After months of controversy, Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s failed passion project to cut costs across the federal government is officially dead, ahead of schedule.
Earlier this month, Office of Personnel Management director Scott Kupor told Reuters that the Department of Government Efficiency “doesn’t exist.”
Even though there are eight more months left on its mandate, DOGE is no longer a “centralized entity,” according to Kupor. Instead, the Office of Personnel Management, an existing independent agency that has been overseeing the federal workforce for decades, will be taking over most of DOGE’s functions.
According to the report, at least two DOGErs are now a part of the National Design Studio, a new body launched by Trump through an executive order in August with the aim of “breathing new life into the design of sites where people interface with their Government.” The National Design Studio is headed by Airbnb co-founder and former DOGEr Joe Gebbia, and they are credited with the AI-generated web design for TrumpRx.
DOGE had a short but eventful life. Trump announced the creation of the “agency” immediately after his election last year. The cuts began shortly after Trump took office, with Musk taking a figurative and literal chainsaw to the federal government. With DOGE, Musk completely gutted the Department of Education, laid off a good chunk of the government’s cybersecurity officials, caused the deaths of an estimated 638 thousand people around the world with funding cuts to USAID, and stripped more than a quarter of the Internal Revenue Service’s workforce (most of these positions are now reportedly being filled by AI agents). Several DOGE staffers have also since ended up practically taking over other federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Social Security Administration.
All that carnage ended up being for practically nothing. A Politico analysis from earlier this year claimed that even though DOGE purported to have saved Americans billions of dollars, only a fraction of that has been realized. Another report, this time by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said that DOGE ended up spending more money than it saved while trying to downsize the government. Musk Watch, a tracker set up by veteran independent journalists, has been able to verify $16.3 billion in federal cuts, significantly less than the $165 billion that DOGE has claimed in the past, and a drop in the bucket compared to DOGE’s original claim that it would eliminate $2 trillion in spending.
The fallout of these catastrophic funding cuts ended up affecting Musk as well. With his newly established government role, Musk’s favorability within the general public plummeted to a new low, and the dissatisfaction proved devastating for Tesla’s profits.
The SpaceX founder ended up catastrophically and very publicly clashing with his buddy Trump as well, though they seem to be friends again after the two were spotted being affectionate at a dinner Trump hosted recently in honor of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
After a short stint heading DOGE, the billionaire officially left his role in May, capping his time with a rather bizarre Oval Office press conference where he showed up with a black eye. Even then, some reports claimed that he was still pulling the strings at the project, and there’s little doubt that people he brought into the government are still operating in other capacities.
Reuters’ reporting was the first official confirmation that DOGE, as an entity, has ceased its operations. But for what it’s worth, Google’s AI Overviews called it months ago. Back in September, some users spotted that AI Overviews would refer to DOGE as “fictional” and based on “political satire or conspiracy theory.” Google was quick to issue a fix, but perhaps the AI was just ahead of its time.
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