The illegal Department of Government efficiency, which dropped below the radar when King Don and Jester Elon fell out last spring, has been dissolved early:
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,” the 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.
…Suspicions that Doge may have been disbanded began to surface earlier this summer. Politico recently reported that in June, 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 [Olivia Empson, “‘That Doesn’t Exist’: Doge Reportedly Quietly Disbanded Ahead of Schedule,” The Guardian, 2025.11.23].
Don’t take that early termination as a sign that this illegal usurpation of Congressional appropriations power itself operated with some remarkable efficiency. This pretend department, like most of Donald Trump’s other projects, did the opposite of its claimed purpose. The administration claims Musk’s hackery saved $214 billion, but the federal government spent $7.010 trillion in Fiscal Year 2025, $275 billion more than in FY 2024. The deficit for FY 2025 was $1.775 trillion, $42 billion less than in FY 2024, but only because the federal government took in $317 billion more in taxes than in FY 2024.
The trend of higher spending and higher taxing continues: the Treasury Department reports that in October, the federal government spent $689 billion, $105 billion more than in October 2024, and collected $404 billion in taxes, $78 billion more than in October 2024.
Yet somehow, even as he takes and spends more money, Trump is doing long-term damage to the government’s ability to operate effectively. Consider this assessment from retired State Department security engineer Daryl Zimmerman:
A drastic reduction in the workforce means there aren’t enough people to do necessary work, which requires cutting back programs, Zimmerman said. He thinks cutting back the State Department’s re-employed annuitant program makes the problem worse and will jeopardize national security.
“I’ve seen programs cut that I don’t think they’ve thought through the impact of those cuts,” Zimmerman said.
It’ll take years and significant costs to build back the federal government, even to verify and reanalyze the need of programs, let alone hire people back, Zimmerman said. Many federal jobs require a specialized skillset.
“We’ve lost institutional knowledge,” Zimmerman said, “and that costs a lot of money and time to rebuild it back to where we need it to be” [Makenzie Huber, “Retired Federal Security Engineer Worries Workforce Cuts Will Leave U.S. Vulnerable,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2025.11.28].
We’re paying more for government, spending more on government, but getting less from government. That doesn’t feel like efficiency to me.