In recent days, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has reported a wide-ranging list of dubious federal government expenditures of taxpayers’ hard-earned money that have now been cancelled. Here are just a few of the most egregious contracts cancelled.
Americans no longer have to pay for lucrative contracts outsourcing plant-watering and something called an “enterprise mail management program”:
- “The VA cancelled a $56,000 contract to water ~8 plants for 5 years. This is ~$1400/plant/year. The contract has been canceled and DOGE will water the plants free of charge.”
- “$3.5M Dept. of VA consulting contract for outsourced ‘enterprise mail management program support services’ which the agency determined could be handled internally.”
Then, there’s the $3.5M consulting contract for “larval fish monitoring” that “the Bureau of Reclamation identified as non-essential.”
Another contract awarded “$364,500 to reduce social discrimination of recyclers in Bolivia.”
“@NIH cancelled seven grants for transgender experiments on animals,” according to DOGE.gov reports, including:
- $532K to “use a mouse model to investigate the effects of cross-sex testosterone treatment.”
- $33K to test “feminizing hormone therapy in the male rat.”
Thanks to DOGE, a $4 million grant “to increase workforce diversity in the construction materials sector” is no more.
Additionally, Americans are now spared from having to fund foreign aid for things like bees, peas, alpacas and “artisanal salt”:
- $39,250 for beekeeping in Brazil.
- $903,811 for alpaca farming in Peru.
- $813,210 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador.
- $731,105 to improve marketability of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala.
- $677,342 to expand fruit and jam sales in Honduras.
- $483,345 to improve artisanal salt production in Ecuador.
Another cancelled contract funded “$323,633 to promote cultural understanding of Venezuelan migrants in Brazil.”
The DOGE website also reports that, in all, the NIH has cancelled grants for approximately $10.9 million – including one to develop “personalized” 3-D avatars for various “gender identities”:
- $1.7M for the “China Health and Retirement Longitudinal study” at Peking University in Beijing, China.
- $135K for a research grant to China Medical University in Shenyang, China.
- $142K for “using telehealth to improve access to gender-affirming care.”
- $1.3M for “transforming health for gender-diverse young adults.”
- $120K for “personalized 3-D avatar tool development” focused on “gender identities.”
- $400K for researching “sources of minority stress and alcohol consumption” among “adults who report uncertainty about their sexual orientation.”
- $160K for researching “racialized sexual discrimination” among “young sexual minority men of color.”
- $241K for “an intervention to promote healthy relationships among transgender and gender expansive youth.”