Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has aggressively moved to shrink the federal government. His administration has frozen federal grants, issued executive orders aligned with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and, most prominently, created what he calls the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
DOGE has been billed as a cost-cutting initiative, although the actual amount of money being saved remains unclear. To lead DOGE, Trump appointed Elon Musk, a megadonor whose companies hold federal contracts worth billions. Musk has already moved forward with major cuts, including sweeping workforce reductions, the curtailment of government operations and purges of entire agencies. Thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs.
While certainly dramatic, these actions reflect a longer trend of privatizing government. Indeed, my sociological research shows that the government has steadily withdrawn from economic production for decades, outsourcing many responsibilities to the private sector.
