On Nov. 12, 2024, President Donald Trump announced a new federal department: The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Led by the “Great Elon Musk” and “American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy,” its target was to dismantle bureaucracy on the federal level, slashing excess regulations and cutting wasteful spending. At the time, Trump referred to it as the “‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.”
Established by executive order on day one of Trump’s presidency, DOGE first added a “Wall of Receipts” to their website in February, touting the money it had allegedly saved by ending unnecessary government contracts. The New York Times, along with other news organizations, found errors in every one of the five largest contracts posted. Errors included counting the same contract cancellation three times and boasting saved numbers that were grossly inflated. Though DOGE quietly removed those five claims after news organizations wrote about such errors, newer versions continued to misrepresent the truth.
Several receipts link to the wrong contracts, which have not been canceled, and savings are purposely misleading. According to NPR, even if taken at face value, its claims of savings end up being less than 1% of the federal government’s spending in the last fiscal year.
DOGE’s receipts for grants aren’t any better. Its top grant termination, claiming $1.75 billion saved, is “wrong twice over.” Other grant receipts show a key misunderstanding of how grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development work. Such grants contain ceiling values, which is the most the government is willing to pay. But this top amount, according to nonprofits, is not always guaranteed, so the government often ends up paying less. So when DOGE cites that it saved $83.6 million on a canceled grant to EngenderHealth, the reality is that the government promised to pay $1.2 million and has paid $500,000, meaning that the real savings for terminating this grant were $700,000.
DOGE’s mischaracterizations go beyond obfuscating how much money is actually being saved — they blatantly misrepresent what they’re cutting funding from. In early March, DOGE and the Department of Agriculture falsely identified a study as prioritizing “menstrual cycles in transgender men” and canceled the related $600,000 grant to Southern University in Louisiana. The grant was actually “intended for research on the potential health risks posed by synthetic feminine hygiene products and for developing alternatives using natural fibers and fabrics.” Nowhere did it mention prioritizing transgender men — in fact, it repeatedly emphasized its efforts to “educate young women and adolescent girls about menstrual hygiene.” The original tweet highlighting the grant revocation was retweeted by DOGE and can be found on their website.
During Trump’s address to Congress on March 4th, he claimed that DOGE had uncovered yet another appalling expenditure — “$8 million dollars for making mice transgender.” A day later, the administration doubled down with an article accusing the “Fake News losers at CNN” of trying, and failing, to fact check this claim. It also included a list of experiments and their associated grant costs, which were completely misleading.
In reality, millions were not spent on transgender animal experiments. The various studies being referred to include studies to understand the health effects of hormones on all humans, Alzheimer’s research and important data on breast cancer research for transgender individuals — a group that deserves the same kind of research and healthcare as anyone else.
DOGE’s largest attacks have been on federal departments themselves. In order to carry out Trump’s executive order, “Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” departments have been forced to fire thousands of probationary workers and comply with a hiring freeze.
The Department of Health and Human Services has shrunk by 20,000 employees — and projections suggest the Food and Drug Administration will lose 3,500, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention will lose 2,400 and the National Institute of Health will lose 1,200 researchers, scientists and doctors. The Department of Veteran Affairs has fired 2,400 employees and plans to fire up to 83,000 — more than one-in-four VA employees are veterans. About 10% of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration workforce has been cut. The Department of Education, which has been cut in half, has also lost every attorney responsible for ensuring that states and school districts use federal K-12 money appropriately.
With downsized departments have come canceled grants and contracts. Canceled projects within the Department of Education include “rigorous evaluations of how the federal government spends education dollars, efforts to improve the reading and math skills of U.S. students and guides for teachers on evidence-based methods of instruction.” DOGE has also terminated much of mass student data collection, as well as U.S. participation in international assessments, making it almost impossible to tell how well students are doing. In the health sector, federal research funding to public universities has taken a substantial cut. This means that studies on Alzheimer’s, muscle health, vision loss, heart failure and even AI safety have been halted. Several frozen studies have left people with experimental drugs and devices in their body with no access to care. Universities have begun to cut admissions across graduate programs due to lack of funding.
What does all this mean for U.S. citizens? Less services and higher costs. The NOAA, for example, has been forced to reduce its number of weather balloon launches, meaning less data from the sky and less precise forecasting. For college students, there will be fewer loans and financial aid. Chronic and terminal illnesses, such as cancers, will continue to go untreated. As for government efficiency, expect even more delays as the workforce diminishes with every slash.
WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are solely the views of the writer.
Contact Sam Kats at [email protected].
