This Woman, Who Is Not Elon Musk, Is Definitely, 100-Percent, For-Sure Running DOGE—Hand to God!

Will the real DOGE boss please stand up? A new player has entered the game, with the White House on Tuesday identifying a federal worker named Amy Gleason as the acting administrator of the government’s cost-cutting task force, not Elon Musk, its thus-far very public face.

Gleason, according to her LinkedIn profile, served in the U.S. Digital Service group during the first Donald Trump administration, focusing on the government’s COVID-19 response and on issues relating to digital healthcare records. The USDS has been rebranded the Department of Government Efficiency, shrouded in mystery, mired with lawsuits from all sides, and still carrying its dumbass joke name.

As the lawsuits continue to rack up, questioning DOGE’s constitutionality, effectiveness, and leadership, while thousands of federal employees lost their jobs and nearly two dozen DOGE employees quit theirs in protest, it remained unclear who actually served as the agency’s administrator. The intrigue mounted on Tuesday morning when White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to identify an acting administrator. Later that afternoon, the White House said it was Gleason, who is evidently currently on vacation in Mexico and reportedly had not been informed of her imminent unmasking.

Meanwhile, in a House Oversight Committee meeting Tuesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene went off on federal employees, saying that they don’t work “real jobs” and “do not deserve their paychecks,” in response to the confusion and anger over Musk’s inflammatory “tell us what you did last week if you want to keep your job” weekend email to millions of federal workers and a subsequent follow up on Monday.

“You can protest all you want outside of departments of this government, you can protest all you want, but the American people disagree with you,” she said. “You’re protecting the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is not a business. Those are not real jobs producing federal revenue, by the way. They’re consuming taxpayer dollars. Those jobs are paid for by the American tax people, who work real jobs, earn real income, pay federal taxes, and then pay these federal employees. Federal employees do not deserve their jobs. Federal employees do not deserve their paychecks. And these are jobs that can be fired at will.”

Gleason is, of course, a federal employee apparently in charge of firing those—yes—federal employees who, under Greene’s blanket assessment, do not have real jobs. Greene, whose government salary is also funded by the American taxpayers, scooped up a number of tech stocks, including for Musk’s Tesla, shortly after the election. Another twist: She’s the head of the subcommittee overseeing DOGE. (Greene’s office did not respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.)

And about Musk: He’s classified as a “Special Government Employee” and draws no salary for whatever it is he does with DOGE (though you just know he’s not paying room and board for his EEOB crash pad). That designation, however, appears to be just as hand-wavey and “because I said so” as DOGE’s overall mission. According to federal ethics guidelines, a special government employee is not meant to work more than 130 days in a 365-day period, though those familiar with the calendar will note that July 4, 2026, the deadline that Trump gave Musk and DOGE to achieve their budget-slashing goals, is beyond 130 days from Trump’s executive order establishing the group. Not to mention that, yes, in that November social media statement heralding the birth of DOGE, Trump wrote that “the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (‘DOGE”)….”

Additionally, Trump’s Day One executive order officially establishing “the DOGE Agenda” contains another deadline that has quietly passed, which would establish a “DOGE Team”—a litter, if you will—for each federal agency.