‘It’s the shadow OPM’: How DOGE is using a once-obscure federal agency as ground zero for its plans to shrink government
CNN
The once-obscure Office of Personnel Management, essentially the human resources department of the federal government, is now ground zero for Elon Musk and President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash bureaucracy and deconstruct vast portions of the administrative state.
The once-obscure Office of Personnel Management, essentially the human resources department of the federal government, is now ground zero for Elon Musk and President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash bureaucracy and deconstruct vast portions of the administrative state. Current and former OPM employees describe an agency that’s been taken over by a shadow operation of political appointees affiliated with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Isolated on a secure floor inside the agency’s Washington headquarters, DOGE personnel, many with deep ties to Musk and his companies, are now effectively in charge of OPM, issuing government-wide directives that are seen as blueprints for carrying out the administration’s vision to shrink the government. That has left career employees sidelined, feeling blindsided and scapegoated. “The federal workers at OPM don’t even know what’s going on, and we are getting blamed for allowing Elon Musk and DOGE into OPM,” a recently departed OPM official told CNN. “It’s very well known within the agency that it’s the shadow OPM, not the career employees pushing the buttons.” DOGE team members arrived at OPM on Inauguration Day.
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