They need to cut off their balls if they have any....

Core DOGE staffers follow Musk out the door

Nearly six months into Trump's term, a string of senior DOGE employees have departed.

By Sophia Cai and Daniel Lippman

For six months, any General Services Administration employee who wanted to enter the epicenter of Elon Musk’s DOGE on the sixth floor of the agency’s headquarters had to pass an armed guard who checked names against a pre-approved list.

Now, the guard is gone. So are the signs in the elevator next to sixth floor buttons reading “Authorized Access Only.”

It’s emblematic of DOGE’s retreat from the center of the Trump administration’s orbit. The once-feared crew that barged into offices and slashed jobs at an unprecedented pace is a shell of its former self, owing to departures, lawsuits, bureaucratic roadblocks and, crucially, the loss of its chainsawer-in-chief: Musk.

At least eight of the core original DOGE staffers have left government, according to internal records reviewed by POLITICO and sources familiar with the matter granted anonymity to discuss it.

That list includes: Steve Davis, who operationally led DOGE; Nicole Hollander, who led the effort to shrink the government’s footprint and is married to Davis; Brad Smith, who led the DOGE team at HHS that made sweeping cuts; Chris Stanley, a Musk aide who helped install Starlink satellites on the roof of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building; Katie Miller, DOGE’s communications director; Amanda Scales, former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management and early gatekeeper for firing exemptions; DOGE’s chief counsel James Burnham, who appears to have resumed his private practice at King Street Legal and Vallecito Capital based on updated firm bios; and Tom Krause, who served as fiscal assistant secretary of the Treasury.

A senior White House official, granted anonymity to describe the employees, explained the departures by pointing to the fact that many DOGE staffers were special government employees, a designation that has a required end date.

“It was never the plan for the highest levels of DOGE officials to make a career out of the government,” the official said.

Elsewhere, at least seven DOGE engineers, most with high-level access across multiple agencies, have left, and at least three more are preparing to exit, according to internal agency records reviewed by POLITICO and another person familiar with the matter granted anonymity to speak freely.

“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, and that mission is moving full steam ahead,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement. “Under the President’s leadership, every agency and department is executing this mission seamlessly and, as a result, has yielded more than $170 billion in savings for the American people.”

Musk still has some allies in government. Despite a sour exit with senior White House officials, Davis remains in contact with some DOGE members, the person said, adding that his departure was nothing more than a “parlor trick.” Davis did not respond to a request for comment.

“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 White House official said of Davis.

While people have left the formal DOGE leadership, Musk allies are assuming key government roles. Scott Kupor, most recently a managing partner at the investment firm Andreessen Horowitz who has defended Musk, this week was confirmed as director of OPM. And at least half a dozen Musk-aligned CIOs across the government remain in their roles, including DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, who recently became chief information officer at the Social Security Administration.

Other DOGE veterans who have quietly assumed senior roles across the executive branch include Tyler Hassen, as acting assistant secretary of policy, management and budget at the Interior Department, and Jeremy Lewin, as acting director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance. Joe Gebbia is at OPM, overseeing the digitization of the federal government’s retirement process.

DOGE’s work is now much more targeted than the high-profile firings that defined the effort’s early months. Its recent work includes deleting unused websites and government phone lines, cancelling unused software licenses and working with the National Weather Service to upgrade the national weather radio system.

DOGE is also building AI.gov, a new initiative designed to accelerate government innovation with AI. The project is led by Thomas Shedd, who splits his time between leading GSA’s Technology Transformation Services and serving as CIO at the Labor Department.