Washington, Dec. 1 – One of the loudest initiatives of the current United States government, the department conceived by President Donald Trump and his former ally Elon Musk to curb wastefulness, disappears today into the mists of nothingness.
Local media do not even talk about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which until a few months ago was like the “watch out, here comes the wolf” for many federal agencies.
Officials and former members of the Republican administration discreetly confirmed that DOGE “no longer exists,” and this happens with eight months left on the contract of a project that, according to its creators, seemed to be the solution to all federal government problems.
DOGE was born precisely in January of this year, after Trump’s return to the White House, with the mission to reduce agencies, cut budgets, and redirect functions toward Donald Trump’s priorities.
Musk, who had contributed about $270 million of his fortune to help the Republican victory in the November 2024 elections, was rewarded by being put in charge, but Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, admitted this month that “that no longer exists,” clarifying that it no longer operates as “a centralized entity.”
The richest man in the world, involved in these cutting missions, promoted his work by holding a chainsaw and a phrase: “This is the chainsaw of bureaucracy.”
However, the honeymoon between Trump and Musk ended too soon. The owner of Tesla and the social network X stopped being a regular visitor to the executive mansion, and the images of the entrepreneur’s eccentricities breaking protocol with one of his children on his shoulders came to an end.
Musk left his position in May, after having overseen cuts to foreign aid and the elimination of thousands of federal jobs. That was when boycotts of his businesses began.
Independent financial experts have not been able to verify whether DOGE was really as good as its name suggested because, during this brief tenure, it claimed to have cut tens of billions of dollars in expenses but did not publish a detailed report about its work.
