❓WHAT HAPPENED: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been dissolved ahead of schedule, achieving only a fraction of its original savings targets.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: DOGE, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Elon Musk, and the Trump administration.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Dissolution announced in November 2025, eight months before the end of its planned 18-month agenda.
💬KEY QUOTE: “DOGE doesn’t exist and will no longer function as a centralized entity.” – Scott Kupor, OPM Director.
🎯IMPACT: Despite reported savings of $214 billion, inflated figures and operational disruptions have left the net impact of DOGE’s efforts in question.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been dissolved eight months ahead of its planned 18-month agenda. On Sunday, Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), was quoted as saying DOGE “doesn’t exist” anymore and will no longer operate as a “centralized entity.” However, Kupor subsequently clarified his remarks, emphasizing that the agency’s mission is being taken up by OPM and its efforts decentralized across the federal government.
“The truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under U.S. DOGE Service. 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,” Kupor wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter). He added: “DOGE catalyzed these changes; the agencies along with U.S. Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget will institutionalize them!”
DOGE was originally established to maximize productivity, reduce wasteful spending, and eliminate fraud in federal outlays. Over its 10-month existence, the department reported terminating 13,440 contracts, 15,887 grants, and 264 leases. However, these figures were often inflated, with one notable instance involving the misrepresentation of an $8 million contract as an $8 billion contract.
Tech industry billionaire, Elon Musk—who served as the frontman for DOGE—initially predicted the department could save $2 trillion, but later revised this estimate to $1 trillion. By November 2025, DOGE claimed $214 billion in savings, equivalent to $1,329.19 per taxpayer. However, independent analyses found that DOGE had overstated its savings by as much as 97 percent in some cases. An analysis published in August could only verify $32.7 billion of the $52.8 billion in federal contracts that the Musk-led effort claims to have cut, and found that the actual government savings were closer to a comparatively paltry $1.4 billion.
The National Pulse reported in July that DOGE’s supposed drastic cuts to the federal workforce only amounted to about one percent of government employees, a far cry from what Musk had promised in October 2024. Musk left DOGE at the end of May, citing a rule limiting special government employees to 130 days of service. Earlier that month, Musk admitted that DOGE didn’t live up to his ambitions, stating, “I think we’ve been effective, not as effective as I’d like.”
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