The Department of Governmental Efficiency, otherwise known as DOGE, was a radical plan to cut government waste and reduce spending.
Where did the idea come from? How did it work? And crucially, did it do what it set out to do?
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about DOGE, the Department of Governmental Efficiency.
[00:00:31] It was established by Executive Order on Donald Trump’s first day back in office and has been plagued by controversy ever since.
[00:00:39] So, in this episode, we’ll look at what it did, what it still does, why it is loved and loathed in almost equal measure, and ask ourselves what happens next.
[00:00:50] OK then, let’s get right into it and talk about DOGE.
[00:00:57] On Saturday, 22nd February, earlier this year, millions of American federal employees got the same email.
[00:01:06] It was, on one level, a simple request.
[00:01:10] It asked them to list five things that they achieved that week. They shouldn’t disclose any classified information, and simple bullet points were fine.
[00:01:21] The email came from the OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, which is the US government’s human resources agency.
[00:01:31] However, a quick glance at social media revealed the ultimate source of the email and the potential consequences of not responding.
[00:01:42] At 8.30 pm that evening, Elon Musk posted on X, “Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
[00:02:05] This was just over a month into the establishment of DOGE, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, and was one of its most controversial acts.
[00:02:16] To some, it was a perfectly fair request. These were federal employees, people whose salaries are paid by taxpayers, so they should be answerable to the public. And this was hardly a difficult question to answer: list five things they did that week.
[00:02:35] To others, it was a crude, politically-charged request, an act of intimidation dressed up as accountability, less about measuring productivity and more about reminding people who held the power.
[00:02:51] And there was immediate confusion among federal employees, the government workers who received the email.
[00:02:59] Should they respond?
[00:03:00] What would happen if they didn’t?
[00:03:03] Some heads of federal agencies instructed their employees not to respond, others instructed them to respond, others to respond, but to their direct manager, not to the original email.
[00:03:18] Later that week, it was reported that around 1 million federal employees had responded to the email, but that still left around 1.5 million who had not.
[00:03:32] One of those who did respond was the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt. She proudly declared that she had responded, saying, “I do five things in about 10 minutes, and all federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working and moving. We have a country to save, and we want this federal government to be responsive to the needs of the American people.”
[00:04:00] The message was clear: to “Make America Great Again”, lazy federal employees needed to pick up the pace, and the waste and inefficiency that had been tolerated under previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican, was no longer going to cut the mustard.
[00:04:20] America needed to be saved, and everyone had to pull their weight.
[00:04:26] Now, before we get to the question of how much waste and inefficiency there is thought to have been, and some theories about the motivations behind the organisation set up to combat it, we must go back to the start, to well before January 20th, the day that Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term.
[00:04:49] In fact, we need to go all the way back to before Trump even became the Republican nominee for the 2024 election.
[00:04:59] In September 2023, when multiple candidates were still vying for the Republican nomination, a fundraising dinner was held at a former Facebook executive’s Silicon Valley mansion.
[00:05:15] It was a $50,000-a-head fundraiser, raising money for the campaign of the former healthcare entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy.
[00:05:26] Elon Musk was one of the guests. As the evening went on, Musk started musing on the idea of radically reducing the size of the federal government.
[00:05:40] He had bought Twitter a year earlier and had embarked on a radical cost-cutting mission, culling more than 80% of the staff.
[00:05:52] Despite the cries from critics that this would be the end of Twitter, that Musk didn’t have the relevant experience with consumer software or social media to make it a success, Twitter — since rebranded as X — didn’t die a painful death.
[00:06:10] A flood of advertisers did leave, and it has had its fair share of growing pains, but it actually has more active users now than it did before Elon Musk bought it.
[00:06:24] Musk theorised that he could embark on the same extreme cost-cutting measures at a governmental level.
[00:06:33] And just think of the savings to be made.
[00:06:37] Twitter might not have been the most efficient company, but it was surely much more efficient than any government. And the numbers were vastly different: Twitter had 8,000 or so employees, the federal government had around 3 million.
[00:06:57] It was a different scale, a less efficient and vastly larger beast, and all of these savings could be passed right back to the American people.
[00:07:09] This wasn’t a political challenge, a question of persuading congressmen and women to support the cuts at a political level.
[00:07:17] It was a technological challenge, he said. Give me access to the systems, let me in, and I will find the waste and cut it.
[00:07:28] Now, Musk never officially supported Ramaswamy, and early the following year, he dropped out of the Republican nomination race and officially pledged support to Donald Trump.
[00:07:42] On July 13th, 2024, the same day as the attempted assassination, Elon Musk publicly tweeted out his support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. As you will remember, Musk ended up becoming Trump’s largest financial backer, spending $290 million to help Donald Trump win re-election.
[00:08:07] This isn’t the time to speculate about his motivations for this, but before long, the two men appeared to be joined at the hip.
[00:08:17] And one of Trump’s campaign pledges was to bring in Elon Musk to lead a task force aimed at reducing government spending.
[00:08:29] This was, in many ways, a continuation of his earlier pledge to “drain the swamp”, but now it seemed less politically-motivated, more about using taxpayer money more efficiently and for American interests rather than targeting career politicians.
[00:08:50] And sure enough, Trump was re-elected, and on his first day in office, he signed an Executive Order establishing the Department of Governmental Efficiency - DOGE, for short.
[00:09:03] As you might know, the acronym DOGE is somewhat of a joke. Doge was an early internet meme–a picture of a Japanese shiba inu dog with some text on it–and there was even a cryptocurrency called Dogecoin, which was the first “meme coin”.
[00:09:22] After Musk and Trump floated the idea of a “government efficiency commission,” a user on X suggested the acronym “DOGE,” and that was it.
[00:09:33] It might have seemed like a joke, a flippant idea created at a dinner party and hastily turned into reality, but there was a lot of planning that went into it.
[00:09:46] The first question was about how to structure this department, or commission.
[00:09:53] A government clearly isn’t like a company with a CEO, who can create and dismantle departments and positions at will. There are systems of checks and balances, laws in place to prevent a rogue actor from coming in and making sweeping changes that are not in the best interests of the country.
[00:10:13] So Musk and his team had to get creative.
[00:10:19] Instead of creating an entirely new department, which would have been fraught with legal and political issues, they took an existing department, renamed it and expanded its remit.
