Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is preparing to step down from his special assignment as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, but he took time this week to reveal the five most outrageous things his team has found in an interview with Fox News’ Jesse Watters.
When Trump signed an executive order creating DOGE on Inauguration Day, the agency set an ambitious target of trimming $2 trillion from the federal budget.
Under Office of Government Ethics rules, “special government employees” like Musk may serve no more than 130 days per year, meaning Musk’s term will end on May 30. He has already begun scaling back his hours at the agency, Fox noted.
So as his time with DOGE comes to an end, he revealed to Watters the most egregious government waste that he and his team found in just a few short months.
Funding a member of the Taliban
Earlier this year, DOGE uncovered that the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) had paid $132,000 to Mohammad Qasem Halimi—a former Taliban member who served as Afghanistan’s Chief of Protocol. On March 31, DOGE announced the contract’s cancellation.
Halimi was detained by U.S. forces at Bagram Air Base for a year starting January 2, 2002. After his release, he held various Afghan government posts and was appointed Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs 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.”
School district parties in Las Vegas
Earlier this year, Fox News Digital reported that DOGE audits found schools spent $200 billion in COVID‑relief funds on items “with little oversight or impact on students,” including Las Vegas hotel rooms and even an ice cream truck.
Granite School District in Utah used $86,000 of its COVID‑relief funds on hotel rooms at Caesars Palace for an educational conference, while California’s Santa Ana Unified spent $393,000 to rent a Major League Baseball stadium, according to a Parents Defending Education report shared by DOGE. Granite has since denied any impropriety in sending educators to the Las Vegas event.
The Department of Government Efficiency also found that schools spent $60,000 on swimming‑pool passes and that one California district used relief funds to buy an ice cream truck.
‘Sesame Street’ … in Iraq
Sen. Joni Ernst (R‑Iowa), chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus, who has worked with Musk on cutting waste, revealed that USAID “authorized a whopping $20 million to create a ‘Sesame Street’ in Iraq.”
Ernst said that during President Biden’s administration, USAID gave $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshop to 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’
DOGE got a boost from a March GAO report showing federal agencies made $162 billion in improper payments—a figure that, while staggering, was $74 billion lower than the prior 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 at HHS, Medicare/Medicaid, the Treasury Department, the Department of Agriculture, and the Small Business Administration.
DEI funding
On the campaign trail and since taking office, Trump has emphasized his goal of drastically reducing federal spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, arguing that a true meritocracy should prevail.
In recent months, DOGE has announced cuts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars from DEI contracts.
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