Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland, Feb. 20, 2025.
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The acting administrator of President Donald Trump‘s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is Amy Gleason, a White House official told CNBC on Tuesday.
The DOGE leader’s name was revealed shortly after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt assured reporters that Elon Musk was overseeing the government-slashing unit.
Speaking at a White House press briefing, Leavitt declined repeated requests to name the DOGE administrator, whose identity had been a question mark for weeks.
Gleason was identified after the briefing by an official who requested anonymity to share the information.
Leavitt’s refusals added to the confusion about who is running DOGE, even as Musk appears to be in charge.
Trump created DOGE on his first day in office via executive order that retooled the U.S. Digital Service, an existing team within the Executive Office of the President. The newly formed “United States DOGE Service” established an administrator who reports directly to the White House chief of staff.
The DOGE administrator is also in charge of an internal group called “the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization,” according to the executive order.
Trump’s action also directed federal agency heads to coordinate with the DOGE administrator, including on the establishment of internal “DOGE Teams” within their agencies.
It is unclear when the administrator role was filled. Semafor reported Feb. 18 that the position “remains vacant” since Mina Hsiang, who was administrator of the unit when it was still known as the U.S. Digital Service, stepped down as Trump took office.
A Feb. 18 Wired article described Gleason as a former U.S. Digital Service official who served during Trump’s first term.
A LinkedIn profile that appears to match Gleason shows she worked as a “Digital Services Expert” at the USDS from October 2018 to December 2021. She rejoined the unit in January as a “Senior Advisor,” according to the profile.
CNBC’s outreach to that profile was not immediately returned.
A page from former President Barack Obama’s archived White House website praises Gleason as part of its “Champions of Change” initiative.
Questions surrounding Musk’s role are at the center of multiple lawsuits challenging DOGE’s actions, which have included waves of sudden firings, the scrapping of government contracts and the attempted shuttering of entire federal agencies.
In one of the lawsuits, a Trump administration aide wrote in a declaration Feb. 17 that Musk is a senior advisor to Trump, with “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”
The aide, Office of Administration Director Joshua Fisher, wrote under penalty of perjury that Musk is “not an employee” of the DOGE entities that Trump established.
During a hearing Monday in a separate federal lawsuit, a Trump administration lawyer was reportedly unable to answer a judge’s questions about Musk’s relationship to DOGE.
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