[00:10:34] The United States Digital Service, or USDS, was created in 2014 under Barack Obama, and was intended to, and I’m quoting directly, "deliver better government services to the American people through technology and design."
[00:10:54] The Executive Order signed by Trump on his first day in office renamed it as the United States DOGE Service, which conveniently meant it could still have the same initials: USDS.
[00:11:10] And within the renamed and reorganised USDS sat DOGE: the Department of Governmental Efficiency.
[00:11:20] Now, it still isn’t completely clear what the difference between the USDS and DOGE is, and there are several other agencies that sit under or alongside it. In the interests of simplicity, I’ll call them all DOGE going forward.
[00:11:39] And DOGE had big plans.
[00:11:43] In late October of 2024, shortly before the election, Elon Musk had claimed that he could cut the federal budget by at least $2 trillion, around one-third of its total.
[00:12:00] Importantly, $2 trillion is higher than the discretionary spending budget.
[00:12:07] Now, to explain why this is important, in the United States, federal government spending is split into three categories: mandatory spending, discretionary spending, and interest on government debt.
[00:12:25] Mandatory spending refers to the money that the government is obligated to spend on its citizens, including programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
[00:12:36] Interest on government debt is the interest the US government pays on its bonds, which it is obliged to pay to maintain faith in the US dollar.
[00:12:46] Discretionary spending is the only category that is “optional”, which can be increased or decreased by Congress. This includes things like defence, foreign aid, transportation and education.
[00:13:03] Mandatory spending is around 60% of the total, discretionary spending is 27%, and the remaining 13% is interest on government debt.
[00:13:15] Together, it makes up almost $7 trillion per year, and there was Musk claiming he could trim this to more like $5 trillion.
[00:13:28] Now, there were few people who would claim that the US government was this slick, well-oiled machine that was as efficient as it could be. Of course, there was waste, of course, there were people who weren’t working particularly hard.
[00:13:42] Perhaps there were some people who weren’t doing any work at all.
[00:13:47] We’re talking about millions of people, a vast bureaucracy, a government. A little waste was to be expected.
[00:13:56] But to say that 30% of government spending was wasteful, especially given that such a large amount of government spending is mandatory, with the money going to people the government is legally required to give it to, that seemed extreme.
[00:14:15] But Elon Musk, even to his greatest critics, had an established track record of pushing through change that was thought to be impossible, whether it was Twitter, mass-market electric cars or reusable rockets.
[00:14:32] And almost immediately, DOGE got to work.
[00:14:37] It was purposefully kept small, with teams of one team lead, one engineer, one HR specialist and one lawyer. These DOGE teams were placed within federal agencies, but instead of a traditional, consultant-led approach, the problem of increasing efficiency was attacked from a technical angle.
[00:15:04] Most often, DOGE employees were not previously federal workers, and instead were highly talented, and often very young, computer programmers.
[00:15:16] They were embedded within government agencies, given access to government computer systems, and allowed to get to work.
[00:15:26] The hypothesis was that by using AI and technical wizardry, DOGE would be able to identify wasteful spending in a way that previous federal systems would not.
[00:15:40] This huge fraud and waste that some people thought was going on within the US government would have nowhere to hide; it would be identified, stopped, and the savings passed back to the American taxpayer.
[00:15:56] However, almost immediately, the controversy started.
[00:16:01] At the start of February, reports emerged that DOGE had gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, which handles everything from Social Security checks to tax refunds.
[00:16:14] This raised alarm bells.
[00:16:17] Democratic lawmakers, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, warned that giving an unelected group like DOGE access to such sensitive information was a recipe for disaster.
[00:16:29] What if there were errors? What if the data was misused?
[00:16:35] After all, Musk’s companies, like SpaceX and Tesla, have billions in government contracts.
[00:16:44] Critics, including unions and consumer advocacy groups, cried foul, arguing that this was a massive conflict of interest.
[00:16:54] A lawsuit was filed on February 3rd, alleging that DOGE’s access to the Treasury’s systems violated federal privacy laws.
[00:17:03] And then there were the layoffs.
[00:17:06] DOGE didn’t just want to modernise technology; it wanted to shrink the federal workforce dramatically.
[00:17:15] By April 2025, DOGE claimed to have saved $150 billion through a combination of contract cancellations, grant terminations, and workforce reductions.
[00:17:30] But these cuts came at a cost.
[00:17:34] For example, the Department of Health and Human Services saw 20,000 positions slashed, including roles at the National Institutes of Health, which funds critical medical research.
[00:17:48] One analysis estimated that these cuts could lead to a $10 billion loss in economic activity and 44,000 jobs across the country.
[00:18:00] After all, these were 44,000 people, enough to fit a football stadium, who were now out of work, might now depend on the government for assistance, and be radically cutting down their own discretionary spending on all the sort of stuff that keeps the American economy driving forward.
[00:18:20] The United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, was hit even harder, with most of its programmes gutted, disbanded completely.
[00:18:33] Critics pointed out that these cuts weren’t just about trimming fat; they were dismantling programs that supported vulnerable populations, both at home and abroad.
[00:18:45] By May of 2025, some estimates linked DOGE’s foreign aid cuts to 300,000 deaths, mostly children.
[00:18:56] To this, the reaction of Musk and Trump can be summed up as “well, it shouldn’t be up to the American taxpayer to pay for all this stuff.”
[00:19:06] Like it or not, Trump won the election on an America-first mandate, and this was nothing if not America first.
[00:19:16] And alongside this, there were plenty of examples of federal government spending that raised a few eyebrows, even to Trump’s greatest critics.
[00:19:26] Funding for a transgender medical clinic in India, $20 million to create a Sesame Street show in Iraq, or even the discovery that the US Air Force had been charged $1,300 per reheatable coffee cup by Boeing.
[00:19:47] DOGE’s website proudly displayed a “Wall of Receipts,” listing thousands of terminated contracts and grants, with savings they claimed reached $205 billion by August 2025, a savings of $1,273.29 per taxpayer.
[00:20:10] To many Americans, this was refreshing, a government finally taking a hard look at where their tax dollars were going, and, most importantly, acting to fix it.
[00:20:22] Indeed, a March 2025 NBC poll found that 46% of voters thought DOGE was a good idea in principle.
[00:20:33] But the critics weren’t having it.
[00:20:36] They argued that DOGE’s savings were wildly exaggerated.
