The order continues the Trump administration’s directives to have all agencies coordinate with Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting effort.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 26 that gives new cost-cutting directives to all federal agencies while they coordinate with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The order directs departments to immediately review all contracts and grants for “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and justify and publicly release government payments and travel expenses, where possible. The General Services Administration will also create a plan for offloading any unnecessary government-owned or leased real estate property.
The excluded contracts and grants include direct assistance to individuals; expenses related to immigration enforcement, law enforcement, the military, public safety, or national intelligence; and “other critical, acute, or emergency spending.”
Trump is also ordering agency heads to work with DOGE team members at their agencies to “review and terminate all unnecessary contracts.”
This review must be completed within 30 days of the order.
Agency heads must also create a “centralized technological system” within their respective departments to record all payments issued and require all agency employees to provide written justification for any payments they submit.
The system must include a mechanism for the agency head to pause and review any payments where the approving employee failed to submit a brief, according to the order.
The order also directs agency heads to consult with their department’s DOGE team leader and issue guidance on signing new contracts or modifying existing contracts to “promote government efficiency and the policies of [the Trump] administration.”
DOGE team leaders are instructed to provide a monthly informational report on contracting activities.
Wednesday’s order is the latest from the Trump administration directing federal agencies to coordinate with Elon Musk’s DOGE as the team works to cut government spending and decrease the size of the federal workforce.
On Feb. 11, Trump signed an executive order directing all agency heads to work with DOGE in cutting staff and limiting hiring.
According to that order, the Office of Personnel Management will create rules to ensure federal workers are “held to the highest standards of conduct.”
Following the expiration of the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 hiring freeze, all federal agencies will be allowed to hire no more than one employee for every four who leave or are released from their positions and must begin plans for large-scale reductions in force and determine which agency components—or agencies themselves—might be eliminated or combined.
Another executive order, signed on Feb. 19, requires federal agencies to work with DOGE to cut any regulations that contradict the Trump administration’s agenda.
More specifically, it directs all agency heads to coordinate with DOGE and the Office of Management and Budget to review all regulations within their jurisdictions to make sure they’re consistent with the law and the president’s policies. It also asks them to prioritize any regulations that “impose heavy costs.”
Agencies are also directed to use discretion to limit any enforcement actions that exceed statutory authority or exceed the federal government’s constitutional powers.
During the president’s first cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Musk said that DOGE needs to move quickly if it wants to succeed in slashing $1 trillion from the federal debt by next year.
He said DOGE “will make mistakes … [and] won’t be perfect” but that his team will point out when any issues occur so they can “fix it very quickly.” Musk cited DOGE accidentally cutting Ebola prevention during the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as one example.
“With USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention,” he said. “So we restored the prevention immediately.”
Musk did not say how many federal workers the administration is looking to cut, but said “we wish to keep everyone who is doing a job that is essential and doing that job well.”