DOGE struggles without Elon Musk at the helm

Published September 25, 2025 7:00am ET



Throughout this week, the Washington Examiner’s Restoring America project will feature its latest series titled “Reforming the Deep State: Reining in the Federal Bureaucracy.” We invited some of the best policy minds in the conservative movement to speak to the issues of what waste, fraud, abuse, and unaccountability exist throughout the federal government and what still needs to be done. To read more from this series, click here.

With Tesla CEO Elon Musk no longer in charge, the Department of Government Efficiency’s aggressive actions to slash the federal workforce and wasteful spending have fallen into the background of President Donald Trump’s second administration.

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