[00:20:41] Firstly, the $2 trillion figure that was floated in the days before the election was reduced to $1 trillion shortly after DOGE was established, then to $150 billion by April 2025, a reduction of more than 90%.
[00:21:00] And there were claims that it would actually have a negative effect; there wouldn’t just be no savings, it would end up costing the country money.
[00:21:10] Independent analyses, like one from the Internal Revenue Service, warned that DOGE’s cuts to tax enforcement could actually increase the federal deficit by hundreds of billions, as the IRS would struggle to collect revenue.
[00:21:27] In other words, these cost “savings” would be more than offset by losses in tax revenue, meaning the country lost, not saved money.
[00:21:39] And then there were the accounting errors and “creative” savings calculations.
[00:21:45] Journalists uncovered billions of dollars in miscounting, with some “savings” tied to contracts that had already been cancelled before DOGE even existed, and other “savings” accounting for the absolute maximum that could possibly be spent, and the real number almost always coming in much lower.
[00:22:07] And then there was what we can characterise as “The Musk Factor”.
[00:22:13] If DOGE was controversial, its leader was even more so.
[00:22:19] Elon Musk, the billionaire behind Tesla, SpaceX, and X, was the face of DOGE, even if he was officially just a “special government employee”, technically only allowed to work 130 days a year.
[00:22:35] His involvement was a double-edged sword.
[00:22:39] On one hand, his reputation as a disruptor gave DOGE credibility among those who wanted radical change. He wasn’t a career politician; he was a modern-day Thomas Edison —a tech genius and entrepreneur who had run wildly successful companies. If anyone was up to the challenge, it was him.
[00:23:02] On the other hand, Musk’s involvement raised red flags, tainting the project.
[00:23:08] His businesses rely heavily on government contracts; SpaceX alone has deals worth billions with NASA and the Department of Defence.
[00:23:18] Critics pointed out that Musk’s access to federal systems could benefit his companies while harming competitors. He was, after all, being given unfettered access to government systems, something that was perhaps worth hundreds of billions to his companies.
[00:23:39] By April 2025, just a few months after DOGE was established, the cracks were starting to show.
[00:23:47] Protests erupted across the country, with chants of “Elon Musk has to go” heard outside Tesla showrooms.
[00:23:55] In Manhattan, demonstrators waved signs reading “No Trump, No Musk, No Fascist USA.”
[00:24:03] There were organised boycotts of Tesla, Musk’s electric car company. Sales dropped dramatically, most prominently in Europe but also in the US, and this was followed by a crash in the share price.
[00:24:18] Musk was forced to intervene, and in April, he announced that he would be leaving DOGE to focus on Tesla.
[00:24:27] By the start of May, he was officially gone.
[00:24:31] Now, although its creator, and the man most associated with it, is no longer involved, DOGE is still active, and its official mandate runs until July 2026.
[00:24:46] So, what does the future hold for DOGE?
[00:24:49] As of September 2025, although it is not in the news as much as earlier in the year, it’s still an important question.
[00:24:59] President Trump could extend DOGE’s mandate with another executive order, and there’s talk of states like Oklahoma and Texas launching their own DOGE-inspired initiatives.
[00:25:12] Even some European leaders have expressed curiosity about the concept, wondering if a similar approach could work across the Atlantic.
[00:25:21] But the road ahead is far from smooth.
[00:25:25] The organisation is still plagued by legal battles.
[00:25:29] And as for public opinion, it remains split.
[00:25:33] Younger Americans especially disapprove of DOGE, and older, especially Republican-leaning voters, support it.
[00:25:43] For its supporters, DOGE is a bold experiment in making government leaner and more accountable, a chance to finally tackle the bureaucracy that’s been slowing America down.
[00:25:56] For its critics, it is a reckless power grab, one that risks dismantling vital services, eroding public trust, and furthermore, one that looks like it will even cost, not save, the country money.
[00:26:11] Whether it is a stroke of genius or a spectacular misstep, one thing is certain: DOGE has sparked a conversation about what government should be, who it should serve, and how it should be run.
[00:26:26] And that conversation, love it or loathe it, isn’t going away anytime soon.
[00:26:33] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on DOGE.
[00:26:37] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:26:41] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:26:45] What do you think of DOGE? Do you think it’s a fantastic idea and that every country should follow its example, that it was a terrible, politicised plot, or somewhere in between?
[00:26:56] For the members among you, you can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:27:05] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:27:11] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about DOGE, the Department of Governmental Efficiency.
[00:00:31] It was established by Executive Order on Donald Trump’s first day back in office and has been plagued by controversy ever since.
[00:00:39] So, in this episode, we’ll look at what it did, what it still does, why it is loved and loathed in almost equal measure, and ask ourselves what happens next.
[00:00:50] OK then, let’s get right into it and talk about DOGE.
[00:00:57] On Saturday, 22nd February, earlier this year, millions of American federal employees got the same email.
[00:01:06] It was, on one level, a simple request.
[00:01:10] It asked them to list five things that they achieved that week. They shouldn’t disclose any classified information, and simple bullet points were fine.
[00:01:21] The email came from the OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, which is the US government’s human resources agency.
[00:01:31] However, a quick glance at social media revealed the ultimate source of the email and the potential consequences of not responding.
[00:01:42] At 8.30 pm that evening, Elon Musk posted on X, “Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
[00:02:05] This was just over a month into the establishment of DOGE, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, and was one of its most controversial acts.
[00:02:16] To some, it was a perfectly fair request. These were federal employees, people whose salaries are paid by taxpayers, so they should be answerable to the public. And this was hardly a difficult question to answer: list five things they did that week.
[00:02:35] To others, it was a crude, politically-charged request, an act of intimidation dressed up as accountability, less about measuring productivity and more about reminding people who held the power.
[00:02:51] And there was immediate confusion among federal employees, the government workers who received the email.
[00:02:59] Should they respond?
[00:03:00] What would happen if they didn’t?
[00:03:03] Some heads of federal agencies instructed their employees not to respond, others instructed them to respond, others to respond, but to their direct manager, not to the original email.
[00:03:18] Later that week, it was reported that around 1 million federal employees had responded to the email, but that still left around 1.5 million who had not.
[00:03:32] One of those who did respond was the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt. She proudly declared that she had responded, saying, “I do five things in about 10 minutes, and all federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working and moving. We have a country to save, and we want this federal government to be responsive to the needs of the American people.”
