The Department of Government Efficiency has been digging around in government agencies, trying to find waste, fraud and abuse, and Elon Musk says the department’s efforts will save the country $160 billion in fiscal year 2026.
Musk has been leading the department as a “special government employee” since Jan. 20, but starting in May, his “time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” per his remarks on a conference call to discuss Tesla’s earnings. Tesla shares have fallen 41% so far in 2025, but they jumped 4% after his announcement on Tuesday.
With the savings from the cuts DOGE has suggested to USAID, Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., have proposed that $2 billion get reallocated to pay for outstanding repairs in state veterans’ homes.
USAID came under scrutiny for its spending almost immediately after President Donald Trump took office in January.
Spending by the agency that came under fire from Republicans included a $2 million grant to strengthen “gender-affirming health care” in Central America, a $20 million investment to enhance foreign fertilizer and a $1 million grant to see if cocaine makes Japanese quail friskier.
Here are some of the other most interesting DOGE findings so far — and whether or not they’re real.
How much has DOGE saved?
DOGE’s website says it has rooted out $160 billion dollars of waste and fraud from the federal government and that these findings will save the average taxpayer $993.79 each.
So far, the department has reported terminating 8,454 contracts, saving $30 billion; 9,699 grants, saving $33 billion; and 643 leases, saving about $311 million.
These terminations total $63.3 billion, and the website does not report where the remaining $97 billion is or will be cut from.
However, the site does include a breakdown of how much federal agencies spent in 2019 compared to 2024. Overall, there was a 51.7% increase in agency spending and a 42% increase in total government revenue in the last four years.
Here are some of the cuts initiated by DOGE.
$59 million to house migrants in New York City hotels
About a week and a half after Trump signed a February executive order that halted all FEMA expenditures temporarily, DOGE discovered a $59 million payment to house migrants in the country illegally in New York City hotels.
Elon Musk posted on X, “The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants. Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.“
As a result, four FEMA members were fired, per CNN.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said after news broke, “Sending $59 million to a migrant hotel to house illegal immigrants when there are still people in North Carolina and California who have not received FEMA funding is not something that this administration is going to tolerate.”
$15 million for family planning in Afghanistan
As part of a $100 million package to Afghanistan focused on “strengthening civil society, supporting media freedoms and protecting human rights, with a particular focus on the rights of women and girls,” USAID allocated $15 million to “procure contraceptives,” which included “oral contraceptives and condoms,” per a non-public congressional funding notice given to the Washington Free Beacon.
$700k to find out if the moon landing quote is what we thought it was
The National Science Foundation was awarded $700,000 to figure out if Neil Armstrong’s famous quote on the moon was transcribed incorrectly.
Was it “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” or was it “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”?
Well, the study was inconclusive, according to the Washington Examiner.
Who are the people behind DOGE?
Musk has been at the forefront of media and public scrutiny of DOGE, often becoming the target of those unhappy with the cuts. That has extended to his Tesla company, with multiple acts of vandalism against the car company reported across the country.
In one interview with Fox News host turned podcaster Tucker Carlson, Musk explained the need for DOGE.
“We’ve got a gigantic government bureaucracy. We’ve got overregulation, you’ve got agencies that have overlapping responsibilities. There’s something like 450 federal government agencies, almost two per year since America was founded,” he said. “We’re just creating new agencies all the time. It’s getting to the point where basically everything is illegal.”
Musk continued, “You just can’t get anything done. These become real costs to people. They’re hidden costs, but they’re very substantial.” He then gave the example of regular Americans trying to build new housing. “It’s very hard to build new housing if you’re burdened with massive requirements that don’t make any sense.”
But Musk is not the only one who’s working with DOGE who sees the department as necessary.
In an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, high-profile members of the department answered questions about the work they’ve been doing. Interviewees included Anthony Armstrong, a Morgan Stanley investment banker working with the Office of Personnel; Tyler Hassen, an energy executive working with the Interior Department; Tom Krause, the CEO of Cloud Software Group working with the Treasury; Steve Davis, the president of the Boring Company working as a DOGE administrator; and Joe Gebbia, a co-founder of Airbnb working with the digital retirement process.
Musk has also recruited a fleet of young coders, software engineers and entrepreneurs. The youngest on the team is 19-year-old Edward Coristine who had a summer internship at Musk’s brain-computer interface company, Neuralink. Coristine came under fire for his past social media posts.