President Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with an Executive Order on the day of his inauguration.
Elon Musk spearheads this initiative providing recommendations to "slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies." And, there are no shortages of wasteful expenditures to uncover.
Musk described every agency as a ‘Target-rich environment” for finding waste, fraud, and abuse at a recent press conference with Trump in the Oval Office.
Trump's Executive Order creating DOGE renames an existing White House office called the U.S. Digital Service, created under President Barack Obama, to US DOGE Service. The Digital Service primarily works to improve government technology.
The newly named DOGE's purpose is to "implement the President's DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity," as well as a new “temporary” purpose of "advancing the President's 18-month DOGE agenda." Trump gave an end date for DOGE of July 4, 2026.
The U.S. Digital Service has about 230 employees currently who work on projects such as updating the IRS file system and improving the Social Security Agency’s (SSA) website. DOGE says its SSA work is projected to save the agency about $285 million.
Every day, since Elon Musk and his DOGE team began work, revelations about waste, fraud, and abuse, have come to light. There are so many that it is almost too much to keep track.
The South Shore Press, in its weekly DOGE Report, will highlight some especially egregious uses of taxpayer money. Here is a snapshot of some of what has been found across the agencies of the federal government.
- FEMA paid a hotel in New York City over $59 million to house and feed illegal immigrants in a luxury hotel. FEMA’s mission is supposed to be disaster relief for Americans.
- EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, with Musk, reported $20 billion that was spirited out of the federal government to a private account in the last days of the Biden Administration seemingly with no accountability as to where this money was going and for what purpose. $45 million in Diversity Equity, Inclusion (DEI) contracts were also canceled.
- USAID, under Biden, sent $20 million to a group called Sesame Workshop to produce a children’s show that "promotes inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups."
- Housing and Urban Development “lost” “$1.9 billion that was just recovered after being misplaced during the Biden administration due to a broken process.”
- Social Security currently pays over $100 billion/year to individuals with no Social Security Number or even a temporary ID number and some were so old they surely were dead. Musk said, ”At this point, I am 100% certain that the magnitude of the fraud in federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability, etc.) exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve ever heard by FAR. It’s not even close.”
- HHS canceled 62 contracts worth $182 million that were not healthcare programs. This included terminating a $168,000 contract for an Anthony Fauci exhibit at the NIH Museum.
- Department of Education terminated 70 DEI training grants totaling $373M. One trained teachers to “engage in ongoing learning and self-reflection to confront their own biases and racism, and develop asset-based anti-racist mindsets.”
- Department of Education terminated grants to the four “Equity Assistance Centers” totaling $33M. One of the programs assisted employees in “Disrupting their Whiteness”. Twenty-nine DEI training grants totaling $101 million were also ended.
- Health and Human Services (HHS) canceled 167 contracts saving $115 million, including a $2.23M contract for HHS for “equity assessments of existing program policies.”
- Department of Agriculture terminated 18 contracts for $9 million, including contracts for “Central American gender assessment consultant services”, “Brazil forest and gender consultant services”, and the “women in forest carbon initiative mentorship program.”
- DEI programs across the government here and abroad were canceled in the millions of dollars. Millions in savings is also realized by canceling subscriptions and other services to far-left-leaning media outlets.