[00:04:00] The message was clear: to “Make America Great Again”, lazy federal employees needed to pick up the pace, and the waste and inefficiency that had been tolerated under previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican, was no longer going to cut the mustard.
[00:04:20] America needed to be saved, and everyone had to pull their weight.
[00:04:26] Now, before we get to the question of how much waste and inefficiency there is thought to have been, and some theories about the motivations behind the organisation set up to combat it, we must go back to the start, to well before January 20th, the day that Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term.
[00:04:49] In fact, we need to go all the way back to before Trump even became the Republican nominee for the 2024 election.
[00:04:59] In September 2023, when multiple candidates were still vying for the Republican nomination, a fundraising dinner was held at a former Facebook executive’s Silicon Valley mansion.
[00:05:15] It was a $50,000-a-head fundraiser, raising money for the campaign of the former healthcare entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy.
[00:05:26] Elon Musk was one of the guests. As the evening went on, Musk started musing on the idea of radically reducing the size of the federal government.
[00:05:40] He had bought Twitter a year earlier and had embarked on a radical cost-cutting mission, culling more than 80% of the staff.
[00:05:52] Despite the cries from critics that this would be the end of Twitter, that Musk didn’t have the relevant experience with consumer software or social media to make it a success, Twitter — since rebranded as X — didn’t die a painful death.
[00:06:10] A flood of advertisers did leave, and it has had its fair share of growing pains, but it actually has more active users now than it did before Elon Musk bought it.
[00:06:24] Musk theorised that he could embark on the same extreme cost-cutting measures at a governmental level.
[00:06:33] And just think of the savings to be made.
[00:06:37] Twitter might not have been the most efficient company, but it was surely much more efficient than any government. And the numbers were vastly different: Twitter had 8,000 or so employees, the federal government had around 3 million.
[00:06:57] It was a different scale, a less efficient and vastly larger beast, and all of these savings could be passed right back to the American people.
[00:07:09] This wasn’t a political challenge, a question of persuading congressmen and women to support the cuts at a political level.
[00:07:17] It was a technological challenge, he said. Give me access to the systems, let me in, and I will find the waste and cut it.
[00:07:28] Now, Musk never officially supported Ramaswamy, and early the following year, he dropped out of the Republican nomination race and officially pledged support to Donald Trump.
[00:07:42] On July 13th, 2024, the same day as the attempted assassination, Elon Musk publicly tweeted out his support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. As you will remember, Musk ended up becoming Trump’s largest financial backer, spending $290 million to help Donald Trump win re-election.
[00:08:07] This isn’t the time to speculate about his motivations for this, but before long, the two men appeared to be joined at the hip.
[00:08:17] And one of Trump’s campaign pledges was to bring in Elon Musk to lead a task force aimed at reducing government spending.
[00:08:29] This was, in many ways, a continuation of his earlier pledge to “drain the swamp”, but now it seemed less politically-motivated, more about using taxpayer money more efficiently and for American interests rather than targeting career politicians.
[00:08:50] And sure enough, Trump was re-elected, and on his first day in office, he signed an Executive Order establishing the Department of Governmental Efficiency - DOGE, for short.
[00:09:03] As you might know, the acronym DOGE is somewhat of a joke. Doge was an early internet meme–a picture of a Japanese shiba inu dog with some text on it–and there was even a cryptocurrency called Dogecoin, which was the first “meme coin”.
[00:09:22] After Musk and Trump floated the idea of a “government efficiency commission,” a user on X suggested the acronym “DOGE,” and that was it.
[00:09:33] It might have seemed like a joke, a flippant idea created at a dinner party and hastily turned into reality, but there was a lot of planning that went into it.
[00:09:46] The first question was about how to structure this department, or commission.
[00:09:53] A government clearly isn’t like a company with a CEO, who can create and dismantle departments and positions at will. There are systems of checks and balances, laws in place to prevent a rogue actor from coming in and making sweeping changes that are not in the best interests of the country.
[00:10:13] So Musk and his team had to get creative.
[00:10:19] Instead of creating an entirely new department, which would have been fraught with legal and political issues, they took an existing department, renamed it and expanded its remit.
[00:10:34] The United States Digital Service, or USDS, was created in 2014 under Barack Obama, and was intended to, and I’m quoting directly, "deliver better government services to the American people through technology and design."
[00:10:54] The Executive Order signed by Trump on his first day in office renamed it as the United States DOGE Service, which conveniently meant it could still have the same initials: USDS.
[00:11:10] And within the renamed and reorganised USDS sat DOGE: the Department of Governmental Efficiency.
[00:11:20] Now, it still isn’t completely clear what the difference between the USDS and DOGE is, and there are several other agencies that sit under or alongside it. In the interests of simplicity, I’ll call them all DOGE going forward.
[00:11:39] And DOGE had big plans.
[00:11:43] In late October of 2024, shortly before the election, Elon Musk had claimed that he could cut the federal budget by at least $2 trillion, around one-third of its total.
[00:12:00] Importantly, $2 trillion is higher than the discretionary spending budget.
[00:12:07] Now, to explain why this is important, in the United States, federal government spending is split into three categories: mandatory spending, discretionary spending, and interest on government debt.
[00:12:25] Mandatory spending refers to the money that the government is obligated to spend on its citizens, including programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
[00:12:36] Interest on government debt is the interest the US government pays on its bonds, which it is obliged to pay to maintain faith in the US dollar.
[00:12:46] Discretionary spending is the only category that is “optional”, which can be increased or decreased by Congress. This includes things like defence, foreign aid, transportation and education.
[00:13:03] Mandatory spending is around 60% of the total, discretionary spending is 27%, and the remaining 13% is interest on government debt.
[00:13:15] Together, it makes up almost $7 trillion per year, and there was Musk claiming he could trim this to more like $5 trillion.
[00:13:28] Now, there were few people who would claim that the US government was this slick, well-oiled machine that was as efficient as it could be. Of course, there was waste, of course, there were people who weren’t working particularly hard.
[00:13:42] Perhaps there were some people who weren’t doing any work at all.
[00:13:47] We’re talking about millions of people, a vast bureaucracy, a government. A little waste was to be expected.
[00:13:56] But to say that 30% of government spending was wasteful, especially given that such a large amount of government spending is mandatory, with the money going to people the government is legally required to give it to, that seemed extreme.
