Is your personal information safe? Why should CT care?
Barbara Heimlich
Editor
DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is an initiative by the second Trump administration tasked with cutting federal spending. It emerged from discussions between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and was established by an executive order on January 20, 2025.
According to Wikipedia, it was founded on January 20, 2025, Washington, D.C. by Donald Trump with the acting administrator, Amy Gleason, with a budget of $40 million.
Musk’s team has taken aim at more than 30 agencies, while gaining access to sensitive government data systems. But the full extent of its reach or ambitions is unclear.
How can DOGE affect Connecticut? DOGE actions, particularly the proposed budget cuts and workforce reductions, will negatively impact the State of Connecticut, especially in areas like federal contracting, support for small businesses, and services for veterans and public media.
DOGE’s actions, such as the dismantling of AmeriCorps, will disrupt essential services like youth, senior, and veteran programs, impacting Connecticut’s ability to support these communities. (See CT.GOV-Connecticut’s Official State Website)
Veterans’ Services: DOGE’s cuts could exacerbate problems at the VA, leading to longer wait times for veterans’ healthcare and benefits, potentially impacting their lives negatively. Additionally, federal funding is at risk for organizations that assist veterans, like the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, impacting the ability of these organizations to provide crucial legal services.
Public Media: Federal funding for public media, including news and programming, is under threat, potentially affecting the ability of CT Public to provide essential services to the community.
Federal Workforce: DOGE’s workforce reductions will impact communities across the country, including Connecticut, as the federal government is a major employer and many of its employees live outside of the Washington, D.C. area.
Federal Employees in Connecticut
Agency Number employed
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS 3,925
DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY 1,107
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY 482
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 413
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION 289
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION 167
DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE 165
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 154
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 148
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 85
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 50
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 49
FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE
CORPORATION 43
DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND
URBAN DEVELOPMENT 39
DEPARTMENT OF STATE 38
GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION 38
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY 18
SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 13
NATIONAL CREDIT UNION ADMINISTRATION 12
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD 12
*Data as of Sept. 2024 Table: Jordan Fenster Source: U.S. Office of Personnel Management
A CT Insider review by Jordan Nathaniel Fenster, of the latest cuts affecting those in Connecticut showed various cuts, from a $3.5 million allocation to Yale through the Department of Health and Human Services to study the psychology of young women of color, to a $773,000 grant to UConn that funded a study on the relationship between drug use and HIV transmission. Sacred Heart University has lost $3.38 million grant for a teacher residency program.
Middletown-based Connecticut Humanities, for example, has lost the entirety of its federal funding, more than $1 million, as Executive Director Jason Mancini said during a Wednesday town hall meeting for arts and culture organizations.
Among other impacts, Mancini said the loss of funding imperils Connecticut’s plans for the state’s 250th anniversary, scheduled to be celebrated next year. “Connecticut Humanities will continue our operations as long as we can,” he said. “We might not be here for July 4, 2026. That’s the reality.”
The Hartford Public Library has lost a $450,000 grant for a program intended to “remove key barriers along the path to citizenship.” Several cities, including Bridgeport and Waterbury, have lost funding under the Inflation Reduction Act intended to remove lead from local homes.
In New Haven, $1 million has been pulled for a program that helped residents currently relying on heating oil to transition to high-efficiency heat pumps, according to Steve Winter, director of New Haven’s office of Climate and Sustainability.
“We’re in the Venn diagram of things that the current administration doesn’t want to see. They don’t they don’t want to see action on climate change. They don’t want to see investment in disengaged communities like the inner city neighborhoods that this grant was focused on,” Winter said. “But what that really results in is higher energy bills for residents and more pollution. Those are the outcomes. Our residents and our air quality are ultimately what suffers.”
Save The Children, the Fairfield-based organization, has taken one of the biggest hits in Connecticut. They have seen tens of millions of dollars frozen in recent months.
