Tag Archive for: department of government efficiency

Solar Picnic Tables? How The Federal Government Has Treated Your Tax Dollars With Utter Disdain

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The House Oversight Committee’s subpanel on government efficiency held a hearing Tuesday exposing billions of taxpayer dollars wasted annually on outdated federal buildings.

Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who leads the Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency (DOGE), opened the hearing by slamming federal agencies for maintaining a bloated real estate footprint. She pledged to continue pushing to “right-size” the federal government’s real estate portfolio.

“Here in D.C., [the Government Accountability Office] found in 2023 that the vast majority of federal agency headquarters buildings were less than 25% occupied — some much less,” Greene said. “Meanwhile, from 2022 to 2024, the backlog of deferred maintenance on the aging buildings the government owns grew from $216 billion to $370 billion. That’s more than one-third of a trillion dollars it will cost to restore them — if we don’t sell them.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has flagged federal property management as a “high-risk” area since 2003. Yet despite two decades of warnings, the Biden administration allowed billions to be spent not only to maintain vacant offices but also on lavish furniture purchases, according to the subcommittee’s review.

Greene highlighted early Trump administration moves, including canceling nearly 700 federal leases totaling 7.9 million square feet of space — moves she said saved taxpayers around $400 million. One such canceled lease was a 15-year, quarter-billion-dollar agreement for luxury office space on Pennsylvania Avenue, signed by the Biden administration to house Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The building, Greene said, had zero broadcasting capabilities, and taxpayers would have been on the hook for another $130 million in renovations.

John Hart, CEO of the watchdog group OpenTheBooks, framed the issue in visceral terms.

“Today’s expansive, excessive and sometimes opulent federal real estate portfolio is both a monument to the administrative state and a mausoleum of lost dreams, opportunity and freedom for American taxpayers,” Hart said in his opening statement. “Do federal employees need seven figures worth of abstract modern art to make the government run?”

Hart testified that agencies spent $4.6 billion on furniture since FY 2021, including $284,000 on FEMA conference rooms and nearly $120,000 on leather recliners for the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. Hart also cited the $238,000 the CDC spent on solar-powered picnic tables which, by the agency’s own social distancing rules, “should have sat unoccupied,” he said.

David Marroni of the GAO echoed the concern over dysfunction and inertia inside the federal property apparatus.

“The pandemic shined a spotlight on these long-standing problems,” Marroni told lawmakers. “The federal government has held on to too much space and has been too slow in shedding underused properties … Progress has been slow. Agencies were in a wait-and-see mode for too long.”

Marroni said that, for the first time, agencies are being forced to begin tracking actual building utilization data starting this summer.

Democrats on the panel said the Trump administration’s rapid disposal plan was ideologically driven and economically reckless.

“I think it’s very clear that part of the agenda here is really about dismantling the administrative state and using real assets of the federal government to do that,” Democratic New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury, the ranking member of the subcommittee, said in the hearing. “The point here is that things are not always as they appear in Washington, D.C., and I think it’s very clear that this is not about the federal taxpayers and the American people. This is about disposing of federal property and a fire sale to make the wealthy more wealthy. Thanks.”

Republicans fired back. Texas Rep. Pat Fallon cited GAO findings that 17 of the 24 largest federal agencies used less than 25% of their office capacity. Republican South Carolina Rep. William Timmons said the goal was to offload waste and inject new life into dead office space. They cited reforms under the Federal Property Management Act and the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act of 2016 as a roadmap for future consolidation.

“I guarantee you that a developer — a big bad developer — is going to come in,” Timmons said. “They’ll build this massive building, put housing in it and pay taxes. That’s the highest and best use.”

Greene said the DOGE subcommittee intends to introduce legislation aimed at streamlining the disposal process for surplus federal property and imposing stricter accountability measures for future real estate acquisitions. She also said the subcommittee would work closely with the White House and the GAO to accelerate selloffs and lease terminations.

AUTHOR

Thomas English

Comtributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

 

EXCLUSIVE: Dark Web Tesla Doxxers Used Widely-Popular Parking App Data To Find Targets, Analysis Shows

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A dark web doxxing website targeting Tesla owners and allies of Elon Musk appears to be compiled from hacked data originally stolen from a massive ParkMobile app breach in 2021, according to records obtained by a data privacy group. 

