In short
- The unit, which was established in January, no longer functions as a centralized office, the government’s personnel chief said.
- Its short life cycle included changing mandates, public confusion over Musk’s role and questions raised in lawsuits about his access to federal systems.
- The phaseout comes as the government considers a rule that would make it easier to close government programs and offices.
The Department of Government Efficiency, created by executive order to drive President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting agenda, effectively shut down eight months before its charter was set to expire.
The agency has ceased to exist as a ‘centralised entity’, with the government’s personnel chief confirming its inactive status despite having eight months left to run, according to a report report by Reuters on Sunday.
Declutter has contacted the White House for comment.
It comes as the Trump administration is considering a new rule that would make it easier to close offices and end entire programs to research The news agency announced this last week.
The draft framework would allow agencies to lay off staff without weighing performance or tenure when closing an entire unit, a shift that a federal labor attorney said would allow officials to selectively eliminate offices and programs they oppose.
A brief history of DOGE
Days after win the 2024 presidential election, and then President-elect Trump noted that the organization’s goal was to “eliminate excessive regulation, reduce wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies.”
Often associated with billionaire Elon Musk, the department caught the attention of the crypto community because of its acronym coordinated the DOGE meme coin he had repeatedly promoted.
That overlap fueled public assumptions about a connection, even though the agency’s mandate and structure were unrelated to its past Dogecoin mentions.
At some point, shortly after the department launched, the Dogecoin logo appeared appeared on its website, briefly causing the cryptocurrency to rise 14.4%.
The same week, the department reportedly began exploring blockchain technology to improve transparency and make government activities and expenditures more efficient.
A month later, in February, a document signed by Joshua Fisher, director of the Office of Administration, reportedly confirmed that Musk had no authority to make government decisions about his role at DOGE.
Lawsuits, and then some
A multi-state within the same month court case filed in federal court alleged that the Trump administration unlawfully granted Elon Musk and members of DOGE sweeping access to the Treasury Department’s sensitive federal payment systems, which handle Social Security, veterans benefits, Medicaid reimbursements and other payouts for U.S. citizens.
The complaint alleged that DOGE personnel without positions at the Treasury Department were given elevated system privileges that exposed vast amounts of personal and financial data, and that this was in line with Musk’s public calls to halt payments to programs the government opposed.
Reports Musk might be leaving DOGE coincided with Bitcoin and Tesla shares rising in early April. By May, Musk confirmed he had left DOGE.
That was quickly followed by one much-discussed argument in June between Musk and Trump, which saw the two once-connected figures publicly turn on each other, trading posts that further clouded the government’s messaging around DOGE.
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