President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting commission that once plunged the government into chaos is nearing its destiny — becoming a former federal initiative.
Up for debate: how and when the end will truly come for the Department of Government Efficiency, which triggered thousands of federal employees to leave their jobs and voided billions of dollars in government contracts.
Trump’s January 2025 executive order creating DOGE also established a July 4, 2026, sunset. “A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift” to America on its semiquincentennial birthday, the president said when he announced the commission.
But DOGE didn’t really deliver on that promise, said Elizabeth Linos, a Harvard Kennedy School public policy and management professor, as did others who spoke to POLITICO about DOGE’s dramatic efforts over the past 18 months. Instead, it resulted in a near-immediate loss of expertise and live-saving programs but cost savings nowhere near the $2 trillion once promised.
Looking long term, Linos said that “effectively, DOGE told the American people that they can’t trust government to protect their data, to use their data and technology for good.”
“That has really long-lasting effects on our ability to rebuild trust in government or even convince the next generation of talent to enter government to begin with,” she said.
DOGE claims it saved $215 billion, or $1,335.40 per taxpayer, with its cuts, which included slashing duplicative software licenses, canceling diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, grants as well as ending leases for underused office space. That’s a pittance to the federal budget, which is now about $7 trillion each year. The effort faded relatively early too as tech mogul Elon Musk clashed with government officials and left DOGE in May last year.
What comes next is not clear.
“President Trump was given a clear mandate to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from the federal government,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle. “He has made significant progress in making the federal government more efficient to better serve the American taxpayer.”
The White House didn’t address questions about whether DOGE will officially fold, as foretold in Trump’s order, or if it has already.
And no final DOGE review is incoming, according to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought — known as the man who wished to put federal employees “in trauma.”
“We have no plans to do kind of a closing DOGE report,” Vought said at a hearing Tuesday. “We’re always happy to give you our assessment of that work. I think it made some really important strides.”
The White House budget proposal released in April sought $35 million for the U.S. DOGE Service. However, at that same hearing, Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio) noticed in the request “that DOGE was pretty much eliminated.”
On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed the executive order setting up DOGE, renaming the U.S. Digital Service, an Obama-era office, as the U.S. DOGE Service. “The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall terminate on July 4, 2026,” the order said.
The president designated Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as DOGE’s co-leaders.
Having an end date was billed as a major selling point. “The final step of @DOGE is to delete itself,” Musk said on the social media site X.
Ramaswamy, however, decamped almost immediately and is now running for governor of Ohio. Other signs indicate everyone else has moved on too.
DOGE’s X account, which has almost 5 million followers, has largely been dormant in recent months, although it sprung back to life last week to defend cuts to USAID after Democrats said its elimination caused deaths around the world.
DOGE’s webpage listing its cost savings hasn’t been updated since Jan. 1.
And U.S. DOGE Service acting Administrator Amy Gleason has a new job, leading a health technology office at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Healthcare Dive reported last month.
Linos said different agencies have lost capacity after being DOGE’d last year, which has not led to better outcomes for the public.
“If anything, wait times are going up, and people are not getting the level of safety that they would expect from their government,” she said. “My sense is that we won’t see an obvious DOGE 2.0 emerging in July.”
‘Deferred resignation’ and deregulation
Over the first weeks of his second term, Trump issued a flurry of orders empowering DOGE, from downsizing the federal workforce to slashing regulations as well as tossing contracts, grants and leases.
It was a bewildering time. Career employees didn’t know who was in charge at their agencies: Trump political appointees or DOGE aides, some so young they didn’t have college degrees yet.
One Department of the Interior employee said then, “This feels like a coup.”
Musk led the charge to cull the federal workforce.
In January 2025, more than 2 million government workers received an email saying they could go on paid administrative leave then if they chose to leave public service later in the year. Musk sent a similar “Fork in the Road” message to Twitter staffers when he took over the social media company in 2022.
Close to 140,000 federal employees opted into the “deferred resignation” program, according to data from May compiled by the Office of Personnel Management.
Ron Sanders, a former OPM associate director and retired member of the Senior Executive Service, compared DOGE to past government reform commissions. He said DOGE was a little different since it harnessed the energy of Musk and his team.
But: “The end result was largely the same,” Sanders said. “That is, in theory at least, a more efficient federal government, translate that to mean fewer civil servants.”
Previous reform efforts tried to improve the work of government, said Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.
“This one did not — it focused solely on cutting,” Kettl said. “That was in the Musk tradition of ravaging an organization and then rebuilding as necessary. The rebuilding process, however, has proven awkward and trouble-filled.”
