Department of Government Efficiency
The Department of Government Efficiency is an initiative by the second Trump administration in the United States. Its stated objective was to modernize information technology, maximize productivity, and cut excess regulations and spending within the federal government. It was first suggested to Donald Trump by Elon Musk in 2024, and was officially established by an executive order on January 20, 2025.
Members of DOGE filled influential roles within several federal agencies, where they obtained administrative access to information systems used in procurement and personnel management, terminated certain government contracts, and facilitated mass layoffs and staff reductions. DOGE personnel also assisted with immigration enforcement. Reports indicated that DOGE accessed and copied data from government databases as part of its operational activities, prompting scrutiny regarding data handling and oversight.
DOGE's status is unclear. Formerly designated as the U.S. Digital Service, USDS abbreviates United States DOGE Service and comprises the United States DOGE Service Temporary Organization, scheduled to end on July 4, 2026. The Supreme Court has exempted it from disclosure, although Musk has said that DOGE is transparent. DOGE's actions have been met with opposition and lawsuits, with some critics warning of a constitutional crisis, and others likening DOGE's actions to a coup. The White House has insisted on the lawfulness of DOGE's activities.
The role Musk had with DOGE is also unclear. The White House asserted he was senior advisor to the president, denied he was making decisions, and named Amy Gleason as acting administrator. Trump insisted that Musk headed DOGE. A federal judge found him to be DOGE’s de facto leader, likely needing Senate confirmation under the Appointments Clause. In May 2025, Musk announced plans to pivot away from DOGE. Musk left Washington on May 30, soon after his offboarding, along with lieutenant Steve Davis, top adviser Katie Miller, and general counsel James Burnham. Trump had maintained his support for Musk until they clashed in June over passage of the Big Beautiful Bill. His administration reiterated its pledge to the DOGE objective, and Russell Vought said DOGE was being institutionalized, a claim that Scott Kupor corroborated in November 2025, when he announced DOGE ceased to exist and the government-wide hiring freeze was over.
DOGE has claimed to have saved hundreds of billions, although other government entities have estimated it to have cost the government $21.7 billion. Another independent analysis estimated that DOGE cuts will cost taxpayers $135 billion; the Internal Revenue Service predicted more than $500 billion in revenue loss due to "DOGE-driven" cuts. Journalists found billions of dollars in miscounting. According to critics, DOGE redefined fraud to target federal employees and programs to build political support; budget experts said DOGE cuts were driven more by political ideology than frugality. Musk, DOGE, and the Trump administration have made multiple claims of having discovered significant fraud, many of which have not held up under scrutiny. According to the estimates of Professor Brooke Nichols, DOGE cuts to foreign aid programs had led to some 300,000 deaths by May 2025, mostly of children. As of January 1, 2026, her counter that estimates the number of deaths exceeds 720,200.
Background
After financially backing Trump and other Republican Party politicians since 2023, Musk became the largest individual donor of the 2024 election cycle. He spent more than US$290 million in campaign contributions. In September 2024, he described deregulation as the only path to his Mars colonization program. In October, he appeared on Trump's stage with an "Occupy Mars" t-shirt.On September 5, 2024, Trump promised to the Economic Club of New York:
At the suggestion of Elon Musk I will create a Government Efficiency Commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms.Javier Milei revealed that, prior to the public declaration, Musk had called Federico Sturzenegger to discuss emulating his ministry's deregulation model in the United States.
In November 2024, The New York Times initially compared the project's stated aims to Theodore Roosevelt's Keep Commission, Ronald Reagan's Grace Commission, and Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government.
Origin
Musk mentioned having proposed a "government efficiency commission" to Trump during an interview in the summer of 2024. Soon after that, he brought it up during a discussion with Trump on Musk's social media platform X. That month, Trump said that he would be open to giving Musk an advisory role. The next day, an X user suggested the name "Department of Government Efficiency" for the new initiative; Musk replied "That is the perfect name", and posted "I am willing to serve" with an AI-created image of him in front of a lectern marked "D.O.G.E." The DOGE acronym refers to an internet meme of a Shiba Inu dog and to Dogecoin, a meme coin that Musk promotes, making "Department of Government Efficiency" a backronym.Days after the election, a small group, including Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Howard Lutnick, and Brad Smith, started meeting at Mar-a-Lago. On November 12, Trump announced that Musk and Ramaswamy would lead DOGE and analogized it to the Manhattan Project. During an interview with Tucker Carlson on the same day, Musk proposed consolidating the 400 federal agencies: "99 is more than enough". Musk and Ramaswamy co-authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal three days later arguing for the need to reduce the size of government.
