Stephanie Holmes, who had been acting as the Interior’s chief human capital officer, and Katrine Trampe, an advisor to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, are both leaving the department, an agency spokesperson confirmed.
Tyler Hassen, another previous associate of the Department of Government Efficiency, is also leaving the [Department of the Interior] Aug. 1, the New York Times reported Friday. He had been the department’s acting assistant secretary of policy, management and budget.
During their tenure, Holmes and Trampe had pushed for, and eventually got, high-level access to a personnel and payroll system run out of Interior as one of a few centralized systems the government uses to pay federal employees. Several high-ranking tech, cybersecurity and legal leaders at the department were placed on administrative leave and under investigation at the time, after they raised concerns about giving that level of access to DOGE.
More recently, though, Holmes, Trampe and Hassen aren’t the only ones to be leaving DOGE.
The trio’s retreat from Interior follows the replacement of Stephen Ehikian as the acting head at the General Services Administration, which has been a DOGE stronghold. Ehikian’s replacement came after longtime Musk associate Steve Davis reportedly tried to install Ehikian as a new leader of DOGE alongside another GSA executive and a senior advisor at the Office of Personnel Management.
Michael Rigas, a deputy secretary at the State Department who is now the acting head of GSA, entered the agency with around 10 officials and strategically placed them around the agency in areas where DOGE members had held the most influence, according to an employee briefed on the matter.
Frank Schuler, who entered government as a DOGE associate and later became the acting associate administrator in the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, and Michael Peters, an early appointee who has served as commissioner of the Public Buildings Service, also both resigned on Tuesday, according to multiple employees familiar with the moves.
“People are happy as they were not well liked,” one staffer told Government Executive about the mood inside the department. “Some people [are] thinking things will improve. Others afraid they have ‘set everything in motion and leaving the burning wreckage behind.’”
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