The site, known as DogeQuest, first appeared in March and publishes names, home addresses, contact details and other personal information tied to Tesla drivers and DOGE staff. Marketed as a hub for anti-Musk “creative expressions of protest,” the platform has been linked to real-world vandalism and remains live on the dark web. Federal investigations into DogeQuest are already underway, the New York Post first reported.

“If you’re on the hunt for a Tesla to unleash your artistic flair with a spray can, just step outside — no map needed! At DOGEQUEST, we believe in empowering creative expressions of protest that you can execute from the comfort of your own home,” the surface-web DogeQuest site reads. “DOGEQUEST neither endorses nor condemns any actions.”

A screenshot of the DogeQuest surface website captured on April 3, 2025. (Captured by Thomas English/Daily Caller News Foundation)

ObscureIQ, a data privacy group, compiled a breakdown of the data — obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation — and determined 98.2% of records used to populate the site matched individuals affected by the 2021 ParkMobile breach.

DogeQuest originally appeared as a surface web doxxing hub, encouraging vandalism of Teslas and displaying names, addresses, contact details and, in some cases, employment information for roughly 1,700 individuals. The site used stolen ParkMobile records along with data purchased from brokers, flagging anyone who had a Tesla listed in their vehicle registration profile, according to ObscureIQ’s analysis.

The platform — now operating as “DogeQuest Unleashed” via a .onion dark web address — has also published personal details of high-value targets including senior military officials, federal employees and private sector executives in Silicon Valley. A spreadsheet reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation indicates several individuals targeted work areas like cybersecurity, defense contracting, public health and diplomatic policy. DOGE staff and their families appear prominently throughout the data.

EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Explores Criminal Charges Against Ousted USIP Mutineers

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The Department of Justice is exploring potential criminal charges against former U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) officials who attempted to block the Trump administration’s leadership changes at the federally funded think tank Monday, a senior DOJ official told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The official, who requested anonymity, told the DCNF the DOJ is examining whether certain USIP actions — such as the removal and destruction of internal and external door locks — created illegal fire hazards. The official also flagged the widespread distribution of internal flyers instructing USIP staff not to cooperate with incoming Trump administration officials as potentially obstructive conduct. The DCNF was the first to report on USIP’s internal flyer campaign and destruction of door locks.

“Eleven board members were lawfully removed, and remaining board members appointed Kenneth Jackson acting president,” Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary, previously told the DCNF. “Rogue bureaucrats will not be allowed to hold agencies hostage. The Trump administration will enforce the President’s executive authority and ensure his agencies remain accountable to the American people.”

The inquiry — which remains in its early stages, the official emphasized — follows a contentious standoff Monday after former USIP leadership tried to block the installation of Kenneth Jackson, who President Donald Trump appointed as the institute’s new president on March 14. The Trump administration determined the institute had failed to comply with a Feb. 19 executive order requiring federally funded organizations like USIP to scale operations down to their bare statutory minimums, triggering a leadership shakeup the institute attempted to resist.

USIP leadership began preparing for a confrontation weeks before the executive order was issued. A Feb. 6 internal document exclusively obtained by the DCNF outlined plans to deny building access to outside officials and reasserted the institute’s discretion over security systems and facilities. Flyers with the names and photos of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officials were posted throughout the building, instructing staff to report their presence and avoid conversation.

After Jackson and other DOGE officials arrived on March 14 with law enforcement and a copy of Trump’s order, they were turned away by USIP’s legal counsel, sources previously told the DCNF. Over the following weekend, USIP leadership escalated its resistance — terminating its private security firm, disabling internet and phone systems and resorting to walkie-talkie communication inside the building.

DOGE officials returned Monday to find the building locked down and staff barricaded on the fifth floor. USIP officials called the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), sources previously told the DCNF, who only later arrived at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. after reports of obstruction by institute staff. MPD entered the fifth floor through emergency stairwells and removed former USIP President George Moose and other senior officials from the premises.

While a federal judge declined to issue a restraining order halting the leadership transition Wednesday, she sharply criticized DOGE’s cooperation with law enforcement, despite the circumstances surrounding USIP’s refusal to comply.

The DOJ official did not specify which individuals were under investigation or when a decision on charges might be made.

