While Elon Musk is preparing to scale back his involvement, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is continuing its aggressive approach to cutting federal contracts and grants. Recently, it uncovered savings exceeding $1.7 billion by targeting what it considers wasteful spending.
In the past few days, DOGE ended 269 federal contracts worth $845 million, resulting in $255 million in savings, according to a post on its X page Thursday. Additionally, it canceled $90 million in grants, including nearly $1 million for a “BIPOC culinary program” and $625,000 for a “Russian-Far East biodiversity partnership.”
These cuts follow DOGE’s announcement last week that it had terminated 57 contracts, including $120,000 allocated for an “Indonesia environmental policy and law enforcement specialist,” totaling $1.5 billion in savings.
Several states and advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against Musk, DOGE, and the Trump administration over the wave of cuts to federal agencies, personnel, and funding. Legal experts and courts remain divided over the constitutionality of Musk’s actions, given his status as a non-confirmed “special government employee” within the executive branch.
As of April 20, DOGE claims to have identified approximately $160 billion in savings, a mix of “asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment elimination, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.”
The backlash against DOGE is impacting Musk’s electric vehicle company, Tesla, leading the billionaire to announce that his “time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” as reported by The Center Square.
