Since US President Donald Trump established DOGE and made Elon Musk its head, government departments and employees have been targeted. The approach is controversial and has massive consequences.
First things first: the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not an official department of the US government but rather a hybrid between an advisory agency and a pet project of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, according to the Deutsche Welle.
Despite the fact that it is neither part of the government nor headed by someone who was democratically confirmed in office, DOGE has been shaking up the US government apparatus since the start of Trump's second term in January. According to Trump, the aim is to cut unnecessary bureaucracy and limit the squandering of taxpayers' money through government cuts.
To date, Trump is highly satisfied with the work of Musk, his friend and presdiential campaign supporter.
"Elon is doing a great job. He's finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste," Trump told reporters in early February.
However, opinions on this differ greatly.
"It's an absolute clown show," Patrick Malone, a professor in the department of Public Administration and Policy at American University in Washington DC, told DW. Malone said that Trump established DOGE because "it's flashy and something he can point to to show he's doing something."
What do US government employees actually do all week?
A recent email sent to around two million government employees last weekend caused a commotion. By Monday, all of them needed to state in five bullet points what they did at work in the past week.
The request came from the Office of Personnel Management, the US government's human resources department. But it was Musk who emphasized that not responding to the email would be taken as a resignation.
On Monday, executives at several government agencies, such as the Department of Defense and the FBI, let their employees know that they did not have to respond. However, later the same day, Trump told reporters that anyone who did not respond possibly didn't exist.
"If people don't respond, it's very possible that there is no such person or they're not working," Trump said. "If you don't answer, you're sort of semi-fired or you're fired."
It remains unclear what will happen next. "It's a mess," Malone told DW. "I've never seen anything like it."
More efficient but not through "slashing, burning and cutting"
Thousands of government employees have been fired already, and almost all employees who were on probation have also been dismissed.
Some government agencies, such as USAID, the agency responsible for development aid, have been hit particularly hard. The USAID budget was radically slashed, and all employees were suspended for the time being.
"Should governments always be more efficient? Of course. But you don't get there through slashing, burning and cutting," Malone said.
The Trump administration has also offered almost all government employees to give up their jobs in return for severance pay if they decide quickly. However, a district court judge in the state of Massachusetts blocked this furlough plan, and federal labor unions have filed lawsuits against Trump over DOGE.
But workers inside DOGE itself are not happy with all the department's measures, with 21 employees handing in their resignation in protest. In a resignation statement sent to the White House, they said they refused to use their technical skills to "dismantle critical public services."
"We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations. However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments."
What is DOGE's legal basis?
More legal resistance to the DOGE measures have surfaced. The question about what exactly Musk's office is actually allowed to do is becoming more prominent.
"The permissibility of a number of actions taken and inspired by DOGE is being challenged," Craig Saperstein, partner at the public policy practice of international law firm Pillsbury and a government law expert, told DW.
"Whether all these actions are legal remains to be seen."
During his first term in office, Trump pushed through a number of controversial measures, and he is the first convicted felon to man the Oval Office.
"In my office, we stopped saying 'But he can't do that,'" Melone told DW. "Obviously, he can."
Yet the president is not allowed to abolish a government department, for example. This requires the support of the US Congress. In the Senate, there would even have to be a so-called "super majority" of at least 60 senators in favor of closing the department.
Nevertheless, the majority of Americans believe that the general idea behind DOGE is good. According to a recent Harvard University poll, 70% of 2,500 registered surveyed said that government expenditures are "filled with waste, fraud and inefficiency."
Where will Americans feel DOGE measures?
According to DOGE, it has already saved $65 billion (€62 billion) as of February 24, 2025. The DOGE website does not break down in detail how that figure was calculated.
Meanwhile, the savings are already noticeable in some national parks. There are long lines at entrances, and reservations are being canceled after many employees of park administrations have been laid off.
"The cuts will have real impacts on real Americans," Malone told DW. "The effects are inevitable. It's just a question of when."
Malone also fears a growing risk of forest fires and losing important results of medical trials if funding is cut.
Saperstein echoes this view. "You get rid of food safety inspectors, you might get more food-borne illnesses. You cut aviation security officers, you might see more plane crashes. You make cuts to the Internal Revenue Service, maybe they won't collect as many taxes as they used to," he said.
For Malone, the current changes to the governmental system are "a real test of the American system of democracy," he told DW.
"We'll see whether the institutions put into place 250 years ago can hold."
