The Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk–fronted cost‑cutting initiative launched early in Donald Trump’s second term, has effectively lost its centralized structure less than a year after its creation. The Office of Personnel Management director has said the office “doesn’t exist” as a centralized entity, even as he insists DOGE’s principles continue to guide the administration’s push for deregulation and workforce cuts.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), created by executive order shortly after Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, has effectively been stripped of its central office roughly 10 months into its work, with many of its functions absorbed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
OPM Director Scott Kupor told Reuters this month that DOGE “doesn’t exist” and is no longer a “centralized entity,” comments that have been widely interpreted as confirmation that the initiative has been disbanded ahead of its scheduled July 4, 2026 end date.
Kupor later appeared to push back on that framing in a post on X, saying that while DOGE "may not have centralized leadership" under the U.S. Digital Service, its goals "remain alive and well" in the Trump administration’s agenda of deregulation, shrinking the federal workforce and prioritizing efficiency. His post suggested that agencies, along with OPM and the White House budget office, are expected to "institutionalize" the cost‑cutting and workforce‑reduction efforts that DOGE helped catalyze.
DOGE was launched after Trump’s 2024 election victory as a sweeping cost‑cutting drive led by Elon Musk, who was appointed as a special government employee to oversee the effort for a limited term. Musk and his team quickly moved to cut grants, fire federal workers, cancel or renegotiate contracts and push agencies to slash what they deemed wasteful spending.
Musk initially spoke of cutting as much as $2 trillion from federal spending, a target he later reduced to about $1 trillion, according to multiple accounts of his early promises. Despite those ambitions, DOGE has fallen far short of such figures. Its website has claimed more than $200 billion in savings through a mix of contract terminations, grant cancellations, asset sales and other changes, but outside analyses have repeatedly found that DOGE overstated its financial impact and miscounted savings. Some watchdogs and lawmakers have argued that the initiative may ultimately cost taxpayers money once broader economic effects and foregone revenue are taken into account.
The Slate article and other reporting describe cases in which DOGE claimed savings that far exceeded the value of the underlying contracts, and note that independent reviewers, including outlets such as Politico and Newsweek, have challenged DOGE’s accounting.
One of DOGE’s most far‑reaching moves came in the foreign‑aid arena. The initiative was closely tied to deep cuts that effectively shut down or drastically curtailed the work of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other aid programs in mid‑2025. USAID and global‑health experts credit U.S. foreign‑assistance programs with saving tens of millions of lives over two decades through vaccinations, malaria prevention and HIV/AIDS treatment.
Internal analyses and academic modeling have attempted to quantify the human toll of the abrupt pullback. A review by Boston University epidemiologist and infectious‑disease modeler Brooke Nichols, cited by TIME and other outlets, estimates that more than 600,000 people have already died as a result of DOGE‑linked aid cuts, with children making up a large share of the victims.
DOGE’s rapid push to shrink the federal workforce has also proved controversial. The initiative was a driving force behind large‑scale layoffs and buyouts across the government. According to OPM figures cited in recent coverage, roughly 317,000 employees left the federal workforce in 2025, compared with about 68,000 new hires, as agencies pursued Trump’s goal of multiple departures for every new hire.
Civil‑service unions and legal experts have challenged portions of DOGE’s approach, and courts have weighed in on some aspects of the administration’s personnel policies. However, the Slate article does not document a sweeping federal court ruling that specifically declared “tens of thousands” of DOGE‑related firings illegal, nor does it describe a blanket order regarding rehiring; such claims could not be independently verified and have therefore been omitted.
The Slate piece and other reports document widespread disruption in domestic programs, including at the Social Security Administration, where DOGE‑driven efforts to rapidly overhaul decades‑old software raised alarms among experts about the risk of system failures and benefit delays. Critics say the initiative’s aggressive timeline for migrating massive codebases and cutting staff threatened the stability of core federal services.
USAID’s effective shutdown and other aid cuts also reverberated overseas. Global‑health initiatives funded in part through U.S. programs—including efforts aligned with campaigns such as PEPFAR’s HIV/AIDS work—faced sudden funding gaps, according to aid groups and researchers who spoke to outside outlets. While DOGE was not solely responsible for every decision on foreign assistance, its mandate to slash spending and its influence over agency budgets made it a central player in those reductions.
Some of the most unsettling allegations concern data access and security. Reporting cited by Slate describes DOGE staffers being embedded in agencies with broad access to sensitive information, including financial and health records, as they sought to identify costs to cut and systems to modernize. In at least some cases, monitoring tools and audit trails were reportedly weakened or removed, prompting concern among privacy advocates and cybersecurity experts about potential misuse of government data.
The Slate article also chronicles the unconventional culture inside DOGE’s ranks, including the presence of very young software engineers placed in highly sensitive roles and internal nicknames that became lore in Washington. However, some specific, colorful anecdotes circulating online—such as a 19‑year‑old staffer known as “Big Balls” personally canceling payments to Ukraine and other countries, or sparking a National Guard deployment after an assault near Dupont Circle—do not appear in the Slate account or other major news reports reviewed for this article. Because these incidents could not be corroborated in independent coverage, they have been excluded here.
Similarly, while there is extensive reporting on DOGE’s role in downsizing parts of the foreign‑aid apparatus, major outlets do not describe a formal, permanent legal dissolution of USAID as an agency via DOGE. Coverage instead characterizes USAID as having been effectively shuttered or rendered nonfunctional by sweeping budget and staffing cuts. This article reflects that more cautious characterization rather than asserting that DOGE legally dissolved USAID.
As of late November 2025, DOGE’s central office has effectively been wound down, with many of its staff reassigned elsewhere in the federal government. Yet the policies and priorities it advanced—steep spending cuts, rapid restructuring of agencies and an expansive drive for “efficiency”—continue to shape Trump administration decisions, even as officials debate how to measure the true costs and benefits of Musk’s short‑lived experiment in remaking the federal bureaucracy.
