U.S. Government Accountability Office is not a presidential executive order, nor does the Department of Government Efficiency seek to add an independent watchdog
The Department of Government Efficiency is looking to add an independent watchdog that finds waste, fraud and abuse in the government in order to widen its reach.
But the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a legislative branch entity that helps audit government spending and suggest ways to make it more efficient, rejected that request on Friday by noting that GAO is not subject to presidential executive orders.
GAO is not subject to Executive Orders and has therefore declined any requests to have a DOGE team assigned to GAO, according to a spokesman for GAO.
A notice shared with NPR by an employee not authorized to speak publicly states that the GAO leadership wrote a letter to the acting administrator and notified Congress.
The GAO regularly releases reports that highlight ways to improve government efficiency, like a May 13 review of federal programs with fragmented, overlapping, or duplicative actions it says could save over $100 billion in spending. But there’s been little overlap between GAO’s work and DOGE’s actions so far.
Among the dozens of organizations contacted by DOGE in recent weeks are several privately incorporated nonprofits that were created by Congress and receive federal funding but are not considered government agencies.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was the subject of a lawsuit after Trump tried to fire three board members.
NPR identified close to 40 entities, many inside and near the government, where DOGE and the Trump administration have been focusing their attention recently.
A Call to Cavanaugh and Fox: Embedding DOGE into Vera, an Issue of Concerns for the General Services Administration and the National Labor Relations Board
In an Apr. 15 call, Cavanaugh said his request to embed into Vera was “void” — not because Vera is a nongovernmental organization, but after learning from Vera staff that the Department of Justice had terminated all of the organization’s grants, according to notes Vera Institute staff shared with NPR.
The growing tension between Congress and the executive branch is the result of DOGE’s efforts to embedded at GAO. Last week, President Trump abruptly fired the Librarian of Congress, a year before the end of her term — raising concerns from members of Congress including Senate Majority leader John Thune.
Cavanaugh’s partner in much of the small agency outreach is Justin Fox, a 21-year-old college student who, according to his LinkedIn profile, is a college student at Indiana University Bloomington and the founder of Vantix Advisors, a “cutting-edge blockchain consulting firm.”
Less than a week after joining the federal government in early March, Fox was detailed to aid DOGE’s efforts at USADF, and has been involved with meetings regarding IAF, NEH, USIP, the Wilson Center, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and more.
Fox sent this week’s email to the GAO, with Cavanaugh copied, according to a copy of the email shared by the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Administration Committees.
Cavanaugh and Fox were detailed to the National Labor Relations Board one day after NPR reported on a whistleblower disclosure alleging sensitive data left the agency’s network after DOGE staffers were given unfettered access to its systems.
At times, the two have been assisted by a member of the Dechert team, who was an associate at the time. Aimonetti is detailed to DOGE from the GSA.
NPR has identified six DOGE staffers based at the General Services Administration who have been primarily responsible for meeting with these independent organizations: Nate Cavanaugh, Justin Fox, Justin Aimonetti, Jack Stein, Jonathan Mendelson and Marshall Wood.
Two government employees, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said that Wood started at the GSA on April 21.
At the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, DOGE’s email came on Apr. 17, requesting a meeting to assign a team to the small federal agency, which advises the president and Congress on preserving the nation’s heritage. The agency has just 42 employees, according to its website.
On April 22 a video call was taken, followed the next day by a meeting at the National Building Museum in D.C., according to ACHP’s acting director of communications, education and outreach.
The DOGE representatives were looking for a synopsis of the program and activities of the ACHP. They requested information about the budget, staff, and contracts. She said that a team has been documented to the ACHP, where they are in the process of being onboard.
DOGE staff met with Peace Corps officials as recently as May 9 to discuss staffing cuts and resignations, according to the two government employees not authorized to speak about DOGE’s operations.
Amy Nieves, a spokesperson for the Access Board, which develops accessibility standards under federal laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act, confirmed that the board’s leadership had a “cordial meeting” with members of DOGE at the board’s Washington office on Apr. 22 and that “additional meetings and engagements have taken place and are expected.”
