Less than a year after Elon Musk took to the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, brandishing a gleaming chainsaw to unveil his Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) cost-cutting campaign, the most significant reduction has been the agency’s dissolution itself.
Reuters reported Sunday that Donald Trump’s DOGE was dissolved eight months ahead of schedule.
“It no longer exists,” Scott Kobor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, told Reuters when asked about DOGE. “There is no specific target for staff reductions.”
The early months of Trump’s second term were dominated by DOGE, the Musk-led agency tasked with drastically reducing federal staff and government spending. But the failing agency appears to have done little more than create chaos.
The tens of thousands of federal employees laid off under Musk’s leadership were offered jobs last September after what amounted to months of paid leave. Reports indicate that millions of dollars in interest and fees were lost due to the freezing of government projects, and that some underqualified employees at the Atomic Energy Agency were earning hundreds of thousands of dollars.
According to a Wall Street Journal article published last month, the Tesla billionaire oversaw a $220 billion increase in federal spending during the current fiscal year, excluding interest.
In addition, the agency wasted approximately $21.7 billion within the federal government during the first half of the year, according to a July report by minority staff members of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Elon Musk left the Atomic Energy Agency four months after its creation, following the expiration of his special government employee status at the end of May. Shortly after, Trump’s “magnificent” bill highlighted deep political differences between the two men, leading to personal attacks. The situation reached a breaking point when Trump threatened to cancel government contracts with the SpaceX founder, to which Musk retorted by claiming Trump’s name appeared in the Epstein files.
Vice President J.D. Vance and White House Chief of Staff Suzy Wilms are reportedly trying to ease tensions between the president and the world’s richest man.
Many DOGE employees are also getting a second chance. While Trump has spoken of the agency in the past tense, several of its top officials have been quietly reassigned to other federal agencies.
Reuters reported that the agency’s director, Amy Gleason, became an advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy in March. Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, now heads the new National Design Studio created by Trump, tasked with “beautifying” government websites.
It’s worth noting that Edward “Big Balls” Korsten, the infamous 19-year-old DOGE employee, left the agency this summer to join the Social Security Administration.
In a statement to Reuters, White House Press Secretary Liz Hewson wrote: “President Trump has a clear mandate to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government, and he continues to actively fulfill that commitment.”
