Elon Musk’s hold on the federal government is weakening, and the latest sign comes from one of his most notorious hires. Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old known as “Big Balls” online, has officially left the U.S. government.
Coristine, a recent high school graduate-turned-technologist, was part of the small group of Musk loyalists recently granted full-time positions at the General Services Administration, which the so-called Department of Government Efficiency used as its main hub.
A White House official confirmed that he resigned Monday, though the reasons remain unclear. By Tuesday afternoon, his government email and Google Workspace accounts were deactivated, and his name was removed from the internal White House DOGE directory.
Coristine’s time at DOGE was short but chaotic. Hired early in President Donald Trump’s second term, he quickly became an example of the agency’s dysfunction: young, unqualified, and given broad access to sensitive government systems. He attended high-level meetings across federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Education.
His persona only made things more absurd. Coristine embraced the nickname “Big Balls,” even adding it to his LinkedIn profile—something Musk reportedly found hilarious.
“People on LinkedIn take themselves, like, super seriously and are pretty averse to risk, and I was like, ‘I want to be neither of those things,’” Coristine said in a Fox News interview in May. “Honestly, I didn’t even think anyone would notice.”
Well, they noticed. And so did the cast of “Saturday Night Live,” which mentioned him during a cold open in March.
But it wasn’t just the nickname that attracted attention. Coristine’s rapid rise—from Neuralink intern and Northeastern University engineering student to DOGE protégé—worried longtime civil servants. He had previously been fired from a data security firm after allegedly leaking sensitive information to a competitor.
Still, he wasn’t a passive figure. Since February, Coristine had been involved in several high-stakes DOGE projects, including efforts to cut the budget at the State Department, where he helped plan the closure of diplomatic posts and layoffs of foreign service staff.
He also participated in activities at the U.S. Agency for International Development and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and he reportedly attended a Commerce Department meeting about Trump’s “gold card” visa plan, which offers citizenship for $5 million. Just days before his resignation, he was meeting with Treasury officials, according to WIRED.
Democrats, unsurprisingly, celebrated his departure.
“He got DOGE’d. Gone but not forgotten,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida wrote on X.
“That must be deflating,” quipped Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona.
Coristine’s exit comes after Musk’s own departure, suggesting that DOGE’s scorched-earth phase may soon be coming to an end.
Since Musk’s messy breakup with Trump, DOGE staffers have been preparing for the fallout. According to The Washington Post, some of Musk’s allies were already losing access to Federal Aviation Administration buildings. Even before the public feud, Cabinet secretaries had already begun reasserting control over hiring.
Maybe this really is the beginning of the end—and with it, the collapse of a reckless cost-cutting campaign that gutted everything from Social Security to scientific research.