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Fake News: Department of Gov’t Efficiency (DOGE) isn’t dead

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by Frank Holmes, reporter

Washington and the media has officially declared President Donald Trump dead hundreds of times over… but every time, he’s bounced back.

It turns out, his favorite department dedicated to draining the Swamp is no different.

The news service Reuters reported that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, wrapped up all operations the weekend before Thanksgiving, even though it had eight months remaining on its mandate.

President Trump set up DOGE in response to a tweet from Tesla founder and X owner Elon Musk on the need to urgently cut government spending and slow the spiraling U.S. federal deficit.

On his first day in office, the president issued an executive order creating the waste-cutting agency and appointed Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as co-chairs. Under the order, the agency was to continue until next July.

But the media insisted Swamp had taken down DOGE, the scourge of government waste, fraud and abuse.

But like President Trump, DOGE had more life in it. Late last month, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor allegedly told Reuters that DOGE “doesn’t exist” as a “centralized entity.”

It turns out the entire story is wishful thinking, according to insiders.

“As usual, this is fake news from Reuters,” DOGE pushed back on social media. “President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to modernize the federal government and reduce waste, fraud and abuse. Just last week, DOGE terminated 78 wasteful contracts and saved taxpayers $335 (million).”

The department’s current acting administrator, Amy Gleason, posted a picture of the department’s mascot with the caption “I’m alive” on LinkedIn.

“The executive order establishing U.S. DOGE Service (USDS) is still in effect. USDS is still partnering with agencies to modernize federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” the message said.

Elon Musk even weighed in on his brainchild.

“DOGE is still happening,” Musk told podcast guru Joe Rogan. “DOGE is still underway.” The media just declared victory after Musk’s resignation and falling out with President Trump, because “they don’t have like a clear person to attack anymore.”

But the bottom really fell out of Reuters’ story when its own source called the “news” service out for yellow journalism.

“Reuters spliced my full comments across paragraphs two and three) to create a grabbing headline,” OPM Director Kupor posted on X.

While DOGE does “not have centralized leadership under USDS…the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: de-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen’ etc.”

Kupor cleared up that DOGE brought these ideas into government, and OPM and OBM “will institutionalize them!”

“DOGE and its long-term counterpart remain, with a full slate of modernization projects underway,” reported the Federal News Network.

Far from dead, the network related that DOGE employees have spent the last few months cutting delays for 600,000 veterans applying for VA disability compensation, making it easier to report Medicare fraud and for doctors to sign up for its National Provider Directory, and processing gun purchase checks required under the National Firearms Act.

To drive the final stake through the story’s heart, two senior Trump officials went to a conservative website to clear up the mystery surrounding the department.

DOGE’s functions have been absorbed by OPM and the Office of Management and Budget (OBM), a Trump administration staffer told the Daily Caller. DOGE itself will continue until at least next May.

Even hostile, liberal sources appeared to verify the story.

Right now, DOGE employees “appear to still be enmeshed in federal agencies.” according to an investigation from the tech website Wired. An unnamed source in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who was obviously unhappy about the development, described DOGE officials as “burrowed into the agencies like ticks.”

An IRS agent complained that, thanks to DOGE member Sam Corcos, the department has tested employees on the tax service’s IT team. Other DOGE members joined the National Design Studio, which oversees the redesign of federal government websites.

“The DOGE ethos…remains fully in force,” concluded Wired.

But it’s not clear how effective DOGE has been to date. The department was the brainchild of Elon Musk, who hoped to cut as much as $2 trillion from the federal budget. But in the end, the agency reports that it cut $214 billion annually, or $1,329 per taxpayer, according to DOGE’s official government website.

During its time in the spotlight, DOGE managed to shine a light on outrageous and offensive government spending, such as U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding a transgender clinic in South Africa. Thanks to DOGE’s actions, USAID closed down on July 1.

DOGE also found that the Small Business Administration approved $312 million in almost 5,600 loans to “business owners” who were 11 years old or younger; that the State Department under Biden spent $1.2 million to upgrade swimming pools in the developing world; and it uncovered a secret cave in Boyers, Pennsylvania, stuffed full of federal documents.

Musk and fellow DOGE member Antonio Graciasas revealed that the number of non-Americans who illegally received a Social Security card ran as high as 2.1 million last year. They found 1.3 million non-citizens received Medicaid, and DOGE claimed it had removed 20 million dead people from the voting rolls.

Even many Democrats praised the organization’s accomplishments.

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett admitted on the Pod Save America podcast that DOGE had accomplished “stuff we should’ve done.” Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as long as 30 years ago, bragged about cutting the federal workforce, the way DOGE did.

“As for DOGE’s achievements, the one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that the service never ran out of examples of wasteful government spending,” concluded Craig Eyermann of the Independent Institute.

Until Washington is drained of every single fraudulent pay-off, ridiculous grant, or ghost job, DOGE can’t ever shut down.

About the Author

Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”