Fate of DOGE revealed: What happened to Musk’s cost-cutting effort?

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate, according to Reuters.

“That doesn’t exist,” Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about DOGE’s status.

Kupor went on to say that DOGE is no longer a “centralized entity,” according to Reuters. The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources office, has now taken over many of DOGE’s functions.

DOGE was originally intended to operate until July 2026.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, launched DOGE as a cost-cutting initiative after President Donald Trump began his second term in January. Musk was a major supporter of Trump and a significant donor to his 2024 presidential campaign.

Musk and DOGE moved quickly to cut certain agencies with little input from Congress. He boasted on X at one point that he and DOGE spent a weekend feeding the United States Agency for International Development to the “wood chipper.”

Many of Musk’s moves drew criticism and court challenges.

Musk and Trump later had a falling out over a massive domestic policy bill Trump and Republicans pushed through Congress earlier this year. Musk was critical of the bill’s impact on the federal deficit.

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, according to Reuters.

Many of the DOGE’s key players have since moved into other roles across government, according to The Guardian.