Department of Government Efficiency

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was a second Trump administration initiative in the United States. Despite its name, it was not a federal executive department. President Donald Trump established it by executive order on January 20, 2025, by renaming the United States Digital Service as the United States DOGE Service and creating a temporary organization scheduled to end on July 4, 2026. The idea was first suggested to Trump by Elon Musk in 2024. DOGE's stated objective was to modernize federal information technology, increase productivity, and reduce regulations and spending. DOGE personnel and affiliates were assigned to federal agencies, where they obtained access to information systems, participated in contract cancellations, promoted artificial intelligence tools, and supported workforce reductions and agency restructuring. The status and leadership of DOGE were disputed during 2025. The White House said Musk was a senior presidential adviser rather than a DOGE employee with formal decision-making authority, while Trump publicly described Musk as heading DOGE and a federal judge found that Musk had likely acted as its de facto leader in actions affecting USAID. Musk left Washington at the end of May 2025, and in November 2025 Scott Kupor, director of the United States Office of Personnel Management, told Reuters that DOGE no longer existed as a centralized entity and that many of its functions had been absorbed by OPM and the Office of Management and Budget. DOGE claimed large savings from contract cancellations and other cuts, but journalists and independent analysts found repeated accounting errors and disputed savings claims. Senate Democrats and the Partnership for Public Service separately estimated that DOGE had imposed billions of dollars in costs, and public-health researchers and commentators linked foreign-aid cuts conducted with DOGE assistance to large numbers of preventable deaths. Its actions drew support from Trump administration officials and criticism from Democrats, federal employee unions, watchdog groups, and legal commentators, who challenged its authority, transparency, and handling of personal data.