What's next for DOGE after Trump's alliance with Musk collapsed

Yahoo

20 hours ago

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump says the work of the Department of Government Efficiency is "not finished at all" after his relationship Elon Musk blew up in spectacular fashion.
Yet whether the government-slashing DOGE will pack the same punch now that the world's richest man not only left the White House, but turned on Trump in an epic public battle, is unclear.
The future of DOGE was already in limbo after Musk's four-month run as the chainsaw-wielding DOGE leader ended, especially because several other top DOGE officials exited the Trump administration alongside Musk. But then came Musk's war of words last week with Trump that ended their political alliance.
Here's what we know about DOGE's direction in a post-Musk White House:
In the aftermath of their fallout, Trump signaled that he's ready to move on from the Musk fight but not DOGE itself.
The president told reporters on June 6 he's "not thinking about Elon" and has no plans to ask him to return his honorary White House key. Trump added on June 9 that he's not getting rid of the red Tesla car he bought from Musk ‒ but "may move the Tesla around a little bit" ‒ and said he won't ditch Musk's Starlink internet service that was installed at the White House.
More: Trump and Musk's bromance ends after personal attacks over criticism of tax bill
Trump declined to take a shot at Musk when asked about the former White House adviser's alleged drug use and whether he believed Musk used drugs at the White House. "I really don't know. I don't think so. I hope not," Trump said. "We had a good relationship and I just wish him well ‒ very well actually."
For his part, Musk appeared to take back some of his harshest attacks, deleting a post he made on X endorsing Trump's impeachment and another alleging Trump is mentioned in undisclosed classified files related to the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump reiterated that in the wake of recent departures, the work of DOGE, which has executed widespread cuts throughout the federal government, isn't over.
"We saved hundreds of billions of dollars ‒ it's terrific. And it's going further," Trump told reporters on Air Force One on June 6.
More: Elon Musk's rise and fall: From Trump's chainsaw-wielding sidekick to a swift exit
For four months, DOGE rapidly fanned throughout the federal government, seizing control of information technology infrastructure, axing federal government contracts, gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development and pushing out or firing tens of thousands of federal employees.
DOGE is set to continue operations until the summer of 2026 under an executive order Trump signed in January. But without Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, at the helm, it's unclear if DOGE will operate with the same slash-and-burn aggressiveness.
At its peak, the quasi-official agency employed more than 100 computer engineers, budget analysts and other staffers ‒ some working at the group's offices at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus and others inside various agencies and departments.
More: Elon Musk escalates feud with Trump: 'Time to drop the really big bomb'
Among the other top DOGE employees to follow were Steve Davis, Musk's top lieutenant who oversaw DOGE's day-to-day operations, publicist Katie Miller and DOGE's top attorney James Burnham. Miller, the wife of top White House aide Stephen Miller, has continued to work for Musk.
Musk's exit as the DOGE leader came as his designation as a "special government employee" ‒ which allowed him to stay on the job for 130 calendar days a year ‒ ended. Others in DOGE's top brass were working under the same structure.
Before Musk began to criticize Trump's tax and policy megabill publicly, he asked for his special government employee status to be extended beyond 130 days to allow him to continue to lead DOGE, but the White House declined, a source told USA TODAY.
The White House has said no individual person will replace Musk, noting that several DOGE employees have "onboarded" as political appointees at the various agencies they've worked to overhaul.
'The mission of eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse is a part of the DNA of the federal government," Harrison Fields, White House deputy press secretary, said in a statement to USA TODAY, "and will continue under the direction of the President, his Cabinet, and agency heads to enhance government efficiency and prioritize responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars."
Russ Vought, Trump's director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, has started to fill Musk's void as the top Trump official carrying out DOGE's stated mission of cutting government "waste, fraud and abuse."
Vought, who also led OMB in Trump's first term, wrote the chapter on executive power in Project 2025, the controversial policy blueprint created by the conservative Heritage Foundation that Trump distanced himself from during the 2024 campaign. Vought uses a lot of the same language as Musk, writing in Project 2025 that the goal should be to "bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will."
Vought, however, isn't calling himself the DOGE leader. Appearing June 4 before the House Appropriations Committee, Vought said the "Cabinet agencies that are in charge of the DOGE consultants that work for them are fundamentally in control of DOGE."
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, wasn't pleased with Vought's answer. "Oh, that's an answer only a mother could love," he said.
Leading up to the Trump-Musk breakup, the business mogul started leveling criticism over the trillions of dollars that Trump's massive tax and spending bill is projected to add to the deficit.
In an appeal to Republican fiscal hawks, the White House and House Speaker Mike Johnson have said they want to codify the DOGE cuts, beginning this week when they hope to formally claw back $9.4 billion in spending.
More: President Trump threatens Elon Musk's billions in government contracts as alliance craters
The rescissions package, set for a House vote on June 12, will include $8.3 billion in cuts to foreign aid and $1.1 billion from public broadcasting funds, including for NPR and PBS.
Republican leadership is bullish that they can get the package quickly passed. They have 45 days to approve it, and it only requires a majority vote in the Senate.
But it may not be so simple: Several lawmakers have concerns with the rollback of a Bush-era program to support AIDS prevention and with the impact on rural communities that rely on public media for information.
Vought has said future legislative packages to enact DOGE cuts could come later if the initial rescissions package passes.
Musk left the White House after falling vastly short of his ambitious cost-savings goal for the federal government.
Musk had set a goal for DOGE to cut $1 trillion from the federal government by the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. He had even talked about $2 trillion in cuts on the 2024 campaign trail when he stumped for Trump.
More: 'Elon is going to get decimated:' How Trump's feud with the world's richest man might end
But DOGE's savings total posted on its website currently stands at $180 billion, which doesn't amount to even 20% of $1 trillion. And this does not even factor in potential exaggerations or errors in DOGE's calculations, which have been a recurring theme in the group's declared savings.
"I did not find the federal government to be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. I was expecting some more easy wins," Sahil Lavingia, a former DOGE engineer, said in an interview with National Public Radio.
Lavingia added that he believed DOGE had produced many examples of government "waste" but disagreed that DOGE uncovered mountains of "fraud and abuse" as Musk claimed.
"The government has been under sort of a magnifying glass for decades," Lavingia said. "And so I think, generally, I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was. This isn't to say that it can't be made more efficient."
Before he left, Musk said DOGE's next focus will be on fixing the federal government's aging computer systems ‒ something far less controversial than taking a battering ram to the federal workforce.
In the meantime, some federal agencies and departments are doing cleanup work to repatch holes left by the mass exodus of federal worker departures steered by DOGE.
The National Science Foundation said it was reinstating several dozen employees following a May federal court ruling that found the mass cuts by DOGE were unlawfully forced by the Office of Personnel Management.
The Washington Post reported that several agencies, including the IRS, Food and Drug Administration, and even USAID, are also scrambling to rehire many of the probationary employees fired under DOGE's direction and bring back longtime federal workers who accepted voluntary buyouts.
Contributing: Riley Beggin
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What's next for DOGE after Trump-Musk alliance collapse