Jose Luis Magana, Associated Press Elon Musk flashes his T-shirt that reads “DOGE” to the media as he walks on South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, March 9, 2025. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which spearheaded job and funding cuts throughout the federal government, shut down operations on July 4.
The department wrote Saturday on X,“‘Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing,’” quoting former President Teddy Roosevelt.
“While the formal mission of DOGE has come to an end, the mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse will continue,” DOGE added. “Good stewardship of taxpayer dollars and accountable government are not temporary initiatives. We hope those principles endure long into America’s next 250 years.”
Under an executive order President Trump signed on his first day back in office, DOGE was set to expire on America’s semiquincentennial. Trump’s order renamed the U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service and directed the heads of every federal agency to “ensure” officials from the new department had “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”
While Amy Gleason served as the acting Administrator of DOGE from February 2025 until Saturday, Elon Musk oversaw the department’s work during the early months of the second Trump administration. Gleason is now the chief product officer at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Musk, who donated hundreds of millions to the president’s 2024 presidential campaign, reported directly to Trump during his 130-day stint as a special government employee. After leaving the administration, Musk and Trump feuded over the former’s opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the latter ended up signing into law in July 2025.
During Musk’s time overseeing DOGE, shares of his company Tesla dipped considerably. Multiple individuals also burned Tesla vehicles.
As of October, DOGE estimated it saved $214 billion through asset sales, contract, grant and lease cancellations, fraud and improper payment deletion, savings on interest, programs and regulations and workforce reductions. That amounted to $1,329 saved per each of the roughly 161 million taxpayers in the U.S., and reduced the national debt by 0.54 percent, according to a site tracking the national debt.
But the initiative did not come without a cost to taxpayers. In December, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a nonprofit, claimed the Trump administration cost taxpayers an estimated $10 billion in 2025 through its deferred resignation program (DRP).
“Ironically, this unreasonably costly mass idling of civil servants was done in the name of ‘government efficiency,’” PEER executive director Timothy White wrote to Shirley Jones, the managing associate general counsel at the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
For fiscal 2027, the administration also requested $35 million from Congress in “reimbursable program activity” for DOGE. The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment on its cost-cutting efforts in the absence of DOGE.
Since Trump’s first day back in office, the number of federal employees has declined by more than 272,000 thanks to a monthslong hiring freeze, early retirement offerings and reductions in force, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Nearly 140,000 employees agreed to leave the federal government through the DRP, which allowed employees to receive full pay and benefits until they left the force by Sept. 30, 2025, OPM noted.
The departments of Defense, Treasury, Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Interior saw the highest number of departures under the program, with more than 48,000 Pentagon employees departing and more than 23,000 Treasury employees leaving.
The federal government, though, rehired hundreds of employees in the fall who were laid off due to DOGE. Other employees, meanwhile, maintained their jobs thanks to litigation.
In its early weeks, DOGE targeted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), housed under the Treasury Department. It also sought individual tax return information of American households and businesses from the IRS, raising privacy concerns.
Musk, his advisers Steve Davis and Katie Miller — the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — and DOGE general counsel James Burnham departed the federal government in May 2025.
However, a number of former DOGE employees remain scattered throughout the administration. Gavin Kilger and Sam Corcos serve as the chief data officer at the Pentagon and the chief information officer at Treasury, respectively.
Edward Coristine, the programmer known as “Big Balls” who was assaulted in an attempted carjacking last August in Washington, D.C., works at the National Design Studio (NDS).
Joe Gebbia, who was involved with DOGE, is overseeing the NDS, which Trump tasked last year with improving federal agency websites.
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