Inside the DOGE Succession Drama Elon Musk Left Behind
What really happened when he logged out of Washington.
By Sophia Cai and Daniel Lippman, Politics
On a Thursday afternoon in early June, 12 staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency packed up their clothes and bedding from the sixth-floor of the Government Services Administration headquarters where they had been sleeping since February, and looked for new homes.
For months, the young engineers who had descended on the capital to shrink the federal bureaucracy had lived with the ever-present threat of backlash — public scrutiny, upset Cabinet officials, even the prospect that someone might assert criminal charges against them. But on the morning of June 5 something changed: Their figurehead, Elon Musk, had a falling-out with his patron, Donald Trump, that played out very publicly across the two men’s social media platforms.
