DOGE self-deletes on July 4th. The grand experiment fell apart long before that. - E&E News by POLITICO

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DOGE self-deletes on July 4th. The grand experiment fell apart long before that.

By Kevin Bogardus, Scott Waldman | 07/02/2026 01:18 PM EDT

Tech mogul Elon Musk’s band of Silicon Valley disruptors have already moved on as DOGE’s charter is scheduled to expire.

Elon Musk speaks during a Feb. 11, 2025, event with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House. Alex Brandon/AP

President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting commission that once plunged the government into chaos is nearing its destiny — becoming a former federal initiative.

Up for debate: how and when the end will truly come for the Department of Government Efficiency, which triggered thousands of federal employees to leave their jobs and voided billions of dollars in government contracts.

Trump’s January 2025 executive order creating DOGE also established a July 4, 2026, sunset. “A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift” to America on its semiquincentennial birthday, the president said when he announced the commission.

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But DOGE didn’t really deliver on that promise, said Elizabeth Linos, a Harvard Kennedy School public policy and management professor, as did others who spoke to POLITICO about DOGE’s dramatic efforts over the past 18 months. Instead, it resulted in a near-immediate loss of expertise and live-saving programs but cost savings nowhere near the $2 trillion once promised.

Looking long term, Linos said that “effectively, DOGE told the American people that they can’t trust government to protect their data, to use their data and technology for good.”

“That has really long-lasting effects on our ability to rebuild trust in government or even convince the next generation of talent to enter government to begin with,” she said.

DOGE claims it saved $215 billion, or $1,335.40 per taxpayer, with its cuts, which included slashing duplicative software licenses, canceling diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, grants as well as ending leases for underused office space. That’s a pittance to the federal budget, which is now about $7 trillion each year. The effort faded relatively early too as tech mogul Elon Musk clashed with government officials and left DOGE in May last year.

What comes next is not clear.

“President Trump was given a clear mandate to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from the federal government,” said White House spokesperson Davis Ingle. “He has made significant progress in making the federal government more efficient to better serve the American taxpayer.”

The White House didn’t address questions about whether DOGE will officially fold, as foretold in Trump’s order, or if it has already.

And no final DOGE review is incoming, according to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought — known as the man who wished to put federal employees “in trauma.”

“We have no plans to do kind of a closing DOGE report,” Vought said at a hearing Tuesday. “We’re always happy to give you our assessment of that work. I think it made some really important strides.”

The White House budget proposal released in April sought $35 million for the U.S. DOGE Service. However, at that same hearing, Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio) noticed in the request “that DOGE was pretty much eliminated.”

On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed the executive order setting up DOGE, renaming the U.S. Digital Service, an Obama-era office, as the U.S. DOGE Service. “The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall terminate on July 4, 2026,” the order said.

The president designated Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as DOGE’s co-leaders.

Having an end date was billed as a major selling point. “The final step of @DOGE is to delete itself,” Musk said on the social media site X.

Ramaswamy, however, decamped almost immediately and is now running for governor of Ohio. Other signs indicate everyone else has moved on too.

DOGE’s X account, which has almost 5 million followers, has largely been dormant in recent months, although it sprung back to life last week to defend cuts to USAID after Democrats said its elimination caused deaths around the world.

DOGE’s webpage listing its cost savings hasn’t been updated since Jan. 1.

And U.S. DOGE Service acting Administrator Amy Gleason has a new job, leading a health technology office at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Healthcare Dive reported last month.

Linos said different agencies have lost capacity after being DOGE’d last year, which has not led to better outcomes for the public.

“If anything, wait times are going up, and people are not getting the level of safety that they would expect from their government,”...