Elon Musk has announced he will step back from the White House DOGE office after spending three months trying to radically reshape the federal government and its workforce.
“Starting next month, I will be allocating far more of my time to Tesla,” he said, “now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency” is done, Musk said in Tuesday’s Tesla earnings call.
He said he’ll continue to spend a day or two a week on government matters, “as long as it is useful,” and the president wants him to do so.
Musk’s announcement comes on the heels of Tesla’s disappointing quarterly earnings report Tuesday.
Under Musk’s unofficial leadership, DOGE has targeted a wide swath of federal agencies, including dismantling the US Agency for International Development, attempting to gain access to sensitive data and payment systems at the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department, and trying to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Musk has also helped Trump gut the federal workforce through buyout offers to government employees, mass firings of probationary workers, and downsizing of agencies like the National Institutes of Health.
Despite its large-scale targeting of federal agencies and workers, DOGE has not come close to its savings goals. Musk first promised that his sweeping DOGE cuts would save taxpayers $2 trillion, but later downgraded that to $1 trillion, and further again to $150 billion,
DOGE’s claimed savings have been riddled with mistakes and corrections, including removing $4 billion from its “Wall of Receipts” in March, dropping its real estate savings by $150 million later that month, and lowering its savings claims by over $9 billion over two days in February.
Musk’s involvement with DOGE was never meant to be permanent — as a “special government employee,” he is not allowed to serve more than 130 days in a 365-day period.
Under Trump’s original executive order, the DOGE office can run through July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the nation’s independence. It’s unclear what will happen with the initiative now given that many of DOGE’s top leaders are long-time Musk allies.
Correction: April 22, 2025 — A previous version of this story misstated Musk’s announcement regarding his DOGE role. He will be stepping back from DOGE, not leaving entirely.
