The Department of Government Efficiency’s centralized office has shuttered, but federal agencies’ individual DOGE teams that work to weed out potential mismanagement and corruption are still in full operation, Fox News Digital learned.
‘President Trump was given a clear mandate to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government, and he continues to actively deliver on that commitment,’ White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital Monday when asked about DOGE’s current status.
Reuters first reported that DOGE no longer existed after speaking with Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor earlier in November.
‘That doesn’t exist,’ Kupor was quoted as telling the outlet.
The administration official clarified on X that DOGE’s policies are ‘alive and well,’ adding that the outlet ‘spliced my full comments across paragraphs 2/3 to create a grabbing headline.’
‘The truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under @USDS. 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; etc. DOGE catalyzed these changes; the agencies along with @USOPM and @WHOMB will institutionalize them!’ he posted.
The White House explained to Fox News Digital that individual teams established at federal agencies are still in full operation, while DOGE’s central office has shuttered.
Fox News Digital did not immediately receive comment on when the office officially shuttered and what sparked the closure months ahead of schedule.
Inception and investigations
Trump established DOGE under a January executive order that renamed the United States Digital Service — which was founded in 2014 by former President Barack Obama as a technology office within the Executive Office of the President — to the United States DOGE Service.
Trump’s executive order stated DOGE would continue until July 4, 2026. The executive order included charging agency chiefs with creating their own DOGE teams to find and eliminate overspending or fraud — teams that are still in operation.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk was the public face of DOGE for months of the administration, serving in the role until May, when fireworks flew between the Trump ally and President Donald Trump over the ‘big beautiful bill.’
Musk lambasted the legislation as ‘outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,’ while Trump accused the billionaire of lashing out over the bill’s cuts to electrical vehicle mandates. Musk is the CEO of electric vehicle company Tesla.
Trump signed the massive piece of legislation into law on the Fourth of July while championing it would advance his agenda on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt.
Musk was brought into the DOGE role as a special government employee, meaning he could only serve in the job for 130 days. While Musk has been the public face of DOGE for months, he was not an employee of the United States DOGE Service and did not report to the acting DOGE administrator, Amy Gleason, according to a court filing previously reported by Fox Digital in March.
Democrats and federal employees have railed against DOGE since its inception, and subsequent investigations and mass terminations at various agencies got underway, including staging protests outside federal buildings in Washington, D.C., and specifically protesting Musk for his involvement with DOGE.
DOGE’s website touts, as of Monday morning, that it has saved $214 billion via ‘asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.’
The amount translates to $1,329.19 in savings per taxpayer, according to the website.
The creation of DOGE was celebrated on the campaign trail as a cornerstone policy for Trump as he looked to slim down the size of the federal government, streamline it and cut potential overspending, fraud and corruption.
Musk played a key role in campaigning for the Trump ticket in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, where he frequently lamented how the federal government was tied up in red tape that handcuffed the private sector from advancing, pointing to his companies SpaceX and Tesla as prime examples of the government hamstringing the tech sector with regulations.
‘SpaceX had to do this study to see if Starship would hit a shark,’ Musk said from the campaign trail of how the government became involved in a SpaceX, studying whether a Starship rocket would hit a whale or shark upon landing. ‘And I’m like… it’s a big ocean. There are a lot of sharks. It’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely. So we said, ‘Fine, we’ll do the analysis. Can you give us the shark data?”
He said at the time that the National Marine Fisheries Service ordered SpaceX to carry out the study.
Trump announced just days after his decisive election win in November 2024 that Musk would lead DOGE alongside former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy — who departed the team at the start of the Trump administration and launched a run for Ohio governor in the 2026 race.
The president celebrated the office would likely serve as the ‘‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,’ as it eyed driving ‘large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.’
Trump repeatedly celebrated the office during high-profile events after his inauguration, including during his joint address to Congress in March where he rattled off how DOGE investigations uncovered government funding for bizarre initiatives, such as free housing and cars for illegal immigrants that cost $22 billion, ‘male circumcision in Mozambique,’ and ‘$20 million for the Arab ‘Sesame Street’ in the Middle East.’
‘Forty-five million dollars for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma,’ Trump said as he provided examples of federal waste March 4 after thanking Musk and DOGE for its work. ‘Forty million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. Eight million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of. Sixty million dollars for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America. Sixty million. Eight million for making mice transgender.’