A new wave of federal disruption has landed in Washington as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), begins deploying agents to examine the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Federal officials are scrambling to adjust as DOGE’s presence marks a significant escalation in Musk and his allies’ campaign to reshape government bureaucracy.
The “nongovernmental” body, spearheaded by Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, was announced last year as a privately funded watchdog group designed to investigate inefficiency and redundancy within federal agencies. The initiative gained traction with the support of President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to be inaugurated as president later this month.
The term “Doge” originates from a widely recognized internet meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog, celebrated for its captions in broken English. The cultural phenomenon later inspired Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency initially created as a parody but which gained notable traction. In November, President-elect Trump unveiled the Department of Government Efficiency, an initiative designed to streamline federal operations and reduce waste.
The name was a deliberate nod to the Doge meme and Dogecoin. Musk has suggested that DOGE could slash up to $2 trillion from the federal budget by eliminating redundancies, scaling back the workforce, and dissolving