The Truman Scholarship Foundation, the Denali Commission, the Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities
The Truman Scholarship Foundation, the Denali Commission and the Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation didn’t respond to NPR’s requests for comment.
According to the court filing, the acting director went to IMLS headquarters and took control of its computer systems. IMLS’s entire staff of 70 were put on administrative leave soon after. (A federal judge has since paused Trump’s attempt to eliminate IMLS and six other agencies.)
At the National Endowment for the Humanities, Cavanaugh and Fox notified nearly 1,500 grantees that their awards were terminated, using a non-governmental Microsoft email account, according to a lawsuit challenging the agency’s dismantling.
The lawsuit said that the agency was a “shell of an agency that Congress established and has consistently funded.”
Trump’s topline 2026 budget proposal calls for the shuttering of nearly two dozen independent agencies, commissions and organizations, from the Marine Mammal Commission to the nonprofit Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation to regional federal-state collaborative partnerships like the Delta Regional Authority and the Denali Commission.
“Last month, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began an assessment of Peace Corps operations. As a result, the agency has identified ways to significantly restructure its workforce, both domestically and overseas,” an unnamed spokesperson using a Peace Corps press email account told NPR. A deferral of resignation program was offered to employees and the agency intends to implement further staff reductions.
The Peace Corps spokesperson said the agency “remains operational” and has no plans to withdraw volunteers serving abroad. The National Peace Corps Association, an alumni group, has raised concerns that “an already lean agency will be forced to sacrifice services for current Peace Corps applicants, Volunteers, and alumni.”
The Peace Corps was added last week to a lawsuit which is challenging the Trump administration’s reorganization of the federal government. A court temporarily stopped agencies from cutting jobs and putting workers on administrative leave.
That includes the Legal Services Corporation, which funds legal aid for those who can’t afford it, the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, which operates under the name NeighborWorks America and provides grants, training, and assistance to community development groups, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides grants to public radio and television stations.
The laws creating the Legal Services Corporation and NeighborWorks America also say, in both cases, that “the corporation shall not be considered a department, agency, or instrumentality of the Federal Government.”
Source: How DOGE has tried to embed beyond the executive branch
NeighborhoodWorks America: How DOGE Embedded Staff at Government Institutions? Robust Response to Cavanaugh’s Interview with Rauscher
LSC director of communications and media relations, Carl Rauscher, confirmed a meeting took place between Ron Flagg and the DOGE staff. “We provided information they requested,” Raucher said.
NeighborWorks America did not say what it had done with the DOGE. “NeighborWorks America is aligned with administration’s housing goals and we are proud of it,” said Douglas Robinson in a statement to NPR. We believe in the efficient delivery of financial resources and technical expertise that sustains and builds affordable housing supply.
Cavanaugh did not respond to a request for comment about why DOGE has sought to embed staff at Vera and other organizations that are not government agencies.
Slashing staff and budgets of smaller agencies is unlikely to make a big contribution towards DOGE’s stated goal of downsizing the federal government. Before Trump took office, Musk’s cost-cutting target was slashed from $2 trillion to $150 billion.
Since then, he’s also been detailed to multiple other agencies, according to court filings, including the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF), the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Minority Business Development Agency.
Cavanaugh first emerged at GSA in February, where he met with many technical staffers and software engineers and interviewed them about their jobs, according to four GSA employees who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.
Cavanaugh currently serves as the appointed president of the U.S. Institute of Peace. The staff of the Interagency Council on Homelessness were put on administrative leave after the agency’s acting director was named.
At least one college student has no federal government experience and the meetings have been conducted by a small group of young staffers, with few apparent knowledge of what these entities do.
There are some who are private and not government agencies that have rejected DOGE’s requests, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Vera Institute of Justice.
Some of them have already been effectively dismantled by DOGE, like the U.S. Institute of Peace, the site of a dramatic daylong standoff between USIP staffers and representatives of the cost-cutting initiative claiming to be new leadership.
Source: How DOGE has tried to embed beyond the executive branch
Reply to a Doge Staffer’s May 13 Message on Government Accountability and Dogs at the Human Resources Observatories
The Government Accountability Office’s reply to a Doge staffer’s May 13 message was “to discuss getting a Dogs team assigned to the agency”.