The so-called Department of Government Efficiency continues its work to shape the government, according to GOP Rep. Pete Sessions, but he swerved questions about who is leading the cost-cutting effort following Elon Musk’s departure.
Sessions, co-chair of the Congressional DOGE Caucus, whose role is to “lead government efficiency initiatives in the House of Representatives,” told Politico’s AI and Tech Summit Tuesday that DOGE remains “an active component in the government.”
The Texas representative, however, didn’t answer a direct question about who is in charge of the effort since Musk left the White House following his public fallout with President Donald Trump in June, according to the outlet.
“They meet on a regular basis. They are made up of professionals who have a mission. They are people who sincerely want to change the system,” Sessions said of the DOGE team, whose mission is still focused on “eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse of the taxpayers’ money.”
Sessions said that he last spoke with Musk in March or April and reportedly characterized the billionaire’s relationship with Trump as a “stormy romance.”
The White House labeled Musk a “senior adviser to the president” while he was gutting the federal government, but Trump appeared to contradict that when he said in February: “I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.”
Amy Gleason is the acting administrator for the U.S. DOGE Service. But former colleagues have described her as an effective behind-the-scenes operator, in stark contrast to the world’s richest man, who enjoyed taking center stage.
DOGE has been accused of serious data breaches since it launched earlier this year, which Sessions blamed on “rigid government systems and protocols.”
One high profile incident includes an alarming whistleblower account from a former Social Security chief data officer. Last month Charles Borges claimed that DOGE uploaded 300 million people’s data to the digital cloud in a “serious data security lapse.”
Borges, who has since quit his role, claimed that DOGE put people’s personal information, including addresses, birth dates, and other sensitive data that could be used to steal identities, at risk of being leaked or hacked into.
His disclosure earlier alleged “systemic data security violations, uninhibited administrative access to highly sensitive production environments, and potential violations” of security protocols and federal privacy laws by DOGE personnel — including Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, the 19-year-old at the center of a wave of controversial policies inside the federal government.
In a statement to The Independent, a spokesperson for the agency said commissioner Frank Bisignano and agency personnel “take all whistleblower complaints seriously” and that it “stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place to protect vital information.”
“We are not aware of any compromise to this environment and remain dedicated to protecting sensitive personal data,” the spokesperson added.
Musk, meanwhile, has been exerting his influence in the U.K. since he left Washington, D.C. and fell out with Trump over his opposition to the president’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”
Seizing on the anti-immigration sentiment currently surging in Britain, the Tesla billionaire spoke at the right-wing “Unite the Kingdom” rally Saturday, as tens of thousands hit the streets of London in the largest protest the city has seen since pro-Palestinian demonstrations in 2023.
Alex Woodward contributed reporting
