Fresh blow for Musk's DOGE as it loses power to award $500B in federal funds

Independent

5 hours ago

The US DOGE Service, the repurposed government agency tasked with carrying out Elon Musk 's Department of Government Efficiency agenda to cut a trillion dollars in federal spending, has reportedly lost access to a key government website responsible for distributing roughly $500 billion in annual awards, the latest blow to the initiative after Musk's acrimonious split from the Trump administration earlier this month.
Earlier this year, DOGE reportedly assumed effective control of grants.gov, a clearinghouse for federal funding opportunities, requiring new proposals to be sent to a DOGE-controlled mailbox for review before being posted.
In the ensuing months since the April policy change, grant opportunities reportedly piled up inside the mailbox, leaving funds at risk of going unspent before the end of the government fiscal year at the end of September.
On Thursday, federal officials were instructed to stop running grant proposals through DOGE, The Washington Post reports.
'Robust controls remain in place, with DOGE personnel embedded at each agency, assisting secretaries' offices in reviewing grants daily,' the White House said in a statement about the report. 'Agency secretaries and senior advisors will continue to implement and leverage the controls initially established by DOGE to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, retaining full agency discretion to determine the appropriate flow of funds at the project level.'
The reported process change is the latest hurdle for DOGE.
The effort, whose figures have repeatedly been shown to be filled with errors and omissions, appears to have fallen short of Musk's bold promises to rapidly cut major portions of federal spending, with some estimates pegging the true figure of savings achieved at about $180 billion, compared to Musk's goal of some $1 trillion.
Numerous DOGE efforts have been paused or shot down in court, and federal agencies are scrambling to hire back many of the employees laid off in Musk's slash-and-burn revamp of federal spending.
Still, even with Musk out, the administration remains committed to achieving some major reductions, including a DOGE-style clawback of $9.4 billion in cuts to foreign aid and pubic media spending that's already passed the House.
Russell Vought, a major force behind the arch-conservative Project 2025 police blueprint and current director of the Office of Management and Budget, has said DOGE's work will continue apace even without Musk.
"Many DOGE employees and [full-time employees] are at the agencies, working almost as in-house consultants as a part of the agency's leadership," he testified this month. "And I think, you know, the leadership of DOGE is now much more decentralized."