The effects of DOGE’s initial blitz through the federal government – which included dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), embedding staffers in almost every agency and illegally firing people en masse – are still playing out.

Contrary to Musk’s promises, DOGE’s success is vague and tough to quantify. Measuring the full impact and determining whether the agency even exists as a centralized entity anymore is difficult, complicated by an ongoing effort from the government to block disclosure of documents, which is itself a symptom of the chaos that the department created.

Although the disarray and destruction left by DOGE is evident across the globe, we still do not really know exactly how the agency operated and its true effects. Instead, humanitarian aid organizations are still trying to assess the extent of the damage that DOGE created while ethics watchdogs have launched lawsuits trying to compel more transparency out of the government.