In the six weeks since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have been working fast to scale back government spending by firing federal employees and gutting U.S. agencies.

Musk can often be seen wearing a casual T-shirt under a blazer, sporting a baseball cap in the Oval Office and in Cabinet meetings. Musk is a proud member of President Trump’s administration, a special government employee and the overseer of the DOGE, a department created by one of Trump’s executive orders.

According to the Jan. 20 order, the Department of Government Efficiency was created to “modernize federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

Joe Mello, a DePaul political science professor, said the Trump administration has worked beyond the constraints of the Constitution to implement plans.

“He has been nominated by the president; he hasn’t gone through a nomination process. None of that stuff, right?” Mello said. “And that was all things that the founders were terrified might happen.”

Elon Musk is the world’s richest person and joined the wealthiest presidential administration in modern history, with several other billionaires and mega-millionaires, such as Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.

Anna Tokash, a DePaul sophomore studying secondary education English, said the presence of billionaires at the inauguration struck her. She said it is “ironic” that Musk is in charge of limiting government spending.

“I feel like billionaires probably don’t have that big of an idea of how much money is too much money,” Tokash said.

In his time as the head of DOGE, Musk has worked with his small team of around 40 people to fire over 30,000 federal employees, according to PBS. As of March 5, DOGE has saved an estimated $105 billion in funding according to their website, however that number is unverifiable.

Contracts, grants and real estate savings are the only categories that DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” provides numbers for. Additionally, several contracts on the “Wall of Receipts” have been deleted, including a $1.9 billion agreement from the Internal Revenue Service for “IT Strategy and Modernization,” according to ABC News.

DOGE has hollowed out many agencies including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protections Bureau.   

Mello said federal employees contribute more to Americans than they often realize. If DOGE lays off workers, the government will still need to carry out the responsibilities of the dismantled agencies, according to Mello.

“They’re going to fire these government employees, realize they’re the ones that have the expertise, rehire them as private contractors and pay them more,” Mello said. “This is not going to save us money. It’s a charade, a ruse by somebody who doesn’t know the first thing about government.”

Sarah Schroeder, a fourth-year DePaul history student, listens to the news every day and thinks Musk is unqualified for being in charge of DOGE.

“He’s doing a horrible job, by the looks of it,” Schroeder said. “He’s just slashing whatever he sees fit for his purposes. It doesn’t seem like he’s competent at all.” 

Musk and his group have also attempted to access database systems from the Treasury Department, Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration, among others. In February, a federal judge in Maryland blocked the Education Department and the Office of Personnel Management from disclosing sensitive data to DOGE.

Melina Arevalo, a comedy arts senior at DePaul, said it is scary that DOGE wants to obtain sensitive federal databases. She thinks the government’s access to large amounts of citizen’s data is “odd.”

“I feel like this was always a concern with the government, but now that it’s just a guy that we can all turn to and be like, ‘well, you are kind of doing this,’” Arevalo said.

Tokash said she does not know yet how DOGE’s actions will affect Americans.

“It’s scary that this many things are changing so quickly in the span of (six) weeks of him being in office,” Tokash said.

Several of DOGE’s own employees are part of Generation Z, with at least one as young as 19. Mello said DOGE hired people whose moral compass does not follow the interests of the country. 

“This is what Trump and Musk both do — is they grab underlings who would never get a job from anybody else in any other administration, because they just people would be super loyal to them,” Mello said.

At Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress, he praised Musk and DOGE for their efforts, saying Musk has been “working very hard.”

“By slashing all of the fraud, waste and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors and put more money in the pockets of American families,” Trump said in his speech.

Mello said he will be watching to see if Trump’s administration and DOGE start openly defying Supreme Court decisions.

“Is Musk in charge? Yes. Is he steering this country in a different direction? Yes. Am I worried about the state of our democracy? Yes,” Mello said.

However, Republicans are starting to push back. On March 5, GOP senators told Musk in a private meeting that DOGE spending cuts will need to be voted on by Congress.

Trump told his Cabinet on Thursday, March 6, that Elon Musk is not in charge of their departments and they decide final job cuts, according to NBC. This was Trump’s first significant act to narrow Musk’s work. 

Schroeder said she would like to see Musk have less of a role in the administration moving forward.

“Get him out of there,” Schroeder said. “I really would never, ever want to hear the words ‘Elon Musk’ and ‘White House’ in the same sentence again.”

Arevalo said she hopes in the future there will be “a more revolutionary mindset in the day-to-day American” and “a change in the system brought on by the citizens of the country.”

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