DOGE quietly disbands after delivering fraction of promised savings

President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has disbanded with eight months remaining on its mandate, ending a high-profile initiative that promised to slash trillions in federal spending but delivered only a fraction of its targets.

A premature end: In the first public acknowledgment of DOGE’s demise, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month that the department “doesn’t exist” and that it no longer operates as a “centralized entity.” Trump’s executive order had set a July 2026 deadline for DOGE, but the president began discussing it in the past tense over the summer, foreshadowing its quiet end. The Office of Personnel Management has since absorbed many of DOGE’s functions, while former employees have moved to other roles across the administration. The government-wide hiring freeze, another DOGE hallmark, has also ended, with Kupor stating “there is no target around reductions” anymore.

What it actually did: Over its 10-month lifespan, DOGE oversaw the departure of roughly 317,000 federal employees while the government hired around 68,000 new workers and canceled 13,440 contracts, 15,887 grants and 264 leases. The initiative, which was spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk and initially entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, placed staff in federal agencies as special government employees with 130-day work limits. However, the department functioned opaquely, and its leadership remained unclear until Amy Gleason was identified as acting administrator over a month after its January launch. Musk himself left Washington following a public dispute with Trump in May. By June, software developer Sahil Lavingia, who spent 55 days at Veterans Affairs, challenged DOGE’s core premise, telling NPR the federal government was not “rife with waste, fraud and abuse” and that abuse appeared “relatively nonexistent.”

Why this matters: DOGE’s collapse highlights the gap between bold promises and actual results. Musk initially pledged to cut “at least $2 trillion,” later lowering that to $1 trillion, but DOGE claimed just $214 billion in savings. A CBS analysis found DOGE inflated savings by as much as 97%, once claiming an $8 billion cut to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contract actually worth $8 million. Moreover, the Partnership for Public Service calculated that DOGE cost taxpayers around $135 billion in its first 100 days through lost productivity and workforce churn. For Asian American communities reliant on federal services, this demonstrates how reform initiatives can prioritize spectacle over substance, causing disruption without delivering meaningful savings.