President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was intended to be a blanket solution to federal bloat. But less than six months into its founding, it resembles not a scalpel for waste, but rather a sledgehammer aimed at the very architecture of American governance and democracy.
At face value, the institution’s mission seems noble: improve efficiency, cut costs, and bring Silicon Valley speed to Washington’s sclerosis. President Trump’s executive order on January 20th, 2025 gave DOGE unprecedented access across all government agencies, allowing its embedded teams of software engineers, lawyers, and auditors to rewrite how the government functions–from contracting and hiring to how information flows across departments. It yields the broad discretionary power to scrutinize, modify, and eliminate government expenditures, programs, and personnel as needed to fulfill its mission of “streamlining” operations.
With help from tech industry billionaire Elon Musk, who is currently at the head of the organization (although Musk’s relationship with Trump has been a bit rocky as of late), and the language of “innovation” on its side, DOGE arrived dressed in the costume of reform. However, it has not governed with nuance, but with disruption for disruption’s sake, firing hundreds of instrumental federal workers and cutting off critical social security programs.
Though let’s be clear: inefficiency in Washington is a real issue, and overdue for reckoning. But in its attempt to gut the “deep state,” DOGE has become a reckless bureaucracy in its own right–one that operates without clear oversight, destabilizes vital services, and redefines executive power in ways that should concern every American, regardless of party.
DOGE claims to have saved the federal government over $180 billion by canceling thousands of contracts, slashing agency budgets, and terminating federal jobs. But a deeper look tells a much less picture-perfect narrative. A Washington Post investigation revealed that many of these “savings” are either overstated or illusory. In one case, a mere $8 million contract was logged as $8 billion in government savings. In others, canceled projects were simply reclassified, not eliminated. The illusion of efficiency has become a substitute for the real value.
Meanwhile, the human cost is mounting. At the Social Security Administration (SSA), automated call loops and AI-enabled job cuts have left seniors stranded in 90-minute queues. Moreover, DOGE’s push to eliminate over 7,000 SSA jobs–reducing staffing to its lowest level in five decades–has crippled the agency’s capacity to serve the nearly 70 million Americans who rely on its benefits. Field offices have shuttered or scaled back, call centers are overwhelmed, and the website has suffered frequent outages. Internal memos warn of a “death spiral,” as employees face mounting workloads, abrupt return-to-office mandates, and shifting priorities that favor Musk-inspired anti-fraud crackdowns over service delivery.
And across other agencies, from NASA to the EPA, civil servants report being buried under new “accountability layers”–excessive documentation requirements and opaque internal audits that stifle basic functionality.
DOGE has also pioneered threats to national security. On February 13th, 2025, the Trump Administration laid off 300 officials from the National Nuclear Security Administration, entailing that the organization with jurisdiction over all of the U.S.’s nuclear weapons is now severely undermanned. Other critical federal agencies, such as Disease Control and Prevention and Homeland Security, have also been subject to a series of worker terminations, hindering daily operations.
It is clear this is not reform. It is a relentless pursuit of dysfunction in the name of efficiency and a political agenda.
DOGE has accomplished all these egregious acts by blatantly circumventing democratic processes. By embedding itself within agencies rather than working through Congress, DOGE has become a shadow government of sorts–issuing mandates, blocking hires, and terminating programs, often without public input or legislative approval. Many of DOGE’s most sweeping decisions–including hiring freezes and data access protocols–have no clear constitutional basis.
This brings us to the question of data. DOGE has secured access to an unprecedented amount of personal information, from tax records to biometric scans to immigration status. Last week, the Supreme Court failed to block DOGE’s request to integrate millions of Social Security records into a centralized AI audit system. Civil liberties advocates warn that this could create the largest government database in U.S. history, with little to no transparency over how data is used or abused.
Proponents argue this is the cost of modernization–the cost of a better country. But modernization without ethics is not progress. It’s surveillance. It’s privatization masquerading as patriotism. It’s the erosion of public trust.
And make no mistake: DOGE is not going away unless action is taken. Although Musk has officially stepping down at the end of May 2025, the project has only deepened its roots. Congress is now considering the DOGE-in-Spending Act, which would codify DOGE’s authority within the Treasury Department. Meanwhile, the House has already passed a $9.4 billion rescissions bill shaped directly by DOGE’s recommendations, cutting funding to agencies like USAID and PBS. What began as a temporary “efficiency squad” is evolving into a permanent mechanism of government.
However, to understand DOGE’s real function, it is critical to look past the branding. The institution is not simply about trimming fat from bloated programs. It is about centralizing authority inside the executive branch. It is about placing unelected so-called “efficiency experts” above agency heads and other branches of government, redirecting how our government serves, funds, and protects its people.
The implications go further than most Americans yet realize. Embedded DOGE teams don’t just consult–they command. They’ve frozen hiring at the Department of Education, vetoed grants at the National Endowment for the Humanities, and slashed hundreds of clean energy projects deemed “inefficient” by metrics only they control. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has also shut down the technology consulting unit of the General Services Administration (GSA), which is pivotal to managing millions of dollars in government contracts every year.
And all of this is happening at a moment when public faith in government is fragile. Trust in federal institutions is already near historic lows. What happens when people can’t reach Social Security by phone, when their disaster relief is delayed, when veterans’ appointments are canceled?
Many say DOGE is necessary, even overdue, of course, including President Trump himself. And yes, there are areas of government that should be modernized, streamlined, perhaps rethought. But there is a world of difference between thoughtful reform and indiscriminate purge without thought about the ramifications for the American people. The former strengthens democracy. The latter hollows it out.
The rise of DOGE should be a wake-up call: not just about the perils of centralized power, but about the misleading language of “efficiency” used to justify these types of sweeping transformations. Efficiency, in itself, is not a virtue. It is a tool. And like any tool, it can be used concurrently as a weapon.
The American public must decide: do we want a government that serves its people and democracy, or one that serves the illusionary rhetoric of efficiency?
Because beneath the buzzwords, beneath the dashboards and savings reports and Trump’s press conferences, DOGE is asking that question for us. And if we don’t answer them soon, they will answer them for us, leaving us without a say in the fate of our country’s fiscal policy.
The rise of DOGE should be a wake-up call: not just about the perils of centralized power, but about the misleading language of “efficiency” used to justify these types of sweeping transformations. Efficiency, in itself, is not a virtue. It is a tool. And like any tool, it can be used concurrently as a weapon.