As President Trump marks his 100th day in office on Tuesday, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) says that it has cut at least $160 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, including several high-profile cuts that have been highlighted over the past few months.
Questionable spending in USAID’s $40 billion budget, including ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq
One of the most talked about DOGE targets in Trump’s first term was spending at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the Senate DOGE Caucus Chairwoman, who says she speaks to Musk about spending cuts every few days, published a list of projects and programs she says the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has helped fund across the years.
Ernst highlighted that the agency ‘authorized a whopping $20 million to create a ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq.’
Under the Biden administration, USAID awarded $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshopto produce a show called ‘Ahlan Simsim Iraq’ in an effort to ‘promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups.’
Several more examples of questionable spending have been uncovered at USAID, including more than $900,000 to a ‘Gaza-based terror charity’ called Bayader Association for Environment and Development and a $1.5 million program slated to ‘advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.’
Fox News Digital previously reported that nearly 15,000 grants worth $60 billion are set to be eliminated, according to internal documents. The grants amount to about 90% of foreign aid contracts and come after a review on spending by the State Department.
DOGE’s efforts at USAID did not come without opposition, including a federal judge in Maryland who ruled that the moves were unconstitutional. In March, a federal appeals court granted the Trump administration’s motion to extend a stay allowing DOGE to continue operating at USAID.
Slashing DEI contracts across the board
On the campaign trail and since taking office, President Trump has made it clear he aims to slash DEI spending in the federal government while making the case that a system of meritocracy should be the focus.
DOGE has announced over the last few months that it has cut hundreds of millions in DEI contracts.
Earlier this month, DOGE announced it had worked with the U.S. National Science Foundation to cancel 402 ‘wasteful’ diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) grants, which will save $233 million, including $1 million for ‘Antiracist Teacher Leadership for Statewide Transformation.’
The Department of Defense could save up to $80 million in wasteful spending by cutting loose a handful of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, the agency announced last month.
The Defense Department has been working with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in slashing wasteful spending, DOD spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video posted to social media.
Parnell listed some of the initial findings flagged by DOGE, much of it consisting of millions of dollars given to support various DEI programs, including $1.9 million for holistic DEI transformation and training in the Air Force and $6 million to the University of Montana to ‘strengthen American democracy by bridging divides.’
The Trump administration announced earlier this month it is slashing millions of dollars in DEI grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) as part of its overall DOGE push.
In February, the Department of Education (DOE) said it is canceling more than $100 million in grants to DEI training as part of DOGE’s efforts.
Cutting the federal workforce
DOGE has made efforts to cut federal spending by cutting the federal workforce, which it argues has become bloated with many employees doing jobs that are unnecessary or could be streamlined.
In February, DOGE terminated employment for 3,600 probationary Health and Human Services employees in a cut it says is estimated to save about $600 million in taxpayer dollars annually.
FOX Business reported in early April that over the previous two months, DOGE’s cutbacks have been attributed to 280,253 layoffs of federal workers and contractors at 27 agencies, according to Challenger tracking. There were an additional 4,429 job cuts attributed to the downstream effect of cutting federal aid and ending contracts, mostly at nonprofits and health organizations.
Roughly 75,000 federal employees accepted a deferred resignation program, Fox News Digital reported in February, which DOGE has argued will save the government money in the long run.
‘Gold bars’: DOGE-inspired EPA locates $20 billion in waste
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), inspired by DOGE’s crackdown on federal spending, said it had located $20 billion in tax dollars within the agency that the Biden administration reportedly ‘knew they were wasting.’
‘An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago, featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’ rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day,’ EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a video posted to X on Wednesday, citing another video from December.
The EPA found that just eight agencies were controlling the distribution of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to different entities ‘at their discretion,’ such as the Climate United Fund, which reportedly received just under $7 billion.
‘The ‘gold bars’ were tax dollars, and ‘tossing them off the Titanic’ meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it,’ Zeldin said, vowing to recover the ‘gold bars’ that were found ‘parked at an outside financial institution.’
Zeldin said that the ‘scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposely designed to obligate all the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.’
In a Fox News interview, the EPA administrator praised DOGE’s work at the agency and said that the cost-cutting department is ‘making us better.’
‘They come up with great recommendations, and we can make a decision to act on it,’ Zeldin said.
Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano contributed to this report