Rev. Nicholas Porter, founding director of Milford-based Jerusalem Peacebuilders, said during an interview that his organization was told they would lose $30,000 through the State Department that funded an advanced teacher training program in Israel. “They wrote us saying, we are discontinuing the grant, not because we’re not satisfied with what you’re doing, not because we want to discontinue it, but because the Secretary of State discontinued it,” he said.
“You live by the sword, you die by the sword,” Porter said. “If you live by government grants, you will die by government grants.”
Many of the grant termination notices come from emails without the “dot gov” extension that usually indicates an official government email address. Weston History & Culture Center Executive Director Samantha Fargion said during the Wednesday town hall that she questioned the validity of the email when she first received it.
Porter also questioned the validity of the email he received.
“We did receive a sketchy email, or one that did not, didn’t have all the hallmarks of an official government email,” Porter said. “But it was in the name of the State Department, and I forwarded it to the public diplomacy department at the U.S. Embassy, that part of which is still in Tel Aviv, and the head of the department there said, ‘Yes, indeed. I’m sorry to tell you, this is a legitimate email.’”
The first 100 days of DOGE: “not successful by any means”
The nonprofit Partnership for Public Service says DOGE’s firings, rehirings and putting employees on leave have cost as much as $135 billion.
DOGE claims $150 billion in savings from layoffs, canceled government contracts and shuttered agencies such as USAID. Thing is, analysts dispute that number, and it falls far short of what Musk had promised during the election campaign. During last year’s election: when Elon Musk was asked how much spending he thought he could cut from the federal government, he stated, “Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion.”
“Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency went from promising $2 trillion in savings to $1 trillion to $150 billion,” said Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow focused on budget, tax and economic policy at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “And they really only verified about $5 billion in savings or less than one-tenth of 1% of federal spending. Clearly, this is not successful by any means.”
There are savings to be found, however. DOGE has been looking for waste, fraud and abuse. Experts say a good place to look is fraud, because we have actual figures — an estimate, at least, for how much money the federal government loses to fraud.
Rebecca Shea came up with that estimate. She’s with the Government Accountability Office, the federal government’s auditor.
“The government loses between $233 billion to $521 billion annually in direct financial fraud loss,” she said. Shea based her findings on patterns of previous fraud. The actual numbers are unknown, because a lot of fraud goes undetected. “So, we don’t have that information to tell us exactly where there are higher rates of fraud.”
Ferreting that out requires initially spending more money — not immediately slashing budgets, argued Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the left-leaning think tank American Progress. He also worked as a budget adviser in the Biden White House.
“It takes technical experts and it costs money to go after that fraud,” he said. “And so what we’ve seen from the Trump administration has actually been the opposite.”
In the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, DOGE has focused on waste and abuse —subjective terms. It’s laid off federal employees, reduced health research funding, canceled numerous federal contracts and shrunk agencies. Yet all those cuts are not really making a dent in the federal government’s spending, according to Brendan Duke with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
“When we look at how much the federal government has spent this year, we see that it has spent more during this calendar year than it did over the comparable period last year or the year before,” he said.
You read that right: spent more, not less. As previously stated, the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service says the firings, rehirings and putting employees on leave have cost as much as $135 billion.
The bottom line, said Duke, is that the Trump administration’s cost-cutting effort has been underwhelming at best, because it has so far largely avoided targeting the biggest spending categories.
“One out of every $5 spent goes to Social Security. One out of every $4 spent goes to health insurance. So just off the bat, that’s about almost half of the federal budget,” he said.
The easier-to-cut portion — so-called discretionary spending — accounts for just a third of total annual expenditures.
In the coming weeks and months, Congress will be looking for more cuts as part of its budget-setting process. Those cuts could potentially come from Medicaid and the children’s health insurance program — both areas that are likely to prove more politically difficult to target.
According to the New York Times, much of the DOGE team’s operations are opaque, and most of its personnel have not been disclosed by the Trump administration, and it is unclear exactly how large the operation is. Through executive order, President Trump moved the team into the White House from the Office of Management and Budget, where it had been housed as the United States Digital Service since its founding, — a transition that effectively shielded its work from open records laws that could give the public insight into its operations.
