The White House’s failed DOGE experiment comes to an official and overdue end

It was nearly two years ago when then-candidate Donald Trump delivered a new campaign pledge: If elected to a second term, the Republican said, he’d appoint Elon Musk to lead some kind of government “efficiency” panel.

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To hear Trump tell it, the endeavor was going to work miracles: The Musk-led commission, he boasted, would save taxpayers “trillions of dollars” and implement “an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months.”

For a variety of reasons, none of this made any sense, but in early 2025, the Republican White House followed through and launched the Department of Government Efficiency, though the charter came with an expiration date of sorts: DOGE would cease to be on July 4, 2026.

In other words, in the wake of Independence Day, DOGE is no more.

Politico reported shortly before its formal demise:

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.

For now, let’s not dwell on the chasm between $215 billion and the “trillions of dollars” in savings Trump promised. Let’s instead emphasize the separate fact that cutting $215 billion in federal spending isn’t an inherently good thing, since much of that spending was worthwhile and beneficial to the public.

As The New Republic recently summarized, “DOGE’s legacy is both very stupid and very sad: It decimated the federal workforce, including Social Security personnel at local offices, and made it easier for hackers to access your data. The agency tore apart USAID, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of lives lost globally.”

Indeed, the damage DOGE did made people’s lives worse, both in the United States and abroad.

But as observers assess DOGE’s legacy, it’s worth recognizing what this endeavor was at its core: a failed experiment.