Elon Musk’s cost-cutting group dropped its total purported savings from eliminating federal office space after losing some battles within the Trump administration.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency on Wednesday sharply cut back the number of federal real estate leases it claimed to have terminated, signaling that the group is losing at least some internal battles to get rid of government office space.
For weeks, Mr. Musk’s group said on its website that it had terminated more than 700 leases, and saved more than $460 million in the process.
But around 1 a.m. Wednesday, the group eliminated references to 136 of those cancellations. That reduced its savings by $140 million, or almost 30 percent of the total for lease cancellations it had claimed a day earlier.
Mr. Musk’s team did not give a reason for the changes. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The deletions appeared to reflect a new dynamic within the Trump administration: Some federal agencies had taken on DOGE and seemed to have won, preserving office space that Mr. Musk’s group said they had to give up. Last week, the General Services Administration, an agency that oversees the federal real estate portfolio, said it was rescinding more than 100 lease terminations notices.
In many cases, the reasons behind the reversals were unclear. G.S.A. officials said they walked back some terminations because of “feedback from customer agencies.” But in some instances, lawmakers and agency officials said they had pushed back on the cuts.