At a Trump campaign rally in Madison Square Garden in October 2024, Musk said he thought DOGE could reduce federal spending by "at least" $2 trillion, a figure higher than the 2023 discretionary spending budget. At the first cabinet meeting of the second Trump administration in February, Musk remained optimistic that $1 trillion–15% of the budget–could be cut. In April 2025, Musk stated that at that time $150 billion had been cut, but this figure was disputed by fact-checkers, and House DOGE caucus leader Blake Moore said on June 5 that Republican members always knew it was a "massive exaggeration". In October, after the fiscal year had ended, the New York Times reported that budget experts and congressional appropriators still didn't know how much funding had been cut or where those unused funds had gone.
Self-deletion date
On December 2, 2024, Ramaswamy posted that "Most government projects should come with a clear expiry date"; Musk replied that the final step of DOGE was "to delete itself". Trump stated that the entity's work will "conclude" no later than July 4, 2026. This termination will coincide with a "Great American Fair" that Trump has proposed for the 250th anniversary of the United States. Trump called the promised results "the perfect gift to America".Trump's January 20 order on DOGE created and divided DOGE into a permanent part and a temporary part. However, It remains unclear what exactly the temporary part consisted of.
Ramaswamy steps away
After the second inauguration of Trump on January 20, the White House confirmed that Ramaswamy would not join DOGE. The announcement came after reports surfaced about internal friction between Ramaswamy and DOGE staff. A Republican strategist stated that Ramaswamy was wanted out of D.C. after his X post on how Americans "venerated mediocrity over excellence". Sources close to Ramaswamy said that he left DOGE to focus on his upcoming campaign for governor of Ohio.Early claims of fraud
On [|November 12, 2024], Trump announced that DOGE will work with the Office of Management and Budget to address what he called "massive waste and fraud" in government spending. Less than a week into his presidency, Trump dismissed 17 inspectors general, whose job was to audit federal agencies. Some of these inspectors were leading investigations, pending legal action against Elon Musk's companies.Trump said DOGE discovered "billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse". Musk suggested that 20 million people received Social Security past age 100, which he later called "the biggest fraud in history"; that claim rests on a misunderstanding of the database. Karoline Leavitt asserted the day after that the DOGE Subcommittee discovered $2.7 trillion in improper Medicaid and Medicare payments to people overseas. Musk shared the claim on his social. Since then the claim has been refuted. Two judges rebuked the Trump administration a few days later for alleging fraud without evidence.
In his Joint Congressional Address on March 4, 2025, Trump repeated Musk's claim about people of implausible ages receiving social security benefits. In March 2025, Musk suggested that those who criticize DOGE are fraudsters.
Structure
On January 20, 2025, Trump established by executive order the "U.S. Department of Government Efficiency". Specifically, he announced a DOGE structure that consists of: the U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service; the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization, an entity within USDS intended to terminate on July 4, 2026; and DOGE teams that coordinate with other agencies. The new USDS is declared to have "full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems and IT systems" to the "maximum extent consistent with law". Trump later issued many other executive orders that mention DOGE.DOGE teams
The first executive order introduced the concept of a "DOGE team" and called for the implementation of an unspecified DOGE agenda. Such team consists of at least four employees and typically includes a team lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney. Members of DOGE teams, who may be special government employees, are embedded in all federal agencies and are determined by agency heads, in consultation with the USDS administrator.New career appointments at each federal agency are to be made in consultation with the agency's DOGE team lead, who also plays a role in determining whether career appointment vacancies will be filled. The team lead provides the USDS administrator with a monthly hiring report.
Executive order 14222 Sect. 3a tasks DOGE teams with assisting agencies in the elaboration of "a centralized technological system" to record every payment issued by the agency, along with justification by the employee who approved it; this system shall also give agency heads a kill switch to override decisions.