[00:14:15] But Elon Musk, even to his greatest critics, had an established track record of pushing through change that was thought to be impossible, whether it was Twitter, mass-market electric cars or reusable rockets.
[00:14:32] And almost immediately, DOGE got to work.
[00:14:37] It was purposefully kept small, with teams of one team lead, one engineer, one HR specialist and one lawyer. These DOGE teams were placed within federal agencies, but instead of a traditional, consultant-led approach, the problem of increasing efficiency was attacked from a technical angle.
[00:15:04] Most often, DOGE employees were not previously federal workers, and instead were highly talented, and often very young, computer programmers.
[00:15:16] They were embedded within government agencies, given access to government computer systems, and allowed to get to work.
[00:15:26] The hypothesis was that by using AI and technical wizardry, DOGE would be able to identify wasteful spending in a way that previous federal systems would not.
[00:15:40] This huge fraud and waste that some people thought was going on within the US government would have nowhere to hide; it would be identified, stopped, and the savings passed back to the American taxpayer.
[00:15:56] However, almost immediately, the controversy started.
[00:16:01] At the start of February, reports emerged that DOGE had gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, which handles everything from Social Security checks to tax refunds.
[00:16:14] This raised alarm bells.
[00:16:17] Democratic lawmakers, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, warned that giving an unelected group like DOGE access to such sensitive information was a recipe for disaster.
[00:16:29] What if there were errors? What if the data was misused?
[00:16:35] After all, Musk’s companies, like SpaceX and Tesla, have billions in government contracts.
[00:16:44] Critics, including unions and consumer advocacy groups, cried foul, arguing that this was a massive conflict of interest.
[00:16:54] A lawsuit was filed on February 3rd, alleging that DOGE’s access to the Treasury’s systems violated federal privacy laws.
[00:17:03] And then there were the layoffs.
[00:17:06] DOGE didn’t just want to modernise technology; it wanted to shrink the federal workforce dramatically.
[00:17:15] By April 2025, DOGE claimed to have saved $150 billion through a combination of contract cancellations, grant terminations, and workforce reductions.
[00:17:30] But these cuts came at a cost.
[00:17:34] For example, the Department of Health and Human Services saw 20,000 positions slashed, including roles at the National Institutes of Health, which funds critical medical research.
[00:17:48] One analysis estimated that these cuts could lead to a $10 billion loss in economic activity and 44,000 jobs across the country.
[00:18:00] After all, these were 44,000 people, enough to fit a football stadium, who were now out of work, might now depend on the government for assistance, and be radically cutting down their own discretionary spending on all the sort of stuff that keeps the American economy driving forward.
[00:18:20] The United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, was hit even harder, with most of its programmes gutted, disbanded completely.
[00:18:33] Critics pointed out that these cuts weren’t just about trimming fat; they were dismantling programs that supported vulnerable populations, both at home and abroad.
[00:18:45] By May of 2025, some estimates linked DOGE’s foreign aid cuts to 300,000 deaths, mostly children.
[00:18:56] To this, the reaction of Musk and Trump can be summed up as “well, it shouldn’t be up to the American taxpayer to pay for all this stuff.”
[00:19:06] Like it or not, Trump won the election on an America-first mandate, and this was nothing if not America first.
[00:19:16] And alongside this, there were plenty of examples of federal government spending that raised a few eyebrows, even to Trump’s greatest critics.
[00:19:26] Funding for a transgender medical clinic in India, $20 million to create a Sesame Street show in Iraq, or even the discovery that the US Air Force had been charged $1,300 per reheatable coffee cup by Boeing.
[00:19:47] DOGE’s website proudly displayed a “Wall of Receipts,” listing thousands of terminated contracts and grants, with savings they claimed reached $205 billion by August 2025, a savings of $1,273.29 per taxpayer.
[00:20:10] To many Americans, this was refreshing, a government finally taking a hard look at where their tax dollars were going, and, most importantly, acting to fix it.
[00:20:22] Indeed, a March 2025 NBC poll found that 46% of voters thought DOGE was a good idea in principle.
[00:20:33] But the critics weren’t having it.
[00:20:36] They argued that DOGE’s savings were wildly exaggerated.
[00:20:41] Firstly, the $2 trillion figure that was floated in the days before the election was reduced to $1 trillion shortly after DOGE was established, then to $150 billion by April 2025, a reduction of more than 90%.
[00:21:00] And there were claims that it would actually have a negative effect; there wouldn’t just be no savings, it would end up costing the country money.
[00:21:10] Independent analyses, like one from the Internal Revenue Service, warned that DOGE’s cuts to tax enforcement could actually increase the federal deficit by hundreds of billions, as the IRS would struggle to collect revenue.
[00:21:27] In other words, these cost “savings” would be more than offset by losses in tax revenue, meaning the country lost, not saved money.
[00:21:39] And then there were the accounting errors and “creative” savings calculations.
[00:21:45] Journalists uncovered billions of dollars in miscounting, with some “savings” tied to contracts that had already been cancelled before DOGE even existed, and other “savings” accounting for the absolute maximum that could possibly be spent, and the real number almost always coming in much lower.
[00:22:07] And then there was what we can characterise as “The Musk Factor”.
[00:22:13] If DOGE was controversial, its leader was even more so.
[00:22:19] Elon Musk, the billionaire behind Tesla, SpaceX, and X, was the face of DOGE, even if he was officially just a “special government employee”, technically only allowed to work 130 days a year.
[00:22:35] His involvement was a double-edged sword.
[00:22:39] On one hand, his reputation as a disruptor gave DOGE credibility among those who wanted radical change. He wasn’t a career politician; he was a modern-day Thomas Edison —a tech genius and entrepreneur who had run wildly successful companies. If anyone was up to the challenge, it was him.
[00:23:02] On the other hand, Musk’s involvement raised red flags, tainting the project.
[00:23:08] His businesses rely heavily on government contracts; SpaceX alone has deals worth billions with NASA and the Department of Defence.
[00:23:18] Critics pointed out that Musk’s access to federal systems could benefit his companies while harming competitors. He was, after all, being given unfettered access to government systems, something that was perhaps worth hundreds of billions to his companies.
[00:23:39] By April 2025, just a few months after DOGE was established, the cracks were starting to show.
[00:23:47] Protests erupted across the country, with chants of “Elon Musk has to go” heard outside Tesla showrooms.