Federal worker unions clashed with DOGE as Musk and his team targeted their members. National Treasury Employees Union President Doreen Greenwald said cuts championed by the group weakened agencies and drove out staff.
“DOGE never proved its claims of savings or widespread waste, fraud, or abuse,” Greenwald said in a statement. “It only caused chaos, disrupted lives, and made government work worse for the people it serves.”
At its heyday during the first months of Trump’s second term, Musk and his DOGE team were praised by administration officials. “Loving the exceptional partnership @EPA has had with @ElonMusk and the entire @DOGE team,” Administrator Lee Zeldin said on social media as they pursued “every efficiency possible as we end wasteful spending and practices.”
DOGE was tasked with reducing federal rules as well. The White House has claimed victory, touting 129 regulations cut for every new rule issued.
Yet administration allies have questioned those results.
“Trump’s regulatory streamlining has not actually translated into governing less,” the Competitive Enterprise Institute said in its annual review of federal rules. DOGE revealed “the limits of one-off reform efforts,” said Wayne Crews, a fellow in regulatory studies at the free market think tank.
“Much of the administrative state is protected by statutes, civil service rules, litigation, congressional interests and entrenched constituencies,” Crews said. “Lasting reform requires changing those underlying institutions rather than relying on temporary management initiatives.”
Meanwhile, political leaders at federal agencies scrapped with DOGE officials for control.
An addendum to the assignment agreement between DOGE and EPA stressed that DOGE employees report to the EPA administrator. That was the original intention of both parties but “for the avoidance of doubt,” they agreed to those supplemental terms, according to the document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
That agreement ran from Jan. 20 last year to July 4, 2026, with an option to extend “through a signed addendum.”
EPA’s press office acknowledged questions about the agency’s agreement with DOGE but didn’t provide a response.
In December, Musk said DOGE was “a little bit successful” on the Katie Miller Podcast. But he wouldn’t do it again.
“Instead of doing DOGE, I would have … worked at my companies, essentially, and they wouldn’t have been burning the cars,” Musk said, referring to protesters trashing Tesla vehicles.
Sanders said DOGE and federal workers had to work together if the commission was to succeed, saying “it takes two to tango.”
“It takes a DOGE-like outsider’s perspective to ask some hard questions,” Sanders said. “It takes insider knowledge, coming mainly from career civil servants, to respond to those questions and to have the courage to identify real fat.”
Alive in spirit
Trump officials have stressed that the spirit of DOGE is embedded in the administration.
In November, OPM Director Scott Kupor told Reuters DOGE “doesn’t exist” but clarified on X it “may not have centralized leadership” but “the principles of DOGE remain alive and well.”
DOGE officials have left the agencies they once consulted, like at EPA and the Interior Department.
Musk departed last year — with an awkward Oval Office press conference and a literal black eye — when his 130 days as a special government employee were up.
Yet a number of DOGE veterans remain in the federal government.
Several prominent DOGE figures ended up at the National Design Studio, another temporary organization established under a separate Trump order. Reporting to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, its mission is to redesign government websites and digital services.
That includes Joe Gebbia, the billionaire co-founder of Airbnb, who serves as its chief design officer. Gebbia is a Musk friend — the National Design Studio webpage features a photo of them together. Neither responded to a request for comment.
Another former DOGE official now at NDS is Zachary Terrell, who garnered attention for cutting National Science Foundation grants last year.
It also includes Edward Coristine, the former DOGE official known as “Big Balls.”
“This is definitely the only place in government where people work seven days a week, consuming Red Bulls,” Coristine said on the TBPN podcast this week.
Meanwhile, Gleason said at an industry conference last month that the U.S. DOGE Service is “largely continuing that same mission” of its forerunner, the U.S. Digital Service, the Federal News Network reported. She didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Recruiting highly skilled tech workers is a top priority for the Trump administration as the global race for artificial intelligence takes off.
USDS appears here to stay. Its website encourages talent to apply. House appropriators, in a bill report, directed “the Administrator of DOGE” to submit quarterly reports on its hires, detailees and transfers to other agencies.
“I think there’s an acknowledgment by this USDS that agency technology is woefully outdated and needs to be modernized,” said Jenny Mattingley, vice president for public policy and stakeholder engagement at the Partnership for Public Service. “To that extent, if that’s something they can do, that’s a helpful legacy to have.”
Nevertheless, Kettl said it’s clear that no future president will replicate DOGE’s slash-and-burn style.
“Republicans will try to find different ways of streamlining government. Democrats will try to find alternative roads to improve performance,” he said. “But no one will go down the DOGE road again.”
Contact Kevin Bogardus on the encrypted messaging app Signal at KevinBogardus.89 and Scott Waldman at Waldman.04.