AUTHOR

Thomas English

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Tim Walz Gloats About Tesla Stock Dip While Ignoring His State’s 1.6 Million Shares In Its Retirement Fund

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Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently mocked Tesla and CEO Elon Musk over the company’s stock dropping while seemingly ignoring the fact that Minnesota’s state pension fund contained sizable shares of Tesla stock.

WATCH: Tim Walz Gloats About Tesla Stock Dip Ignoring His State’s 1.6 Million Shares in state Retirement Fund

During a Tuesday town hall in Wisconsin, Walz said that he checks the value of Tesla’s stock when he needs “a little boost.” Walz’s state, however, had 1.6 million shares of Tesla stock in its retirement fund as of June 2024, directly impacting public workers such as teachers and first responders.

“Some of you know this, on the iPhone, they’ve got that little stock app,” Walz said Tuesday. “I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day — $225 and dropping. And if you own one, we’re not blaming you. You can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off.”

“I’m not a vindictive person or anything but I take great pleasure in the fact that this guy’s life is going to get very, very difficult,” Walz added about Musk.

Musk recently told employees to hang on to their Tesla stock after the company’s shares dropped more than 50% in just three months, Bloomberg reported Friday. Shortly after Walz’s diss about Tesla stocks, Musk took to social media to jab at Walz over his failed 2024 vice presidential campaign.

“Sometimes when I need a little boost, I look at the @JDVance portrait in the @WhiteHouse and thank the Lord,” Musk wrote in a March 19 post on X.

Investor Kevin O’Leary criticized Walz during a Thursday appearance on CNN over the governor’s recent comments about Tesla’s stock, calling it “beyond stupid.”

“That poor guy [Walz] didn’t check his portfolio and his own pension plan for the state,” O’Leary said. “It’s beyond stupid what he did.”

“What’s the matter with that guy?” O’Leary added. “He doesn’t check the well-being of his own constituents.”

Tesla dealerships and chargers across the U.S. have been hit with a wave of vandalism in recent weeks amid ongoing backlash against Musk due to his close ties to the White House and his efforts to eliminate wasteful spending across the federal government as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Notably, other blue states have previously invested in Tesla stocks alongside Minnesota, including Oregon, which has roughly $135.3 million in Tesla stocks in its state pension fund, which equates to 0.7% of the fund’s total public equity holdings, according to OregonLive. New York’s pension fund also possessed roughly $1.42 billion worth of Tesla stock as of December 2024, according to Pensions & Investments.

Still, many Democratic lawmakers have continued publicly criticizing Musk and Tesla, including Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who claimed in March that Musk “is a billionaire con man with a lot of money,” as well as Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who wrote in a Thursday post on X that President Donald Trump and Musk “turned the White House into a Tesla dealership. Is that where you want your taxpayer dollars going? Nope.”

Walz is currently embarking on a town hall tour of red districts across the U.S. The Minnesota governor could run for reelection in 2026, though he told The New Yorker in a March 2 interview that he would potentially consider launching a 2028 presidential bid if the conditions and his “skill set” were right.

Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

Ireland Owens

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Returns Nearly $1 Billion In ‘Unused’ Federal Funds After Meeting With Elon Musk

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Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday that Florida has returned nearly $1 billion in federal funds after meeting with Elon Musk.

“For years, Florida has been trying to return federal funds to the federal government due to the ideological strings attached by the Biden Administration—but they couldn’t even figure out how to accept it,” the governor said in a post on X. “Today, I met with @elonmusk and the DOGE team, and we got this done in the same day.”

“Other states should follow Florida in supporting DOGE’s efforts!”DeSantis said.

The post was accompanied by an email from DeSantis’ office to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The email noted after his visit with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the state of Florida returned $878,112,000 in taxpayer dollars to the federal government.

The governor’s office said they will “also continue to identify other unused or surplus federal funding granted to Florida and determine if further refunds can be made.”

“Almost a billion dollars of your taxpayer money saved,” Musk said in response to DeSantis’ post. The announcement comes one month after DeSantis revealed the creation of the Florida DOGE task force which is set to “further eliminate waste within state government, save taxpayers money, and ensure accountability in Florida,” according to a press release.