[00:23:55] In Manhattan, demonstrators waved signs reading “No Trump, No Musk, No Fascist USA.”
[00:24:03] There were organised boycotts of Tesla, Musk’s electric car company. Sales dropped dramatically, most prominently in Europe but also in the US, and this was followed by a crash in the share price.
[00:24:18] Musk was forced to intervene, and in April, he announced that he would be leaving DOGE to focus on Tesla.
[00:24:27] By the start of May, he was officially gone.
[00:24:31] Now, although its creator, and the man most associated with it, is no longer involved, DOGE is still active, and its official mandate runs until July 2026.
[00:24:46] So, what does the future hold for DOGE?
[00:24:49] As of September 2025, although it is not in the news as much as earlier in the year, it’s still an important question.
[00:24:59] President Trump could extend DOGE’s mandate with another executive order, and there’s talk of states like Oklahoma and Texas launching their own DOGE-inspired initiatives.
[00:25:12] Even some European leaders have expressed curiosity about the concept, wondering if a similar approach could work across the Atlantic.
[00:25:21] But the road ahead is far from smooth.
[00:25:25] The organisation is still plagued by legal battles.
[00:25:29] And as for public opinion, it remains split.
[00:25:33] Younger Americans especially disapprove of DOGE, and older, especially Republican-leaning voters, support it.
[00:25:43] For its supporters, DOGE is a bold experiment in making government leaner and more accountable, a chance to finally tackle the bureaucracy that’s been slowing America down.
[00:25:56] For its critics, it is a reckless power grab, one that risks dismantling vital services, eroding public trust, and furthermore, one that looks like it will even cost, not save, the country money.
[00:26:11] Whether it is a stroke of genius or a spectacular misstep, one thing is certain: DOGE has sparked a conversation about what government should be, who it should serve, and how it should be run.
[00:26:26] And that conversation, love it or loathe it, isn’t going away anytime soon.
[00:26:33] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on DOGE.
[00:26:37] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:26:41] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:26:45] What do you think of DOGE? Do you think it’s a fantastic idea and that every country should follow its example, that it was a terrible, politicised plot, or somewhere in between?
[00:26:56] For the members among you, you can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:27:05] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:27:11] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about DOGE, the Department of Governmental Efficiency.
[00:00:31] It was established by Executive Order on Donald Trump’s first day back in office and has been plagued by controversy ever since.
[00:00:39] So, in this episode, we’ll look at what it did, what it still does, why it is loved and loathed in almost equal measure, and ask ourselves what happens next.
[00:00:50] OK then, let’s get right into it and talk about DOGE.
[00:00:57] On Saturday, 22nd February, earlier this year, millions of American federal employees got the same email.
[00:01:06] It was, on one level, a simple request.
[00:01:10] It asked them to list five things that they achieved that week. They shouldn’t disclose any classified information, and simple bullet points were fine.
[00:01:21] The email came from the OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, which is the US government’s human resources agency.
[00:01:31] However, a quick glance at social media revealed the ultimate source of the email and the potential consequences of not responding.
[00:01:42] At 8.30 pm that evening, Elon Musk posted on X, “Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
[00:02:05] This was just over a month into the establishment of DOGE, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, and was one of its most controversial acts.
[00:02:16] To some, it was a perfectly fair request. These were federal employees, people whose salaries are paid by taxpayers, so they should be answerable to the public. And this was hardly a difficult question to answer: list five things they did that week.
[00:02:35] To others, it was a crude, politically-charged request, an act of intimidation dressed up as accountability, less about measuring productivity and more about reminding people who held the power.
[00:02:51] And there was immediate confusion among federal employees, the government workers who received the email.
[00:02:59] Should they respond?
[00:03:00] What would happen if they didn’t?
[00:03:03] Some heads of federal agencies instructed their employees not to respond, others instructed them to respond, others to respond, but to their direct manager, not to the original email.
[00:03:18] Later that week, it was reported that around 1 million federal employees had responded to the email, but that still left around 1.5 million who had not.
[00:03:32] One of those who did respond was the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt. She proudly declared that she had responded, saying, “I do five things in about 10 minutes, and all federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working and moving. We have a country to save, and we want this federal government to be responsive to the needs of the American people.”
[00:04:00] The message was clear: to “Make America Great Again”, lazy federal employees needed to pick up the pace, and the waste and inefficiency that had been tolerated under previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican, was no longer going to cut the mustard.
[00:04:20] America needed to be saved, and everyone had to pull their weight.
[00:04:26] Now, before we get to the question of how much waste and inefficiency there is thought to have been, and some theories about the motivations behind the organisation set up to combat it, we must go back to the start, to well before January 20th, the day that Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term.
[00:04:49] In fact, we need to go all the way back to before Trump even became the Republican nominee for the 2024 election.
[00:04:59] In September 2023, when multiple candidates were still vying for the Republican nomination, a fundraising dinner was held at a former Facebook executive’s Silicon Valley mansion.
[00:05:15] It was a $50,000-a-head fundraiser, raising money for the campaign of the former healthcare entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy.
[00:05:26] Elon Musk was one of the guests. As the evening went on, Musk started musing on the idea of radically reducing the size of the federal government.
[00:05:40] He had bought Twitter a year earlier and had embarked on a radical cost-cutting mission, culling more than 80% of the staff.
[00:05:52] Despite the cries from critics that this would be the end of Twitter, that Musk didn’t have the relevant experience with consumer software or social media to make it a success, Twitter — since rebranded as X — didn’t die a painful death.
[00:06:10] A flood of advertisers did leave, and it has had its fair share of growing pains, but it actually has more active users now than it did before Elon Musk bought it.
[00:06:24] Musk theorised that he could embark on the same extreme cost-cutting measures at a governmental level.
[00:06:33] And just think of the savings to be made.
[00:06:37] Twitter might not have been the most efficient company, but it was surely much more efficient than any government. And the numbers were vastly different: Twitter had 8,000 or so employees, the federal government had around 3 million.
[00:06:57] It was a different scale, a less efficient and vastly larger beast, and all of these savings could be passed right back to the American people.
[00:07:09] This wasn’t a political challenge, a question of persuading congressmen and women to support the cuts at a political level.
[00:07:17] It was a technological challenge, he said. Give me access to the systems, let me in, and I will find the waste and cut it.
