The US Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by billionaire Elon Musk to slim down the federal government, has shut down eight months before its mandate was officially due to expire. Many of his competencies have been taken over by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Reuters reported.
- DOGE prematurely terminated its activity eight months early.
- The competences of the DOGE passed to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
- The office faced criticism for the unclear results of government slimming.
- Some employees transferred to the new National Design Studio.
- Abolition of DOGE may have negative humanitarian impacts on developing countries.
“It doesn’t exist,” OPM Director Scott Kupor said in November when asked about the current state of DOGE, which was established by US President Donald Trump in January after returning to the White House.
Reducing government spending
In the first months of Trump’s second term, DOGE took dramatic steps to quickly shrink federal agencies, cut their budgets or redirect their operations to align with the current president’s priorities, according to Reuters. However, critics claim that despite promises of this, the apparently defunct office has achieved little in terms of measurable savings.
In the first official statement on the dissolution of the DOGE, Kupor noted that this office is no longer a centralized entity. Many of the tasks he was in charge of were taken over by OPM, according to Reuters, according to statements by the OPM chief and documents reviewed by the agency.
Appointment of new agencies
At least two of DOGE’s staff are now involved in the National Design Studio, which Trump established in August. The agency, headed by Airbnb co-founder and designer Joe Gebbia, is supposed to beautify government websites.
Gebbia was a member of the DOGE team under Musk. He retired from leadership in May, and the following month his close relationship with Trump grew into a dispute, in which the two exchanged several critical messages. The reason was, among other things, disagreements in connection with the tax and spending bill at the time, which Musk strongly opposed.
Unfulfilled DOGE goals
According to Reuters, the dissolution of DOGE is in stark contrast to the government’s months-long effort to draw attention to it. As part of the effort, Trump, his advisers and ministers have written about the office on social media, while Musk has regularly promoted it on his X platform and at one point even brandished a chainsaw to demonstrate.
DOGE was originally created by Trump’s executive order with a mandate set to expire next July. The agency claimed to have cut government spending by tens of billions of dollars since its inception. However, external financial experts pointed out that the office had not provided detailed public accounting of its activities, so they could not verify its claims.
Humanitarian risks
Trump administration officials have not publicly acknowledged that DOGE no longer exists, even after the spat between Musk and Trump. However, the president and his team have been publicly hinting at the decline of the office since this summer – Trump often speaks about DOGE in the past tense, Reuters added.
In addition to domestic changes, DOGE also addressed programs of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which the Trump administration planned to significantly reduce or eliminate. Since then, several of its programs have been transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Experts warned that such moves could weaken humanitarian aid and support to developing countries, including the fight against disease. A study by Boston University even states that the measures could have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
