The Department of Government Efficiency is looking very different without its billionaire leader.
The agency, no longer helmed by Elon Musk, has been beset by staff departures, legal headaches and bureaucratic obstacles.
Once guarded by armed security, the agency no longer has a sentry stationed at the entrance to its headquarters, according to Politico’s West Wing Playbook. The “Authorized Access Only” signs that once marked its floor in the elevators at the General Services Administration are also reportedly gone.
When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, with Musk—a top campaign donor—closely by his side, the billionaire’s ham-fisted efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy through DOGE dominated the headlines. The department canned government contracts, gutted agencies and fired thousands of federal employees, often leaving chaos in its wake.
But nearly six months in, things look very different. At the end of May, Musk exited his high-profile role, citing the expiration of the 130 days he was allowed to serve as a special government employee. Days later, simmering tensions between Musk and Trump spilled aggressively into public view—and have repeatedly flared since.
According to Politico, at least eight members of the original core DOGE team have left government. The departures included Musk’s right-hand man, Steve Davis, and DOGE’s communications director, Katie Miller, who is married to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Both Davis and Miller left when Musk did.
About ten DOGE engineers have also left or are planning to leave, the newsletter said.
In March, Musk said DOGE had about 100 employees, and that he planned to double that figure. That doesn’t appear to have happened.
The White House defended DOGE’s mission in a statement to the Daily Beast, with deputy press secretary Harrison Fields insisting that Trump’s plan to “root out waste, fraud and abuse” is “moving full steam ahead.”
“Under the President’s leadership, every agency and department is executing this mission seamlessly and, as a result, has yielded more than $170 billion in savings for the American people,” he said.
The Trump administration has reportedly been scrambling to re-hire some of the people that were pushed out of their government jobs due to DOGE cuts, after understaffing became a significant problem.
Trump himself seems to have soured on DOGE’s approach a little, telling a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, “I would have done it differently, a little bit, maybe.”
That comment follows weeks of tit-for-tat between the president and Musk. On Sunday, Trump said on social media that Musk had become a “TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” and that he had gone “off the rails.”
Musk had antagonized Trump by vowing to start a new “America Party” following the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which the tech mogul was fiercely opposed to.
“The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS,” Trump said of Musk’s idea in his Sunday Truth Social post.