[00:07:28] Now, Musk never officially supported Ramaswamy, and early the following year, he dropped out of the Republican nomination race and officially pledged support to Donald Trump.
[00:07:42] On July 13th, 2024, the same day as the attempted assassination, Elon Musk publicly tweeted out his support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. As you will remember, Musk ended up becoming Trump’s largest financial backer, spending $290 million to help Donald Trump win re-election.
[00:08:07] This isn’t the time to speculate about his motivations for this, but before long, the two men appeared to be joined at the hip.
[00:08:17] And one of Trump’s campaign pledges was to bring in Elon Musk to lead a task force aimed at reducing government spending.
[00:08:29] This was, in many ways, a continuation of his earlier pledge to “drain the swamp”, but now it seemed less politically-motivated, more about using taxpayer money more efficiently and for American interests rather than targeting career politicians.
[00:08:50] And sure enough, Trump was re-elected, and on his first day in office, he signed an Executive Order establishing the Department of Governmental Efficiency - DOGE, for short.
[00:09:03] As you might know, the acronym DOGE is somewhat of a joke. Doge was an early internet meme–a picture of a Japanese shiba inu dog with some text on it–and there was even a cryptocurrency called Dogecoin, which was the first “meme coin”.
[00:09:22] After Musk and Trump floated the idea of a “government efficiency commission,” a user on X suggested the acronym “DOGE,” and that was it.
[00:09:33] It might have seemed like a joke, a flippant idea created at a dinner party and hastily turned into reality, but there was a lot of planning that went into it.
[00:09:46] The first question was about how to structure this department, or commission.
[00:09:53] A government clearly isn’t like a company with a CEO, who can create and dismantle departments and positions at will. There are systems of checks and balances, laws in place to prevent a rogue actor from coming in and making sweeping changes that are not in the best interests of the country.
[00:10:13] So Musk and his team had to get creative.
[00:10:19] Instead of creating an entirely new department, which would have been fraught with legal and political issues, they took an existing department, renamed it and expanded its remit.
[00:10:34] The United States Digital Service, or USDS, was created in 2014 under Barack Obama, and was intended to, and I’m quoting directly, "deliver better government services to the American people through technology and design."
[00:10:54] The Executive Order signed by Trump on his first day in office renamed it as the United States DOGE Service, which conveniently meant it could still have the same initials: USDS.
[00:11:10] And within the renamed and reorganised USDS sat DOGE: the Department of Governmental Efficiency.
[00:11:20] Now, it still isn’t completely clear what the difference between the USDS and DOGE is, and there are several other agencies that sit under or alongside it. In the interests of simplicity, I’ll call them all DOGE going forward.
[00:11:39] And DOGE had big plans.
[00:11:43] In late October of 2024, shortly before the election, Elon Musk had claimed that he could cut the federal budget by at least $2 trillion, around one-third of its total.
[00:12:00] Importantly, $2 trillion is higher than the discretionary spending budget.
[00:12:07] Now, to explain why this is important, in the United States, federal government spending is split into three categories: mandatory spending, discretionary spending, and interest on government debt.
[00:12:25] Mandatory spending refers to the money that the government is obligated to spend on its citizens, including programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
[00:12:36] Interest on government debt is the interest the US government pays on its bonds, which it is obliged to pay to maintain faith in the US dollar.
[00:12:46] Discretionary spending is the only category that is “optional”, which can be increased or decreased by Congress. This includes things like defence, foreign aid, transportation and education.
[00:13:03] Mandatory spending is around 60% of the total, discretionary spending is 27%, and the remaining 13% is interest on government debt.
[00:13:15] Together, it makes up almost $7 trillion per year, and there was Musk claiming he could trim this to more like $5 trillion.
[00:13:28] Now, there were few people who would claim that the US government was this slick, well-oiled machine that was as efficient as it could be. Of course, there was waste, of course, there were people who weren’t working particularly hard.
[00:13:42] Perhaps there were some people who weren’t doing any work at all.
[00:13:47] We’re talking about millions of people, a vast bureaucracy, a government. A little waste was to be expected.
[00:13:56] But to say that 30% of government spending was wasteful, especially given that such a large amount of government spending is mandatory, with the money going to people the government is legally required to give it to, that seemed extreme.
[00:14:15] But Elon Musk, even to his greatest critics, had an established track record of pushing through change that was thought to be impossible, whether it was Twitter, mass-market electric cars or reusable rockets.
[00:14:32] And almost immediately, DOGE got to work.
[00:14:37] It was purposefully kept small, with teams of one team lead, one engineer, one HR specialist and one lawyer. These DOGE teams were placed within federal agencies, but instead of a traditional, consultant-led approach, the problem of increasing efficiency was attacked from a technical angle.
[00:15:04] Most often, DOGE employees were not previously federal workers, and instead were highly talented, and often very young, computer programmers.
[00:15:16] They were embedded within government agencies, given access to government computer systems, and allowed to get to work.
[00:15:26] The hypothesis was that by using AI and technical wizardry, DOGE would be able to identify wasteful spending in a way that previous federal systems would not.
[00:15:40] This huge fraud and waste that some people thought was going on within the US government would have nowhere to hide; it would be identified, stopped, and the savings passed back to the American taxpayer.
[00:15:56] However, almost immediately, the controversy started.
[00:16:01] At the start of February, reports emerged that DOGE had gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, which handles everything from Social Security checks to tax refunds.
[00:16:14] This raised alarm bells.
[00:16:17] Democratic lawmakers, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, warned that giving an unelected group like DOGE access to such sensitive information was a recipe for disaster.
[00:16:29] What if there were errors? What if the data was misused?
[00:16:35] After all, Musk’s companies, like SpaceX and Tesla, have billions in government contracts.
[00:16:44] Critics, including unions and consumer advocacy groups, cried foul, arguing that this was a massive conflict of interest.
[00:16:54] A lawsuit was filed on February 3rd, alleging that DOGE’s access to the Treasury’s systems violated federal privacy laws.
[00:17:03] And then there were the layoffs.
[00:17:06] DOGE didn’t just want to modernise technology; it wanted to shrink the federal workforce dramatically.
[00:17:15] By April 2025, DOGE claimed to have saved $150 billion through a combination of contract cancellations, grant terminations, and workforce reductions.
[00:17:30] But these cuts came at a cost.
[00:17:34] For example, the Department of Health and Human Services saw 20,000 positions slashed, including roles at the National Institutes of Health, which funds critical medical research.