“Florida has set the standard for fiscally conservative governance, and our new Florida DOGE task force will do even more to serve the people of Florida,” DeSantis said in a statement. “It will eliminate redundant boards and commissions, review state university and college operations and spending, utilize artificial intelligence to further examine state agencies to uncover hidden waste, and even audit the spending habits of local entities to shine the light on waste and bloat.”

The Florida task force is set to eliminate bureaucratic bloat and modernize the state’s government “to best serve the people of Florida.”

AUTHOR

Fiona McLoughlin

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE:Commerce Secretar Hyoward Lutnick Addresses Concerns DOGE Cuts Will Harm Economic Numbers

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

It Turns Out Americans Can Smoothly File Their Taxes Without Thousands Of IRS Bureaucrats

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The IRS has maintained stable tax return processing and refund issuance despite significant staff reductions through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to tax professionals.

The agency has eliminated thousands of positions in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s government streamlining initiative, raising concerns among Democrats about potential disruptions during tax season. Despite these workforce reductions, electronic filing systems and refund processing have continued to function effectively, though some delays have emerged in compliance and enforcement areas, tax professionals told CNN on Sunday.

“It seems to be business as usual,” Mark Koziel, CEO of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, told the outlet, adding that tax preparers have been able to file returns and receive refunds without significant issues.

The IRS workforce has shrunk considerably, with about 6,700 probationary employees terminated in February and nearly 5,000 more accepting voluntary resignation packages. An additional 6,800 employees could face layoffs in May, sources separately told CNN.

H&R Block representatives confirmed to the outlet that tax returns are being processed efficiently, reinforcing observations from CPAs nationwide that filings are continuing as expected. Despite previously urging the agency to boost its total employment to 100,000 as part of a “modernization effort,” former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel acknowledged the IRS is operationally stable despite the cuts — though he attributed this to previous investments in agency technology and other tools implemented during his tenure under former President Joe Biden.

“The layoffs so far have been more targeted on the collection side than the taxpayer services side,” Werfel told CNN.

His calls to increase IRS employment came after Biden had already approved the hiring of 87,000 new IRS employees over a period of ten years beginning in 2023.

Critics maintain that deeper staffing reductions could eventually impact both taxpayer services and federal revenue collection — while conservative criticism has steadily increased over recent years amid massive staff expansions and the implementation of a reporting requirement for payment platforms to report transactions exceeding $600 to the IRS, a threshold that was significantly lowered from the previous $20,000 limit in 2022.

Despite these concerns, early IRS statistics show that refunds are being issued at a slightly higher rate than last year, with the average refund amount up nearly 6% compared to the same period in 2024. The agency has processed over 43.6 million refunds as of March 7, even as the total number of returns received is slightly down from last year.

The IRS remains the most unpopular federal agency in America, with a July Pew Research poll showing 50% of Americans view it unfavorably. Republicans generally hold more negative opinions following the agency’s 2017 formal apology for subjecting conservative groups to “heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays” when processing tax-exempt applications.

AUTHOR

Thomas English

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

DOGE NEWS: $300 Million in Business Loans for Kids Under 11

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Last week, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered a government agency called the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) with an annual budget of $61 million that operates in Latin America in a similar way to USAID but separately. 

On Tuesday, it was announced that all grants to the agency had been canceled and all but one IAF employee had been laid off (they can’t all be fired because closing the agency entirely would be beyond the executive branch’s authority, since the agency was created by an act of Congress).

Examples of cancelled grants: 

  • $904,811 for raising alpacas in Peru,
  • $364,500 to prevent social discrimination against recyclers in Bolivia,
  • $813,210 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador,
  • $323,633 to encourage cultural understanding of Venezuelan immigrants in Brazil,
  • $731,105 to improve sales of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala,
  • $677,342 to expand fruit and jam sales in Honduras,
  • $483,345 to improve production of fine table salt in Ecuador, and
  • $39,250 to beekeepers in Brazil.

DOGE also claims that they found thousands of cases where more than $300 million in loans were granted to children.

It was revealed today that last year, 45% of IAF spending was on salaries and administrative costs for the agency, with only 55% going to grants.

Other examples of canceled grants have been released:

  • $523,000 for avocado marketing in Honduras,
  • $770,550 for cocoa farming in Peru,
  • $1,509,200 for seed banks in Haiti and the Caribbean, and more.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has canceled seven grants for animal sex-change therapy trials, including $532,000 for testosterone injections into female rats and $33,000 for female hormones injections into male mice.

