As President Donald Trump celebrated his 100th day in office this week, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said it has cut at least $160 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.
When Trump signed an executive order establishing the agency on his Inauguration Day, DOGE set an ambitious goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget.
According to the Office of Government Ethics, ‘special government employees’ like Musk can work for the federal government no more than 130 days a year, which in Musk’s case will fall on May 30. He has already started pairing back his hours leading the controversial agency.
Fox News Channel’s ‘Jesse Watters Primetime’ had the opportunity to see behind the curtain of Musk’s infamous DOGE, which Democrats have railed against and Republicans have celebrated since Trump returned to the White House this year. The ‘DOGE boys’ reminded Watters on Thursday of some of the most shocking savings secured by the department this year.
Funding a former Taliban member
Earlier this year, DOGE discovered the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) had transferred $132,000 to Mohammad Qasem Halimi, a former Taliban member who was Afghanistan’s former Chief of Protocol. DOGE announced on March 31 that the contract was canceled.
Halimi was detained by the U.S. and held at Bagram Air Base for a year beginning Jan. 2, 2002. He held several positions in Afghanistan’s government following his release and was appointed as the Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs in Afghanistan in 2020.
‘A small agency called the United States Institute of Peace is definitely the agency we’ve had the most fight at. We actually went into the agency and found they had loaded guns inside their headquarters — Institute for Peace,’ a DOGE staffer told Watters. ‘So by far, the least peaceful agency that we’ve worked with, ironically. Additionally, we found that they were spending money on things like private jets, and they even had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban. This is real. We don’t encounter that in most agencies.’
USIP did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s inquiry.
Parties at Caesars Palace
Fox News Digital reported earlier this year that the nation’s schools spent $200 billion in COVID-relief funds on expenses ‘with little oversight or impact on students,’ such as Las Vegas hotel rooms and buying an ice cream truck, according to DOGE’s audits.
Granite School District in Utah spent their COVID-relief funds on $86,000 in hotel rooms for an educational conference at Caesars Palace, a ritzy Las Vegas casino, while Santa Ana Unified in California spent $393,000 to rent out a Major League Baseball stadium, according to a report by Parents Defending Education and shared by DOGE. Granite School District has since denied ‘any impropriety for having our educators participate’ in the Las Vegas conference.
The cost-cutting department also revealed that schools spent $60,000 of COVID-relief funds on swimming pool passes, while a California district used its funds to purchase an ice cream truck.
‘They were basically partying on the taxpayers’ dollars,’ Musk told Watters on Thursday.
Millions for ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who is chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus and who has collaborated closely with Musk to identify waste to cut, revealed that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) ‘authorized a whopping $20 million to create a ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq.’
Ernst said that under the Biden administration, USAID awarded the $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.’
Billions in ‘improper payments’ in 2024 alone
DOGE received a hand from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which released a report in March revealing that federal agencies wasted $162 billion in ‘improper payments,’ which was actually a decrease of $74 billion from the previous fiscal year.
GAO’s analysis revealed that of the 16 government agencies reporting improper payments, 75% of the waste found was concentrated in five programs: $54 billion from three Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Medicare programs; $31 billion in HHS Medicaid; $16 billion from the Department of the Treasury’s earned income tax credit; $11 billion from the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; and $9 billion from the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Restaurant Revitalization Fund.
Large amounts of DEI spending within the federal government
On the campaign trail and since taking office, Trump has made it clear he aims to slash diversity, equity and inclusion (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’ 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 DEI programs, the agency announced last month.
The Defense Department has been working with DOGE to slash 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 as part of its overall DOGE push.
And in February, the Department of Education said it is canceling more than $100 million in grants to DEI training as part of DOGE’s efforts.
Fox News Digital’s Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.