“What we’re seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what’s going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what’s happening because these aren’t really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”
Not surprisingly, DOGE staffers all have deep ties to Musk’s businesses. The Times attempted to contact each DOGE staffer on this list through a combination of verified email addresses and social media accounts. For those without known contact information, Times reporters tried to reach them by sending emails to a name and address pattern consistent with other known email addresses. No one returned the Times’s requests for comment.
WIRED magazine has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s DOGE project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.
The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.
The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.
DOGE Leadership
Elon Musk: Senior adviser to the president
Musk launched the DOGE operation prior to Mr. Trump’s inauguration, and has directed it from an advisory role in the White House. As the world’s richest man, he has earned a reputation for being a ruthless cost cutter — something he’s applying to his new perch in the U.S. government. Company involvement: X, SpaceX, Starlink, The Boring Company, xAI, Tesla, Neuralink
Brad Smith: A DOGE leader, health care entrepreneur, Smith essentially functioned as a chief of staff for DOGE during the presidential transition and has led the team with Steve Davis. He has operated as a kind of policy handyman for Mr. Trump, taking on a variety of health-related roles. Agency involvement: Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Amy Gleason: Acting administrator during the first Trump administration, Ms. Gleason worked at the United States Digital Service, which was subsumed by DOGE. She later worked with Brad Smith at an investment firm focused on health companies, and she rejoined the U.S.D.S. late last year. She was named the administrator of DOGE on Tuesday. Agency involvement: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services, United States Digital Service.
DOGE Staffers With Interesting Bios
Amanda Scales: Chief of staff, Office of Personnel Management, worked at Musk’s artificial intelligence company, has a senior role at the Office of Personnel Management, a powerful agency that manages government hiring. Agency involvement: Office of Personnel Management. Company involvement: xAI. Both Bobba and Coristine are listed in internal OPM records reviewed by WIRED as “experts” at OPM, reporting directly to Amanda Scales, its new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, and as part of Uber’s talent acquisition team, per LinkedIn.
Katie Miller: Senior adviser, Miller, a longtime aide to Trump, is married to Stephen Miller, and acts as a senior adviser to the operation. The president called her a “deeply experienced communications professional” when he named her to the team as one of the first hires.
Jennifer Balajadia: Musk’s longtime assistant, and she has email addresses at multiple federal agencies — a sign of her reach across the bureaucracy, alongside Musk’s. Agency involvement: Department of Education
Notable Worker Bees
Katrine Trampe: ADOGE liaison, Interior Department, she is charged with reviewing and canceling grants and contracts. In March, she gained high-level administrative access to a payroll system for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. Agency involvement: Department of the Interior
Rachel Riley: Adviser, Health and Human Services. Working at the Department of Health and Human Services she has worked closely with Brad Smith. The two requested access to payment systems at the Medicare agency, according to a document seen by The Times. Agency involvement: Department of Health and Human Services
Tom Krause: Senior Treasury official, has led DOGE efforts to review the Treasury Department’s payment systems, which contain sensitive information about millions of Americans. He clashed with a top civil servant at the Treasury, who resisted giving Mr. Krause access to the systems and later resigned from his job. Mr. Krause has since been named to that civil servant’s job, with oversight of the nation’s fiscal systems.
Marko Elez: Software engineer, a former X employee who was granted access to the Treasury Department’s payments system. A history of racist social media posts led him to resign from DOGE in February. But he was quickly reinstated after Vice President JD Vance came to his defense. Agency involvement: Treasury Department, Social Security Administration, Department of Labor, Department of Health and Human Services, United States Digital Service, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Transportation Security Administration
Ryan Wunderly: Special adviser, Treasury Department, hired to fill Marko Elez’s vacant role at the Treasury, which gives him read-only access to the department’s payments system, according to a court filing.
