The Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, has had its central office shut down while the teams embedded inside federal agencies keep working, White House officials say. The move has stirred headlines and confusion, with administration spokespeople defending the program’s principles and opponents calling foul. This piece lays out what happened, who was involved, the savings being claimed, and why the fight over reforms is still loud and ugly.
The White House pushed back quickly, saying DOGE’s mission remains a priority even if its centralized office no longer exists. “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 told Fox News Digital Monday when asked about DOGE’s current status. Agency-level DOGE teams, the administration says, continue to hunt down waste and cut bureaucratic red tape.
Reports surfaced that the program no longer existed after a senior official told a news outlet, “That doesn’t exist.” The administration responded on X with a longer defense, insisting the reforms are ongoing and that headlines missed the nuance. “The truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under @USDS. But, the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: de-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first class citizen; etc. DOGE catalyzed these changes; the agencies along with @USOPM and @WHOMB will institutionalize them!” he posted.
The central office’s closure has not changed the fact that the program was born out of an executive order meant to remake how government buys, manages and audits. The order renamed the old digital service and directed agency chiefs to stand up their own teams to dig into contracts, grants and programs for waste. Trump framed DOGE as a core part of his effort to slim government and make efficiency a priority rather than an afterthought.
Elon Musk was the high-profile public face of DOGE for months and then left the role in May after clashing with the administration over spending cuts. Musk blasted the budget action as “outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” while President Trump argued the measure reflected necessary tradeoffs on mandates and policy. Musk served as a special government employee limited to 130 days, and he was not a formal staffer reporting to the acting administrator.
Resistance has been fierce from the left and from some federal workers who feared purges and wholesale restructuring. Democrats and federal employees have railed against DOGE since its inception, and subsequent investigations and mass terminations at various agencies got underway, including staging protests outside federal buildings in Washington, D.C., and specifically protesting Musk for his involvement with DOGE. Those protests kept the controversy in the headlines even as agency teams kept chipping away at contracts and programs.
The administration points to large headline numbers to defend the push, saying substantial savings have already been squeezed out of the system. DOGE’s website touts, as of Monday morning, that it has saved $214 billion via “asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.” The program claims that translates to $1,329.19 in savings per taxpayer, numbers the White House leans on to demonstrate tangible results.
The campaign wrapped DOGE in promises to cut waste, and allies like Musk used the campaign trail to rail against wasteful regulation strangling private innovation. “SpaceX had to do this study to see if Starship would hit a shark,” Musk said from the campaign trail of how the government became involved in a SpaceX, studying whether a Starship rocket would hit a whale or shark upon landing. “And I’m like… it’s a big ocean. There are a lot of sharks. It’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely. So we said, ‘Fine, we’ll do the analysis. Can you give us the shark data?'”
Trump repeatedly used DOGE as evidence of a new approach to oversight, calling out what he labeled absurd spending. “Forty-five million dollars for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma,” Trump said as he provided examples of federal waste March 4 after thanking Musk and DOGE for its work. “Forty million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. Eight million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of. Sixty million dollars for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America. Sixty million. Eight million for making mice transgender.”
