say could spill over beyond the Trump administration.
Under the Constitution, the authority for establishing and funding federal agencies comes from Congress. But Trump and many of the people who support him, including Vought and Vance, adhere to what was until relatively recently a fringe view of how government should be run: the unitary executive theory. This posits that, much like the CEO of a company, the president has near complete control over the executive branch, of which federal agencies are a part—power more like that of a king than of the figure described in the nation’s founding documents.
“The unitary executive theory has animated a lot of what DOGE has done at a lot of different places,” says George Foote, outside general counsel to the US Institute of Peace.
“You just go to the data systems, you go to payroll systems, you figure out where the contracts are going out the door and you take control of those. From there, you can just make sure people don’t get paid, or you can eliminate a contract, or you could pull together different data sources,” says [Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan]. “That’s a different mode of operating from how even people like Russ Vought or Stephen Miller, people who are fairly sophisticated in thinking about bureaucracy, were operating in the past.”
“I absolutely think the data consolidation [theft —lambert] piece or prioritization of this administration is tied to DOGE and will be part of DOGE’s legacy,” says Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
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