[00:17:48] One analysis estimated that these cuts could lead to a $10 billion loss in economic activity and 44,000 jobs across the country.
[00:18:00] After all, these were 44,000 people, enough to fit a football stadium, who were now out of work, might now depend on the government for assistance, and be radically cutting down their own discretionary spending on all the sort of stuff that keeps the American economy driving forward.
[00:18:20] The United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, was hit even harder, with most of its programmes gutted, disbanded completely.
[00:18:33] Critics pointed out that these cuts weren’t just about trimming fat; they were dismantling programs that supported vulnerable populations, both at home and abroad.
[00:18:45] By May of 2025, some estimates linked DOGE’s foreign aid cuts to 300,000 deaths, mostly children.
[00:18:56] To this, the reaction of Musk and Trump can be summed up as “well, it shouldn’t be up to the American taxpayer to pay for all this stuff.”
[00:19:06] Like it or not, Trump won the election on an America-first mandate, and this was nothing if not America first.
[00:19:16] And alongside this, there were plenty of examples of federal government spending that raised a few eyebrows, even to Trump’s greatest critics.
[00:19:26] Funding for a transgender medical clinic in India, $20 million to create a Sesame Street show in Iraq, or even the discovery that the US Air Force had been charged $1,300 per reheatable coffee cup by Boeing.
[00:19:47] DOGE’s website proudly displayed a “Wall of Receipts,” listing thousands of terminated contracts and grants, with savings they claimed reached $205 billion by August 2025, a savings of $1,273.29 per taxpayer.
[00:20:10] To many Americans, this was refreshing, a government finally taking a hard look at where their tax dollars were going, and, most importantly, acting to fix it.
[00:20:22] Indeed, a March 2025 NBC poll found that 46% of voters thought DOGE was a good idea in principle.
[00:20:33] But the critics weren’t having it.
[00:20:36] They argued that DOGE’s savings were wildly exaggerated.
[00:20:41] Firstly, the $2 trillion figure that was floated in the days before the election was reduced to $1 trillion shortly after DOGE was established, then to $150 billion by April 2025, a reduction of more than 90%.
[00:21:00] And there were claims that it would actually have a negative effect; there wouldn’t just be no savings, it would end up costing the country money.
[00:21:10] Independent analyses, like one from the Internal Revenue Service, warned that DOGE’s cuts to tax enforcement could actually increase the federal deficit by hundreds of billions, as the IRS would struggle to collect revenue.
[00:21:27] In other words, these cost “savings” would be more than offset by losses in tax revenue, meaning the country lost, not saved money.
[00:21:39] And then there were the accounting errors and “creative” savings calculations.
[00:21:45] Journalists uncovered billions of dollars in miscounting, with some “savings” tied to contracts that had already been cancelled before DOGE even existed, and other “savings” accounting for the absolute maximum that could possibly be spent, and the real number almost always coming in much lower.
[00:22:07] And then there was what we can characterise as “The Musk Factor”.
[00:22:13] If DOGE was controversial, its leader was even more so.
[00:22:19] Elon Musk, the billionaire behind Tesla, SpaceX, and X, was the face of DOGE, even if he was officially just a “special government employee”, technically only allowed to work 130 days a year.
[00:22:35] His involvement was a double-edged sword.
[00:22:39] On one hand, his reputation as a disruptor gave DOGE credibility among those who wanted radical change. He wasn’t a career politician; he was a modern-day Thomas Edison —a tech genius and entrepreneur who had run wildly successful companies. If anyone was up to the challenge, it was him.
[00:23:02] On the other hand, Musk’s involvement raised red flags, tainting the project.
[00:23:08] His businesses rely heavily on government contracts; SpaceX alone has deals worth billions with NASA and the Department of Defence.
[00:23:18] Critics pointed out that Musk’s access to federal systems could benefit his companies while harming competitors. He was, after all, being given unfettered access to government systems, something that was perhaps worth hundreds of billions to his companies.
[00:23:39] By April 2025, just a few months after DOGE was established, the cracks were starting to show.
[00:23:47] Protests erupted across the country, with chants of “Elon Musk has to go” heard outside Tesla showrooms.
[00:23:55] In Manhattan, demonstrators waved signs reading “No Trump, No Musk, No Fascist USA.”
[00:24:03] There were organised boycotts of Tesla, Musk’s electric car company. Sales dropped dramatically, most prominently in Europe but also in the US, and this was followed by a crash in the share price.
[00:24:18] Musk was forced to intervene, and in April, he announced that he would be leaving DOGE to focus on Tesla.
[00:24:27] By the start of May, he was officially gone.
[00:24:31] Now, although its creator, and the man most associated with it, is no longer involved, DOGE is still active, and its official mandate runs until July 2026.
[00:24:46] So, what does the future hold for DOGE?
[00:24:49] As of September 2025, although it is not in the news as much as earlier in the year, it’s still an important question.
[00:24:59] President Trump could extend DOGE’s mandate with another executive order, and there’s talk of states like Oklahoma and Texas launching their own DOGE-inspired initiatives.
[00:25:12] Even some European leaders have expressed curiosity about the concept, wondering if a similar approach could work across the Atlantic.
[00:25:21] But the road ahead is far from smooth.
[00:25:25] The organisation is still plagued by legal battles.
[00:25:29] And as for public opinion, it remains split.
[00:25:33] Younger Americans especially disapprove of DOGE, and older, especially Republican-leaning voters, support it.
[00:25:43] For its supporters, DOGE is a bold experiment in making government leaner and more accountable, a chance to finally tackle the bureaucracy that’s been slowing America down.
[00:25:56] For its critics, it is a reckless power grab, one that risks dismantling vital services, eroding public trust, and furthermore, one that looks like it will even cost, not save, the country money.
[00:26:11] Whether it is a stroke of genius or a spectacular misstep, one thing is certain: DOGE has sparked a conversation about what government should be, who it should serve, and how it should be run.
[00:26:26] And that conversation, love it or loathe it, isn’t going away anytime soon.
[00:26:33] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on DOGE.
[00:26:37] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:26:41] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:26:45] What do you think of DOGE? Do you think it’s a fantastic idea and that every country should follow its example, that it was a terrible, politicised plot, or somewhere in between?
[00:26:56] For the members among you, you can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:27:05] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:27:11] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