President Trump mentioned this finding in his address to Congress last week.

U.S. Department of Government Efficiency:

Weekly Credit Card Update! Pilot program with 16 agencies to audit unused/unneeded credit cards. After 3 weeks, >200,000 cards have been de-activated. Great progress this past week by @HHSGov  @Interior.

As a reminder, at the start of the audit, there were ~4.6M active cards/accounts, so still more work to do.

RELATED ARTICLE: Who was running the White House while Biden was asleep?

RELATED VIDEO: CNN: 54% of Americans want DOGE to cut government spending and operations

EDITORS NOTE: This Newsrael News Desk column is republished with permission. ©All righs reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Agrees To Put Taxpayer-Funded Union Work Back Under Microscope After Joni Ernst Request

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The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will again report on how much time and money federal employees spend on union activity after a hiatus during the Biden administration following a request from Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa.

Ernst and Republican Rep. Michael Cloud of Texas urged OPM to resume reporting taxpayer-funded union time (TFUT), also known as “official time,” when Ernst introduced the “Protecting Taxpayers’ Wallets Act of 2025” on Feb. 11. Ernst praised the Trump administration for the decision, as revealed in a Feb. 27 memo provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation, in which OPM Acting Director Charles Eskell directed agencies to resume tracking TFUT.

“I am thrilled to see the Trump administration restart the reporting of taxpayer-funded union time, so the American people know just how much money bureaucrats are paid not to work,” Ernst told the DCNF. “Federal employees should be serving taxpayers, not themselves, during the workday. If they want to engage in union activity, they need to refund taxpayers for every last penny.”

The Feb. 27 memo orders federal agencies to provide information on the job positions held by employees carrying out union activities on taxpayer time, whether or not they engaged in telework, the total number of hours employees spent on union time and information on the use of government materials and office space.

Ernst requested that government agencies provide information on TFUT in December. Ernst’s office received information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about TFUT for fiscal years 2023 and 2024.

The data from NRC showed one employee, a project manager, who earned $171,469 a year, spent over 99.5% of their time on union work in fiscal year 2023, while a project manager earning $166,393 per year also spent over 99.5% of their time on union activities in fiscal year 2024. Three other employees, listed as reliability and risk engineers, earned at least $163,000 a year in the NRC data and spent at least 48% of their time on union activities during fiscal years 2023 and 2024.

Ernst previously uncovered abuses relating to “official time,” with one employee moving to Florida and working in real estate while on the arrangement, while another employee claimed to be on “official time” while being jailed following an arrest for drinking and driving.

Federal employees spent 2.6 million hours, the equivalent of almost three centuries, on union activities, costing taxpayers at least $135 million in fiscal year 2019, according to Ernst, who cited data from OPM. Unions also used at least $24 million in office space and supplies paid for by taxpayers.

AUTHOR

Harold Hutchison

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

FAA Reportedly Considering Replacing Verizon With Musk’s Starlink For $2 Billion Air Traffic Control Contract

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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is considering canceling its $2.4 billion air traffic control communications system contract with Verizon and instead enlisting Elon Musk’s satellite company, sources told The Washington Post.

The potential shift to Starlink, the satellite communications infrastructure under SpaceX, comes after a December General Services Administration (GSA) report highlighting an “urgent” need to modernize the FAA’s dated systems. The SpaceX founder has repeatedly criticized the FAA and suggested Verizon’s systems contributed to recent deadly aviation incidents — though he later issued a correction clarifying that Verizon’s systems haven’t yet been implemented and that L3Harris, a defense contractor, operates the “ancient system” currently running air traffic control infrastructure.

“Correction: the ancient system that is rapidly declining in capability was made L3Harris. The new system that is not yet operational is from Verizon,” Musk wrote.

Verizon also emphasized that the “FAA systems currently in place are run by L3Harris and not Verizon,” and that the company was at “the beginning of a multi-year contract to replace antiquated, legacy systems” in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The telecommunications company announced its partnership with the agency through the FAA Enterprise Network Services (FENS) contract in 2023, an initiative meant to modernize air traffic control systems and communication between agency offices — though the FAA said in an X post Monday it has considered switching to Starlink “since the prior administration.” The FAA also said SpaceX employees are already working with the agency to update its aging communications infrastructure and testing Starlink systems at “non-safety critical” facilities in Atlantic City and Alaska. Some SpaceX employees already have FAA email addresses, according to The Washington Post.

