US President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate, ending an initiative launched with fanfare as a symbol of Trump’s pledge to slash the government’s size, but which critics say delivered few measurable savings.
“That doesn’t exist,” US Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor said earlier this month when asked about DOGE’s status.
It is no longer a “centralized entity,” Kupor added, in the first public comments from the Trump administration on the end of DOGE.
Photo: Reuters
The agency, set up in January, made dramatic forays across Washington in the early months of Trump’s second term to rapidly shrink federal agencies, cut their budgets or redirect their work to Trump priorities.
The US Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources office, has since taken over many of DOGE’s functions, Kupor said.
At least two prominent DOGE employees are now involved with the National Design Studio, a new body created through an executive order signed by Trump in August. That body is headed by Joe Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb, and Trump’s order directed him to beautify government Web sites.
Gebbia was part of billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE team, while DOGE employee Edward Coristine, nicknamed “Big Balls,” encouraged his social media followers to apply to join.
The fading away of DOGE is in sharp contrast to the government-wide effort over months to draw attention to it, with Trump, his advisers and Cabinet secretaries posting about it on social media. Musk, who led DOGE initially, regularly touted its work on social media and at one point brandished a chainsaw to advertise his efforts to cut government jobs.
“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” Musk said, holding the tool above his head at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, in February.
DOGE claimed to have slashed tens of billions of dollars in expenditures, but it was impossible for outside financial experts to verify that because the unit did not provide detailed public accounting of its work.
“President Trump was given a clear mandate to reduce waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government, and he continues to actively deliver on that commitment,” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in an e-mail.
Trump administration officials have not openly said that DOGE no longer exists, even after Musk’s public feud with Trump in May. Musk has since left Washington.
Trump and his team have nevertheless signaled its demise in public since this summer, even though the US president signed an executive order earlier in his term decreeing that DOGE would last through July next year. In statements to reporters, Trump often talks about DOGE in the past tense.
Acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason, whose background is in healthcare technology, formally became an adviser to US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy in March, according to a court filing, in addition to her role with DOGE. Her public statements have largely focused on her Health and Human Services role.
Republican-led states, including Idaho and Florida, are creating local entities similar to DOGE.
A government-wide hiring freeze — another hallmark of DOGE — is also over, Kupor said.
Trump on his first day in office barred federal agencies from bringing in new employees, with exceptions for positions his team deemed necessary to enforce immigration laws and protect public safety. He later said DOGE representatives must approve any other exceptions, adding that agencies should hire “no more than one employee for every four” that depart.
“There is no target around reductions” anymore, Kupor said.
DOGE staff have also taken on other roles in the administration. As well as Gebbia, Zachary Terrell, part of the DOGE team given access to government health systems in the early days of Trump’s second term, is now chief technology officer at the US Department of Health and Human Services. Rachel Riley, who had the same access according to court filings, is now chief of the US Office of Naval Research, according to the office’s Web site.
Jeremy Lewin, who helped Musk and the Trump administration dismantle the US Agency for International Development, now oversees foreign assistance at the US Department of State, according to the agency’s Web site.
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