The administration of United States President Donald Trump has prematurely liquidated the Department of Federal Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was headed by Ilon Musk until the end of May, Reuters reports.
According to Reuters, the agency was disbanded eight months before the end of its mandate – DOGE was scheduled to exist until July 2026.
“It doesn’t exist,” state Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Chairman Scott Kupor told the agency earlier this month when asked about DOGE’s status.
Kupor added that the entity is no longer centralised and its functions have been partially transferred to OPM.
Reuters highlights that the dissolution of DOGE is in stark contrast to the attention the Trump administration previously paid to promoting it. The department was created by one of Trump’s first executive orders, signed on inauguration day on 20 January, and was supposed to be in charge of cutting government spending and restructuring federal agencies.
Tesla and SpaceX founder Ilon Musk became the head of DOGE. He left the post at the end of May after his contract ended – amid a conflict with Trump over the president’s proposed “big and beautiful” tax and spending bill.
In May, the tax and spending bill, which Donald Trump himself calls a “big and beautiful” law, passed the House of Representatives with a small margin of votes. In the Senate, the document faced resistance, particularly from members of Trump’s Republican Party, which now has a majority in both houses of Congress.
On 30 May, Ilon Musk left the administration of President Donald Trump, where he served as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It was created with the goal of cutting government spending. Musk actually worked as a freelancer, running the department as a special government employee. You can’t work more than 130 days a year in this status. After the end of Musk’s work in the presidential administration, Trump presented the businessman with a symbolic golden key to the White House – in gratitude for his work.