Eight more DOGE staffers join Musk in leaving the agency after tenure expiry

Eight senior staff members from DOGE, the internal Trump-era department tasked with cutting down federal waste, have officially left their posts to continue working in alignment with Elon Musk, according to Politico.

These exits follow months of quiet pullback from the team that once operated with unrestricted access and federal firepower inside the government’s central agencies.

For half a year, the sixth floor of the General Services Administration in D.C. was locked down. A private guard screened a short list of names, and elevator signs warned everyone else to stay out. Now, the guard is gone. So are the signs.

The entire sixth floor that used to house DOGE now feels more like a relic than a stronghold. With Musk no longer directly leading operations and Trump back in the White House, the internal crackdown team has thinned out both in numbers and in power.

Departures expose fading presence inside Trump’s government

Among those who’ve walked out are Steve Davis, the group’s operations head, and Nicole Hollander, who managed government downsizing and is married to Davis.

Brad Smith, who led DOGE operations at Health and Human Services, has also exited, along with Chris Stanley, a Musk associate who handled the installation of Starlink systems on the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Former comms chief Katie Miller, early personnel gatekeeper Amanda Scales, lead attorney James Burnham, and former Treasury fiscal assistant secretary Tom Krause round out the eight confirmed departures.

A White House official, speaking anonymously, said most of these people were hired under special government employee rules, meaning their terms were always expected to end. “It was never the plan for the highest levels of DOGE officials to make a career out of the government,” the official said.

More exits are coming. Seven engineers tied to DOGE have already resigned, most of them with top-level clearance across federal agencies. At least three more are preparing to leave, based on internal federal records. The exodus marks a huge shift from the department’s early days of massive firings and surprise office inspections.

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, pushed back against the idea that DOGE’s influence is fading. “Many Presidents have promised, but none other than President Trump has delivered to actually make government more efficient and root out waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington,” Fields said. He claimed over $170 billion in savings under Trump’s direction.

Musk’s allies now placed across government

Although Davis no longer has a title in the federal system, he’s still talking to DOGE staff. One person close to him allegedly described his exit as a “parlor trick,” saying he hasn’t really left the scene.

But a senior White House official dismissed that. “If you’re not a member of the federal government, you have zero influence in the decision-making and execution of the president’s agenda,” the official said.

Even as DOGE loses top names, new ones tied to Musk are taking over. Scott Kupor, previously with Andreessen Horowitz and a public defender of Musk, was just confirmed as the director of the Office of Personnel Management. At least six chief information officers who worked closely with DOGE are still in office. That includes Aram Moghaddassi, now running IT at the Social Security Administration.

Other Musk-linked staff now in high-level  government positions include Tyler Hassen, acting assistant secretary of policy and budget at the Interior Department, and Jeremy Lewin, acting head of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance. Joe Gebbia is also working at OPM, overseeing the full transition of the retirement system into digital infrastructure.

DOGE’s focus has changed too. No more purges. Instead, they’re cleaning up. Recent tasks include shutting down unused government websites, disconnecting inactive phone lines, canceling dead software licenses, and helping the National Weather Service overhaul its radio systems. The fast, visible moves of the past have been replaced by behind-the-scenes work.

Still, there’s one new public project on the way. It’s called AI.gov, and it’s being built to inject artificial intelligence into day-to-day government services. The site’s development is being led by Thomas Shedd, who’s balancing two major jobs, one at GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, and another as CIO of the Labor Department.

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