Statement by Trump administration confirms longstanding suspicions that Musk-led agency is on its way out

The “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has apparently been dissolved with eight months still remaining on its contract, ending a drawn-out campaign of invading federal agencies and firing thousands of federal workers.

“That doesn’t exist,” office of personnel management (OPM) director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about Doge’s status, adding that it was no longer a “centralized entity”.

The statement confirmed longstanding suspicions that Doge, created by an executive order that Donald Trump signed on his first day, was on its way out. The tech billionaire Elon Musk and the former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy were tapped to lead the effort and were expected to drive “large scale structural reform” through 24 July 2026.

“We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible,” Musk said about the department back in February, ignoring the fact that Doge agents refused to identify themselves in many cases, slashed agency spending often without consulting with the agencies, and did not transparently provide a public accounting of its work. “I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization.”

Suspicions that Doge may have been disbanded began to surface earlier this summer, after Politico reported in June that staffers had “packed up their clothes and bedding” at the department’s headquarters, where they had been sleeping since February, and looked for new homes.

The rehousing followed the explosive online feud between Trump and Musk, and many former employees reportedly grew worried that their role in slashing government programs and eliminating jobs could carry criminal repercussions. By May, more than 200,000 federal workers had been laid off and roughly 75,000 had accepted buyouts. The organization said these cuts saved billions of dollars in expenditure, but it was impossible for experts to authenticate these claims because of the lack of public accounting.

“Now, if somebody from Doge, or representing themselves from Doge, asked me to do something, I wouldn’t just blindly do it,” a former Doge official who now reports to a federal agency told Politico back in June.

While Trump administration officials have not publicly commented on the fact Doge reportedly no longer exists, documents revealed by Reuters showed that the OPM, the federal government’s human resources office, have since taken over many of the department’s former responsibilities. Trump has also been known to speak about Doge in the past tense and Musk officially leaving Washington in May further heightened speculations.

Many of the agency’s key players have since moved into other roles across government. Amy Gleason, the acting administrator, became an adviser to the health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, in March. Zachary Terrell, another senior member of the team, is now chief technology officer at the Department of Health, while Rachel Riley has taken up the post of chief of the Office of Naval Research, according to Reuters.

The most prominent of these departures was Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, who has since been instructed by Trump to beautify government websites.

So far, since his Doge work, Gebbia has redirected his efforts, launching websites to recruit law enforcement officers to patrol Washington DC and advertise the president’s extensive drug pricing program.