The chaos Elon Musk and Doge are leaving behind in Washington

Elon Musk formally exited his role in the Trump administration on Wednesday night, ending a contentious and generally unpopular run as a senior adviser to the president and de facto head of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge). Though he promised efficiency and modernization, Musk leaves behind a trail of uncertainty and reduced functionality.

The timing of Musk’s departure lines up with the end of his 130-day term limit as a “special government employee” but also plays a part in an effort by the billionaire to signal a wider shift away from Washington as he faces backlash from the public and shareholders. Musk has recently made a show of refocusing his efforts on his tech companies in interviews, saying that he has spent too much time focused on politics and plans to reduce his political spending in the future.

As Musk moves on, he consigns a mess of half-realized plans and gutted agencies to his acolytes installed in key positions across the federal government. His departure throws Doge’s already chaotic impact on the government into an even grayer limbo, with questions over how much power the nebulous taskforce will have without him and who, if anyone, might rebuild the programs and services it destroyed.

Doge’s debris

Musk’s initial pitch for Doge was to save $2tn from the budget by rooting out rampant waste and fraud, as well as to conduct an overhaul of government software that would modernize how federal agencies operate. Doge so far has claimed to cut about $140bn from the budget – although its “wall of receipts” is notorious for containing errors that overestimate its savings. Donald Trump’s new tax bill, though not part of Doge and opposed by Musk, is also expected to add $2.3tn to the deficit, nullifying any savings Doge may have achieved. Its promises of a new, modernized software have frequently been limited to AI chatbots – some of which were already in the works under the Biden administration.

The greater impact of Doge has instead been its dismantling of government services and humanitarian aid. Doge’s cuts have targeted a swath of agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization, which handles weather and natural disaster forecasting and plunged others such as the Department of Veterans Affairs into crises. Numerous smaller agencies, such as one that coordinates policy on homelessness, have been in effect shut down. Doge has brought several bureaus to their knees, with no clear plan of whether the staff Musk leaves behind will try to update or maintain their services or simply shut them off.

In one early example of its cuts and the holes in government they have created, Doge targeted the government tech group that partnered with federal agencies to provide tech solutions, known as 18F.

When Doge staffers entered the General Services Administration agency that housed the 18F Office, former employees have said they appeared to fundamentally misunderstand how the government operates and the challenges of creating public services.

Former 18F director Lindsay Young, who is now part of a legal appeal that contends the firing of 18F violated legal requirements, is concerned that Doge’s cuts will have long-lasting effects on government functions.

“In government, it’s just so much easier to tear things down than it is to build things up,” Young said.

The mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services represented a similar loss of institutional knowledge that Doge does not seem intent on replacing.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who has been tracking Doge’s cuts, used the agency’s tobacco unit as an example, which was severely affected by the cuts. “The loss of so much expertise, especially in the healthcare area will mean that more Americans will become sick or die earlier than they might have,” he said. “It also may take many years and great expenditure of resources to restore that experience and expertise.”

Musk’s gutting of USAid, formerly the world’s largest single provider of humanitarian aid, is one of the starkest examples of the disarray and harm that Doge’s cuts have caused. The US canceled approximately 83% of USAid programs, imperiling services around the world aimed at humanitarian assistance and disease prevention. One pioneering program under USAid, Pepfar, which coordinates the US HIV/Aids response, has seen its services reduced worldwide and its staff left in confusion over what they can still do for people who relied on their organization. Doge’s cuts to the program have likewise threatened the rollout of a new anti-HIV drug that researchers have hailed as a “miracle” for its effectiveness.

As Musk returns to Tesla and SpaceX, the agencies he laid waste to are left to pick up the pieces.

The Doge staffers still holding sway in government

While Musk is returning to his tech empire, many of the former employees and inexperienced young engineers whom he hired to work for Doge are set to remain part of the government. One of the largest questions about what Doge’s future looks like is whether these staffers, some of whom gained near unfettered access to the government’s most sensitive data, will retain the same powers they enjoyed under Musk.

Doge staffers, such as billionaire investor and Musk ally Antonio Gracias, have embedded themselves at key agencies such as the Social Security Administration and Federal Aviation Administration. They have worked as a sort of parallel government task force, operating with a lack of transparency as their attempts to access databases and migrate data has caused disarray and technical problems. Whether Trump and agency heads allow them to continue on with carte blanche remains unseen.

Already at least two prominent Doge staffers have followed Musk to the exit. The billionaire’s longtime top lieutenant Steve Davis, who was running the day-to-day operations of Doge, left his role on Thursday. Spokesperson Katie Miller, wife of Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, also left the White House to work full-time for Musk, according to CNN.

Some of Musk’s dictates have already been rolled back since he left Washington earlier this month, including a much-derided mandate that required federal employees to send a list of five things that they accomplished each week. The weekly email, which was initially introduced with the threat of being fired for non-compliance, was largely ignored and viewed by many as pointless busywork. On Wednesday, the Pentagon formally announced that it would halt the practice.

Doge is not being left leaderless, however. Taking over for Musk, according to the Wall Street Journal, is Christian nationalist and key figure in the rightwing Project 2025 manifesto Russ Vought. A longtime believer that the president should have sweeping executive powers, Vought has said that he wants federal employees to be left “in trauma” and to slash federal funding.

Musk has praised Doge’s work and pledged that it will continue without him, and as recently as this week is still removing veteran officials it disagrees with from federal agencies. Even at reduced numbers, Musk’s allies also still have access to immense amounts of sensitive and confidential data they are reportedly intending to use to surveil immigrants.

What seems farther away than ever in the chaos, however, is Musk’s promise to make the government more efficient and better serve the public.

“You don’t need that many people to decide to just cut things,” 18F’s Young said. “But if you actually want to build things, that takes thought. It takes effort.”