Trump dissolves DOGE despite eight months left in its charter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency was disbanded with eight months left in his term, ending an initiative launched with fanfare as a symbol of Trump’s promise to reduce the size of government but which critics say generated few measurable savings.

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

It is no longer a “centralized entity,” Kupor added, in the Trump administration’s first public comments on the end of DOGE.

The agency, created in January, made dramatic raids across Washington in the early months of Trump’s second term to rapidly shrink federal agencies, cut their budgets or redirect their work toward Trump’s priorities. Since then, OPM, the federal government’s human resources office, has taken over many of DOGE’s functions, according to Kupor and documents reviewed by Reuters.

At least two prominent DOGE employees are now involved with the National Design Studio, a new body created by an executive order signed by Trump in August. That body is headed by Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, and was ordered by Trump’s order to beautify government websites.

Gebbia was part of billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE team, while DOGE employee Edward Coristine, nicknamed “Big Balls,” encouraged followers of his X account to apply to join.

DOGE’s demise stands in stark contrast to months of government-wide effort to draw attention to it, with Trump, his advisers and Cabinet secretaries posting about it on social media. Musk, who initially ran DOGE, regularly promoted his work on his X platform and at one point brandished a chainsaw to announce his efforts to cut government jobs.

“This is the chainsaw of bureaucracy,” Musk said, holding the tool above his head at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, in February.

DOGE claimed to have cut tens of billions of dollars in expenses, but it was impossible for outside financial experts to verify this because the unit did not provide a detailed public accounting of its work.

“President Trump was given a clear mandate to reduce waste, fraud and abuse across the federal government, and he continues to actively deliver on that commitment,” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in an email to Reuters.

Trump officials have been pointing to the demise of DOGE

Brendan Smialowsky/News via Getty Images

Trump administration officials have not openly said that DOGE no longer exists, even after Musk’s public dispute with Trump in May. Musk has since left Washington.

However, Trump and his team have publicly noted its demise since this summer, despite the US president signing an executive order early in his term decreeing that DOGE would last until July 2026.

In statements to reporters, Trump often speaks about DOGE in the past tense. DOGE Acting Administrator Amy Gleason, whose background is in health technology, formally became an adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy in March, according to a court filing, in addition to her role at DOGE. His public statements have largely focused on his role at HHS.

Meanwhile, Republican-led states, including Idaho and Florida, are creating local entities similar to DOGE.

Kupor said he also ended the government-wide hiring freeze, another hallmark of DOGE.

On his first day in office, Trump banned federal agencies from hiring new employees, with exceptions for positions his team deemed necessary to enforce immigration laws and protect public safety. He later said DOGE representatives must approve any other exceptions, adding that agencies must hire “no more than one employee for every four” who leave.

“There is no longer any target around reductions,” Kupor said.

Former DOGE employees move on to new roles

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DOGE staff have also taken on other roles in the administration. The most notable is Gebbia, who Trump tasked with improving the “visual presentation” of government websites.

So far, his design studio has launched websites to recruit law enforcement officers to patrol Washington, D.C., and advertise the president’s drug pricing program. Gebbia declined an interview with Reuters through a spokesman.

Zachary Terrell, part of the DOGE team that was given access to government health systems in the early days of Trump’s second term, is now chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services. Rachel Riley, who had the same access according to court documents, is now head of the Office of Naval Research, according to the office’s website.

Jeremy Lewin, who helped Musk and the Trump administration dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, now oversees foreign assistance at the State Department, according to the agency’s website.

Shortly after Trump’s election, Musk said he had a mandate to “remove the mountain” of government regulations. He made undoing government regulations and remaking government with AI two key tenets of DOGE, in addition to eliminating federal government jobs.

The administration is still working to cut regulations. The White House budget office has tasked Scott Langmack, who was a DOGE representative at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, with creating custom AI applications to pore over U.S. regulations and determine which ones to eliminate, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Musk, meanwhile, has reappeared in Washington. This week he attended a dinner at the White House for Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.