As DOGE began to order massive budget cuts and layoffs, and those affected by the moves began to raise questions in the press and in court about their legality, administration officials equivocated on Musk’s exact role, asserting he was simply a senior adviser to the president and had no official position in DOGE.
Five weeks after its creation and under pressure from a growing cascade of lawsuits, the White House revealed in late February that an obscure bureaucrat named Amy Gleason had been acting as DOGE’s administrator since nearly day one.
However, ProPublica has found that she does not appear to be running the budget-slashing group, according to interviews with six current and former government officials. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.
“I get the sense that Amy is in the role of scapegoat,” said one source who had been in meetings with Gleason.
The exact chain of command at DOGE is not clear to most federal employees who brush up against the team. But sources told ProPublica that longtime Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, a former executive of Musk’s Boring Company and SpaceX, appears to be administering day-to-day operations. And at times, Musk himself issues commands from inside the Secretary of War Suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, said a person familiar with the matter.
“I don’t know who Amy Gleason even is,” said one person who’s worked closely with DOGE’s leadership in a federal agency. “Davis runs the show.”
The announcement that placed Gleason in between Musk and DOGE’s daily operations appeared haphazard: Gleason was on vacation in Mexico when Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, named her as acting administrator to a group of reporters in Washington. Gleason told colleagues the White House had not coordinated the announcement with her.
Other parts of the rollout were equally perplexing: Leavitt asserted Gleason had been the administrator since nearly its inception — but colleagues said Gleason only began running staff meetings about a month into the administration with a small group of career technologists that predated the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, Gleason told her former colleagues back in Nashville, Tennessee — where she recently worked as a health technology executive — she was planning on returning there in a few short months.
One government worker who has been in meetings with Gleason described her as “someone with little to no actual decision-making” responsibilities.
She revealed as much to colleagues in meetings in recent weeks, where she made clear she was not deeply involved in the DOGE budget cutting that has put humanitarian programs in peril and forced thousands of employees out of work, sources who were in those meetings told ProPublica.
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