100 days later, US federal workers tally Doge's damage

Roughly 100 days after Elon Musk's dramatic departure from the Trump White House, federal workers are still grappling with the lasting damage from his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

- ALEX PIGMAN

The consequences of this unprecedented assault on the federal bureaucracy are expected to reverberate for years.

From his modest office in the executive building adjacent to the White House, Mr Musk orchestrated an aggressive takeover of major government branches.

His strategy was surgical yet devastating: deploy small teams of tech experts to systematically dismantle and disrupt the nation's more than 2 million-strong civil service.

The shock-and-awe campaign succeeded beyond expectations.

According to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan Washington-based NGO, nearly 200,000 civil servants have left the federal workforce so far.

For many of these workers - including numerous military veterans - the experience proved profoundly traumatic, with decades-long careers abruptly terminated and their life's work dismissed as meaningless waste.

Following Mr Musk's very public falling-out with President Donald Trump this spring, Doge has been largely dismantled.

"Not much" remains of the original operation, said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service.

"It's a little bit like Godzilla having flattened the city and left," Mr Stier told AFP. "Godzilla is gone, but there's still a flattened city."

'BASICALLY UNFIXABLE'