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By Tom Norton
Fact Check Reporter
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In less than five months, Elon Musk has had a disruptive impact on the U.S. government, leading huge decisions that have reshaped federal agencies despite holding no permanent role in Washington.
Musk, who officially announced his departure from the White House on Wednesday, had been noticeably absent over the past few weeks, particularly compared to earlier this year when he seemed inseparable from President Donald Trump.
The SpaceX, Tesla, and X CEO enthusiastically championed cutting what he and others described as wasteful and fraudulent federal spending.
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Musk said he had "done enough" and that he will step away from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the inner-government group that has slashed federal budgets and workforces.
As he prepared his goodbyes, Newsweek looked back at Musk's time in government and asked experts on whether he will have a lasting impact.
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What Has DOGE Saved?
In October 2024, Musk claimed he could cut $2 trillion from government spending, about one-third of the federal budget, but appeared to walk it back in January 2025. During an interview on his X, formerly Twitter, he said $2 trillion was a "best case outcome" but there was a "good shot" of reaching half that target.
As of May, DOGE's website claims it had saved $170 billion in federal spending. However, the veracity of the figures has been called into question, with critics claiming that many of the savings claims weren't backed by basic paperwork, and those that were had poor detail.
The DOGE website included contracts that had been canceled before DOGE's creation and, in one instance, an $8 million saving that had been incorrectly entered as an $8 billion, according to Reuters.
Experts speaking with Newsweek previously expressed their skepticism about the savings, saying that the value of the DOGE's actions was unclear and relied on "shaky" calculations.
"We also don't know how many of the reductions are permanent, as some of the touted layoffs are already being reversed, as employees are being welcomed back to their former positions," Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek.
"In other words, it's going to take many additional months and even years of data to see the real savings DOGE has enacted."
DOGE Guts Federal Workforce
Workforce cuts began in earnest in early February. Federal employees were offered "deferred resignation" proposals to leave their jobs by February 6. Although a federal judge blocked it, 75,000 employees accepted the offer by February 12, as reported by the Associated Press.
Since then, tens of thousands of federal employees have lost their jobs.
In a report released on May 1, executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said the government had led all U.S. sectors in job cuts this year with 282,227, of which 281,452 were attributed to DOGE-related cost-cutting.
Analysis by The New York Times, last updated on May 12, said there have been at least 58,556 confirmed cuts. Musk has defended DOGE's actions, telling reporters in an Oval Office press conference in early February: "The people voted for major government reform and that's what the people are going to get."
The departments and agencies that faced the largest proportion of layoffs included the United States Agency for International Development, where almost all employees were fired, Voice of America, Americorps, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education.
What Is Elon Musk's DOGE Legacy?
While Musk has attracted a unique type of attention, the appointment of unelected, partisan advisers in the White House is not unique, as University of Texas professor Daron Shaw, a teacher of American government, told Newsweek.
"I'm a little surprised that there's been as much chatter about the supposed uniqueness of Musk's position," Shaw said. "And more generally, the use of non-government officials to engage in task forces or make recommendations or even directly advise the president. And I say I'm a little surprised just because this has been fairly standard practice."
Others have blasted Musk's actions with DOGE. In a post on X on May 29, Berkeley professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich posted a video in which he argued that DOGE's actions had reduced food standards testing, risked making natural disasters "more deadly," made travel more dangerous, reduced consumer financial protections and had helped to "enrich oligarchs," among other criticism.
"Elon may be on his way out, but DOGE is still gutting countless government programs and services that millions of Americans rely on," Reich wrote.
John Owens, a professor of United States government and politics at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster, told Newsweek that although Musk caused a great deal of "bluster and bravado," his long-term influence over politics remained to be seen. Owens noted Musk's seeming lack of influence in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Musk memorably spoke at a rally in the build-up wearing a Wisconsin "Cheesehead" hat.
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"His embarrassing setback in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election has affected his political reputation," Owens said.
Shaw suggested that Musk's influence had become a "lightning rod" and that everything he did was "seen through the lens of whether you liked Elon Musk or not."
"The interesting question would be: Did it matter what he did at DOGE?" Shaw said.
"Let's just say, you know, the argument that's been suggested by Democrats [who] say 'Well, we kind of like what he's, you know, this notion of curbing waste. No one's in favor of waste, fraud, deficiency...but, you know, hey, we're in favor of that, but we just hate the way he did it, and it's extra constitutional, if not unconstitutional, etc., etc....
"And you know, I sort of sit back as an analyst and wonder: Is there anything he could have done where Democrats would have said, 'Yes, that's the way it should be done?' And I'm not sure.
"I'm not dismissing complaints. I'm just saying we need to imagine an alternative world in which this was done, you know, sort of surgically, and the process by which these cuts were identified was, you know, well explained to the public on a daily basis.
"If then, Democrats would have said, 'You know, he's right, you know, USAID is bloated and Department of Education isn't getting it done, we're convinced,' [but] I'm skeptical about that."
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