Image: Kevin Dietsch/Getty
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.
Since the Trump administration took over in late January, major efforts by Musk and his DOGE team include:
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.
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)?
🏛️ Yesterday afternoon, a federal appeals court temporarily paused a ruling, handed down by the Court of International Trade one day earlier, that had declared most of President Trump’s tariff plans to be illegal.
🌍 President Trump is strongly considering new sanctions on Russia in the coming days as his frustration with Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine continues to mount, according to multiple reports.
🏛️ The Republican-led Senate voted yesterday to revoke several Biden-era waivers that allow California to set its own vehicle emissions standards, a move that blocks the state’s first-in-the nation rule banning all new gas-powered cars by 2035.
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