The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been quietly wound down with eight months still left in its formal charter, according to comments from the director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
OPM Director Scott Kupor told Reuters that DOGE — the broad cost-cutting push led by billionaire Elon Musk that defined the opening stretch of President Donald Trump’s second term — “doesn’t exist” anymore. Kupor said most of DOGE’s responsibilities have been folded into OPM, the federal government’s human resources arm.
He added that DOGE is no longer the centralized operation it was when Trump tapped Musk to spearhead it in January.
Later on Sunday, Kupor appeared to push back on the framing of the Reuters report in a post on X, though he did not dispute its factual claims.
“The truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under the [U.S. DOGE Service] But, the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: de-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen,” Kupor wrote. He said OPM and the Office of Management and Budget would “institutionalize” DOGE’s changes across the government.
Musk’s partnership with the Trump Administration drew heavy scrutiny, both for the breadth of access he was granted as a “special advisor” and for the sweeping reach of DOGE’s cuts — spanning areas from foreign aid to Social Security.
Soon after launching, Musk and his team moved rapidly to slash federal grants, dismiss large numbers of government workers, shut down entire agencies, and cancel contracts. DOGE personnel were embedded across departments and sought sensitive data access under the banner of improving efficiency.
For months, Musk repeatedly said his central goal was to cut the deficit by $1 trillion by September 30. But that target slipped further out of reach after an increasingly public clash with Trump over the president’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which ultimately ruptured their relationship.
Musk’s departure had been anticipated. As a special government employee, he was working under a 130-day arrangement that expired on Friday, May 30.
By the time he left, DOGE was far from the $1 trillion savings Musk had predicted. The DOGE website claims $214 billion in federal savings, but multiple reports have found those figures were inflated, reworked, or overstated.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment from TIME.
Even without meeting its savings promises, DOGE left major disruption in its wake, both in the U.S. and abroad. At the Social Security Administration, staff reductions and other changes labeled as “efficiency measures” produced serious backlogs and delays in claim processing.
Internationally, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — widely credited with saving tens of millions of lives over two decades through vaccines, malaria prevention, and HIV/AIDS programs — was effectively shuttered in July 2025. An internal USAID memo projected hundreds of thousands of excess deaths resulting from the closure. Separate research by Boston University epidemiologist and infectious-disease modeler Brooke Nichols estimates more than 600,000 deaths have already occurred due to the cuts.
Since Musk exited government, dozens of DOGE staffers — including the core leadership team — have also left. A memo released during the government shutdown noted that 45 employees were still on DOGE’s rolls in October and that the office remained open at that time.
Many remaining staffers have since been reassigned throughout the executive branch. Some prominent figures moved to Trump’s new National Design Studio led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia. Others took senior technology or policy posts, including chief technology officer roles at the Department of Health and Human Services, foreign-assistance oversight positions at the State Department, and leadership at the Office of Naval Research.
Kupor also told Reuters that certain DOGE initiatives, including the government-wide hiring freeze, have now ended.
When asked for comment, OPM referred TIME to Kupor’s Sunday post on X.
