Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk said Wednesday night that he will be stepping back from his official role with the White House’s cost-cutting agency that has a charter to operate through 2026.
“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk said in a social media post.
“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” Musk said.
President Donald Trump created DOGE on the first day of his new administration via an executive order that rebranded the U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service with a focus on modernizing Federal government technology to improve efficiency and productivity.
The executive order pointed DOGE to “commence a Software Modernization Initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems,” and gave Federal agencies 30 days to create DOGE teams to implement the department’s agenda.
The order also instructed Federal agency leaders “to promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization.”
The order envisions DOGE as advancing an 18-month agenda and closing up shop on July 4, 2026.
As of this week, DOGE laid claim to generating $175 billion of savings for the government, which it said is made up of a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reduction.” Those savings figures have been widely questioned.
Musk said in January that DOGE was targeting total savings of up to $2 trillion.
Amy Gleason was appointed acting administrator of DOGE in February and continues in that role. Musk, however, has been the most public face of the organization while working, according to a White House statement issued in February, as a senior advisor to President Trump.
He was designated a “special government employee,” and employees in that category are limited to working for the government for no more than 130 days per year. Counting weekends since then, Musk’s 130th day in government service since President Trump’s inauguration would be May 30.