Elon Musk’s DOGE minions are transforming federal offices into crash pads complete with furniture, children’s play areas, and a wildly expensive washer-dryer, according to a report.
Employees with Musk’s nebulous cost-cutting task force have set up IKEA beds, lamps and dressers in at least four rooms on the sixth floor of the General Services Administration building, two career GSA employees told Politico.
The GSA is even considering spending $25,000 to install a washer and dryer on the same floor, and a child’s play area is decorated with a stuffed animal and other toys, according to photos and an invoice obtained by Politico.
“People are definitely … sleeping there,” a GSA staffer told the news outlet.
The rooms share office space with conference rooms and can only be accessed with high-level security clearances, making it difficult even for lawmakers to assess how often they’re occupied, according to Politico.
Washer-dryer access would certainly suggest they’re more than an occasional crash pad, though. The report is consistent with information provided to Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) during a Feb. 2 town hall.
“One of Musk’s top lieutenants and his wife and young child have shacked up on the 6th floor of our agency and they are living there,” an unidentified constituent said during the meeting.
The Daily Beast has contacted the GSA for comment.
Sleeping in federal agency offices is generally prohibited unless a supervisor has directed an employee to remain onsite to conduct official government business, and it is “necessary” for the person to sleep on the premises, according to a 2019 GSA bulletin.
“In accordance with the Sleeping in Federal Buildings bulletin, specific instances of an employee sleeping at the 1800F building was expressly authorized by an agency official,” a spokesperson for the GSA told Politico in a statement. “Any purchases the agency has made followed all appropriate laws and regulations.”
Musk has also told friends he’s sleeping at his DOGE offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Wired reported in late January. The world’s richest man has previously said he lived at his Tesla factories for three years and slept on the floor underneath his desk—out in the open in the factory—because it motivated his employees to “give it their all.”
Veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher blasted DOGE’s sleeping arrangements as the “performative nonsense of ‘hardcore’ tech nincompoops.”
“They could put people in nearby hotels or Airbnbs for a lot less,” she wrote in a post on social media platform Bluesky. “It’s all cosplaying intense workaholism for the cheap seats, and all for PR.”
Former federal employees, meanwhile, speculated the point of DOGE sleeping in their offices was to “terrorize the civilian workforce.”
“It’s exceedingly odd,” Jeff Nesbit, an author and former senior official, told Politico. “I’ve run the public affairs offices of five different Cabinet departments or agencies under four different presidents, two Republicans and two Democrats. I have never heard of any such thing.