Edward Coristine: Software engineer, is one of the youngest DOGE staffers, having graduated high school last year. A coder who interned at Neuralink, one of Mr. Musk’s companies, Coristine was fired from another internship at a tech firm after an investigation into the leaking of internal information. Agency involvement: General Services Administration, United States Agency for International Development, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, United States Digital Service, Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Transportation Security Administration. Company involvement: Neuralink. Coristine, as WIRED previously reported, appears to have recently graduated from high school and to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his résumé obtained by WIRED, he spent three months at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company, last summer. Employees at GSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.
Luke Farritor: Software engineer. Few of Musk’s aides have been spotted at as many federal agencies as Farritor, a prize-winning computer scientist who dropped out of college. He has spent a significant amount of time at the General Services Administration, interviewing tech staff members about their work. Agency involvement: General Services Administration, United States Agency for International Development, Centers for Disease Control, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Social Security Administration, Department of Energy, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, United States Digital Service, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Transportation Security Administration. Company involvement: SpaceX. Farritor, who per sources has a working GSA email address, is a former intern at SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and currently a Thiel Fellow after, according to his LinkedIn, dropping out of the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. While in school, he was part of an award-winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scroll.
Christopher Stanley: Software engineer. Stanley has worked for Elon Musk at SpaceX and X in security engineering roles. He recently was involved in helping to release Jan. 6 prisoners. Agency involvement: Office of Personnel Management, Department of Justice.
Ethan Shaotran: Software engineer, part of the cadre of young coders. He founded an artificial intelligence start-up that received funding from OpenAI, a major player in tech and one of Musk’s chief competitors in A.I. Shaotran told Business Insider in September that he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an OpenAI-backed startup, Energize AI. Shaotran was the runner-up in a hackathon held by xAI, Musk’s AI company. In the Business Insider article, Shaotran says he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to build his scheduling assistant, Spark.
Alexandra Beynon: Software engineer, former head of engineering at a company that prescribes ketamine therapy. (Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects). Agency involvement: Department of Education
Gavin Kliger: Software engineer, no government experience, has emerged as one of Musk’s most prolific foot soldiers. He has clashed with security officials at U.S.A.I.D., sought access to sensitive taxpayer data at the I.R.S, and was involved in taking down parts of the C.F.P.B. website. Gavin Kliger helped oversee mass firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while holding stock in companies that experts say likely stand to benefit from dismantling that agency — a potential violation of federal ethics laws. Kliger, whose LinkedIn lists him as a special adviser to the director of OPM and who is listed in internal records reviewed by WIRED as a special adviser to the director for information technology, attended UC Berkeley until 2020; most recently, according to his LinkedIn, he worked for the AI company Databricks. His Substack includes a post titled “The Curious Case of Matt Gaetz: How the Deep State Destroys Its Enemies,” as well as another titled “Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense: The Warrior Washington Fears.”
Cole Killian: Software engineer. Killian is among the young coders working at DOGE and is listed as a detailee at the Environmental Protection Agency, a designation often given to those on temporary assignment. Agency involvement: Social Security Administration, Environmental Protection Agency. Killian, has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is currently listed as a volunteer, according to internal records reviewed by WIRED. According to a copy of his now-deleted résumé obtained by WIRED, he attended McGill University through at least 2021 and graduated high school in 2019. An archived copy of his now-deleted personal website indicates that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic and high-frequency financial trades.
Akash Bobba: Software engineer, 21, Agency involvement: Office of Personnel Management, General Services Administration, Social Security Administration. Bobba has attended UC Berkeley, where he was in the prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program. According to a copy of his now-deleted LinkedIn obtained by WIRED, Bobba was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund as of last spring and was previously an intern at both Meta and Palantir. He was a featured guest on a since-deleted podcast with Aman Manazir, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they landed their dream jobs, where he talked about those experiences last June.
Ask Yourself This:
How many of these government agencies have your name, address, social security information, salary information………
This question is important, and the Stratford Crier is not trying to scare you. Our goal is to make you aware of the political climate that we first alerted you to in our series Project 2025: What’s At Stake?
