Elon Musk is getting out of DOGE

Elon Musk officially said goodbye to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Friday, when his 130-day legal tenure as a special government employee expired.

The report card

Since the Trump administration took over in late January, major efforts by Musk and his DOGE team include:

• Effectively taking control of the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human-resources arm.
• Enacting major budget cuts and headcount reductions to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), citing inefficiency and waste—though the moves have drawn legal pushback.
• Leading efforts that cut 280,000+ jobs across the US government—out of ~2.3 million total civilian federal employees—per data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

DOGE’s overall initiatives have saved ~$175 billion in federal spending, per the most recent update to its website. On the campaign trail, Musk said he’d slash government spending by $2 trillion, but later amended his target to $1 trillion shortly before taking office.

But its math isn’t always mathing. Several budget experts and media outlets have called DOGE’s cost-cutting claims inflated. Critics claim many of its savings aren’t backed by basic paperwork, leading to errors like overstating Education Department savings by hundreds of millions of dollars, and mistakenly counting an $8 million canceled contract as $8 billion.

• Detractors also point to a recent nonpartisan report that estimates DOGE’s efforts will cost the federal government ~$135 billion this fiscal year due to factors like paid leave for employees, lost productivity, and re-hiring mistakenly fired workers.

Looking ahead…While President Trump has said Musk “is really not leaving” and will still manage some DOGE affairs in the future, the world’s richest man indicated he plans to focus the vast majority of his attention on his businesses, including Tesla, SpaceX, and X. Musk’s departure likely won’t have a major impact on DOGE, but its work could run into some legal hurdles, per analysts—a federal judge last week allowed a case challenging DOGE's authority within the federal government to continue, and several others are still pending.

📊 Flash poll: In general, do you support Elon Musk’s efforts as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)?

• Yes
• No
• Unsure/other