The Defense Department effectively barred its civilian employees from using their government-issued travel charge cards, according to a DOD memo.
The new spending rules, spelled out in a March 5 memorandum signed by Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Darin Selnick, came a week after President Donald Trump issued a Feb. 26 executive order outlining government cost-saving initiatives, including some that targeted federal workers’ spending habits.
“DOD civilian employees must cancel all future non-exempted official travel reservations, and those currently on non-exempted travel must return to their respective permanent duty stations as soon as feasible,” the DOD memo read.
The spending limit for the government-issued travel cards of federal civilian employees was officially reduced to $1.00, per the instructions.
The memo exempts DOD civilian employee travel that directly supports military operations or a permanent change in station.
Trump’s executive order — entitled “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Cost Efficiency Initiative” — called for a “transformation in federal spending” by cutting costs and harnessing the power of the increasingly controversial DOGE agency to do the heavy lifting.
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Two tenets of the executive order, “non-essential travel justification” and “credit card freeze,” provided more detailed instructions.
Agencies will be tasked with installing a technological system in which approvals for federally funded travel for “conferences and other non-essential purposes” are logged. Employees will not be allowed to travel unless the head of that agency submits a written justification through the system.
Federal employees’ credit cards will also be frozen for 30 days, save for credit cards tied to disaster relief or natural disaster response benefit assistance.
Elon Musk, the Trump-appointed special government employee who leads DOGE and is the CEO of automotive company Tesla, has faced criticism for the substantial firings his agency has made in the name of cost savings. Cuts have impacted a long list of federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Energy, the National Parks Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is planning to cut 80,000 employees.
DOGE has also received backlash for emails it sent out requiring federal employees, including DOD civilians, to reply with a detailed list of their professional accomplishments for the week in an attempt to assess productivity.
Riley Ceder is a reporter at Military Times, where he covers breaking news, criminal justice, investigations, and cyber. He previously worked as an investigative practicum student at The Washington Post, where he contributed to the Abused by the Badge investigation.
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