The Department of Government Effectiveness (Doge) appears to have been disbanded with eight months left on its contract, ending a protracted campaign of invading federal agencies and laying off thousands of federal employees.
“There is no such thing,” said Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor. Reuters earlier this month, when asked about Doge's status, he added that it was no longer a “centralized organization.”
The statement confirmed long-standing suspicions that the Doge, created According to the order that Donald Trump signed on his first day in office, it was already coming to an end. technology Billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy were tapped to lead the effort and were expected to enact “major structural reform” by July 24, 2026.
“We're really trying to be as transparent as possible,” Musk said about the agency back in February, ignoring the fact that Doge agents in many cases refused to identify themselves, cut agency expenses, often without consulting the agencies, and failed to provide transparent public reporting of their work. “I don’t know of any instance where an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization.”
Suspicions that Doge may have disbanded began to surface earlier this summer after Politico reported In June, employees “collected clothes and bedding” at the department’s headquarters, where they had been sleeping since February, and looked for new housing.
The relocation follows an explosive online feud between Trump and Musk, with many former employees reportedly beginning to worry that their role in slashing government programs and eliminating jobs could lead to criminal consequences. TO Maybemore than 200,000 federal employees were laid off, and approximately 75,000 accepted buyouts. The organization said these cuts saved costs amounted to billions of dollars, but experts were unable to confirm these claims due to a lack of public reporting.
“Now, if someone from Doge or a Doge representative asked me to do something, I wouldn’t just do it blindly,” said a former Doge official who now reports to a federal agency. Politician back in June.
Although Trump administration officials have not publicly commented on the fact that Doge is reportedly no longer in existence, documents Data released to Reuters showed that OPM, the federal government's human resources division, has since taken over many of the department's former responsibilities. Trump is also known to have spoken of Doge in the past tense, and Musk, who officially left Washington in May, has further fueled speculation.
Many of the agency's key players have since moved on to other government positions. Amy Gleason, the acting administrator, became an adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. in March. Zachary Terrell, another senior member of the team, is now the Department of Health's chief technology officer, and Rachel Riley has taken over as director of the Office of Naval Research. Reuters.
The most notable of these departures was Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, who has since been tasked by Trump with sprucing up government websites.
Since becoming doge, Gebbia has refocused his efforts, launching websites to recruit law enforcement officers to patrol Washington and to advertise the president's sweeping drug pricing program.
