The DOGE mindset is still central to the Trump administration's agenda as 2025 ends

The DOGE mindset is still central to the Trump administration's agenda as 2025 ends Earlier this year, Elon Musk wielded what he called a "chainsaw for bureaucracy" during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 20, 2025. While Musk no longer leads DOGE, the idea of trimming the federal government remains. SAUL LOEB/AFP hide caption toggle caption Earlier this month, billionaire Elon Musk, the one-time DOGE leader and Trump adviser, sat down with Katie Miller on her podcast to reflect on his time with the administration. He called DOGE's work "a little bit successful" but said he wouldn't do it again if given the chance. "We were somewhat successful, Musk said. "I mean we stopped a lot of funding ... that really just made no sense, that was just entirely wasteful." Musk left his role with DOGE in May after legal setbacks and clashes with Trump's cabinet. Yet even as he retreated from Washington, the idea that slashing wasteful spending will lead to profound cuts to the nation's growing deficit remains central to the Trump administration's vision of a slimmed down bureaucracy. While many of DOGE's initial outsized promises to increase efficiency and slash spending never fully materialized , the Trump administration has not given up on those goals. Here's a look back at some of what DOGE did and did not accomplish in its inaugural year and how the Trump administration is calibrating its tactics to make more incremental and less high-profile tweaks to federal agencies. Shrinking the federal workforce Agencies ordered to fire employees earlier in the year by DOGE were hiring back hundreds of workers ahead of the end of the fiscal year in September, while the Office of Management and Budget tried to lay off more people during the longest-ever federal government shutdown in October. Still, by the end of 2025, some 317,000 federal employees will be out of the government, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Some federal agencies and programs, like the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and much of the Education Department have been effectively eliminated. Despite those reductions and a push to cut contracts and terminate leases, the federal government is still spending more money than it brings in. Focus on slashing 'Democrat priorities' Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought is leading the push to streamline the federal workforce. Vought has long called for the federal government to have a smaller footprint, most recently including efforts to enact mass reductions-in-force at several agencies during the federal government shutdown that started in October and was blocked by the courts. Also during the shutdown, the Trump administration announced several rounds of funding cuts aimed at what the president called "Democrat priorities" like transportation and energy grants, continuing the trend of spending money on policies they like and removing funding from policies that Trump disagrees with. Trump's priorities rely on the sharing of sensitive data DOGE's push to consolidate sensitive personal...

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