“Alaska has long had issues with reliable weather information for the aviation community,” the agency wrote. “That is why the FAA has been considering the use of Starlink since the prior administration to increase reliability at remote sites, including in Alaska. This week, the FAA is testing one terminal at its facility in Atlantic City and two terminals at non-safety critical sites in Alaska.”

Starlink expects to install 4,000 satellite terminals at these sites over the next 12 to 18 months, according to Bloomberg.

Democratic lawmakers including California Sen. Adam Schiff and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey have raised ethical concerns ahead of the potential partnership, with Schiff arguing in a Feb. 10 letter to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles that Musk’s financial interests in the contract create serious ethical issues. Markey wrote a similar letter to the FAA on Wednesday.

“Mr. Musk holds substantial financial interests in private companies, including Tesla, Inc., SpaceX, The Boring Company, xAI, X Corp and Neuralink,” the senator wrote. “Mr. Musk’s companies have also been the subject of at least 20 recent investigations by federal agencies, which heightens the risk that Mr. Musk may seek to use his new position to shield his companies from federal scrutiny.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy defended the development in a Fox News column on Feb. 19, stating the integration of SpaceX infrastructure in air traffic control systems is “just the start” of the modernization effort.

“The Government Accountability Office stated that among the FAA’s 138 systems, 51 are unsustainable and the agency doesn’t plan to complete modernization projects for some of these systems for at least 10 years,” Duffy wrote. “Additionally, the FAA doesn’t yet have plans to modernize other systems in need — three of which are at least 30 years old … Despite the obvious need for reform, partisans are certain to criticize this upcoming SpaceX visit, manufacturing illusory controversy rather than welcoming progress.”

The FAA and SpaceX did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

Thomas English

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Musk-Vance Tag Team Delivers Knockout Blow To Cancel Culture, Rehires DOGE Staffer

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Elon Musk reinstated a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) aide Friday, just one day after the staffer resigned following reports that he operated an inflammatory social media account.

The aide, 25-year-old Marko Elez, had stepped down Thursday after The Wall Street Journal linked him to a pseudonymous X account reportedly containing racist posts. His return followed a Friday morning poll by Musk asking users whether to rehire Elez, with 78% of over 385,000 participants voting yes. Vice President JD Vance also backed Elez’s reinstatement, arguing “we shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people.”

“He will be brought back,” Musk wrote. “To err is human, to forgive divine.”

Elez had reportedly made multiple inflammatory remarks in the now-deleted posts, including calls to “normalize Indian hate.” The user also bragged that he was “racist before it was cool,” adding that “you couldn’t pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” according to the outlet.

“I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” the vice president wrote after Musk’s poll closed. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.”

Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna, a child of Indian immigrants, responded by asking Vance if Elez would have to apologize as a prerequisite for his reinstatement, adding, “Just asking for the sake of both of our kids.” Vance, whose wife is also the child of Indian immigrants, responded in a series of posts.

“For the sake of both of our kids? Grow up,” Vance wrote. “Racist trolls on the internet, while offensive, don’t threaten my kids. You know what does? A culture that denies grace to people who make mistakes. A culture that encourages congressmen to act like whiny children.”

“I don’t worry about my kids making mistakes, or developing views they later regret. I don’t even worry that much about trolls on the internet. You know what I do worry about, Ro? That they’ll grow up to be a US Congressmen who engages in emotional blackmail over a kid’s social media posts,” the vice president continued. “You disgust me.”

Asked about Vance’s support for the reinstatement, President Donald Trump echoed the vice president during a White House press conference with Shigeru Ishida, Japan’s prime minister.

“Well, I don’t know about the particular thing, but if the vice president said that — did you say that? I’m with the vice president,” Trump said.

Over the past week, Elez emerged at the center of a legal row over DOGE’s access to sensitive payment systems and taxpayer data in the Treasury Department. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agreed Thursday to temporarily limit Elez and other DOGE staffers’ ability to share Treasury data outside the department, but allowed them continued “read-only” access.

Elez graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in computer science and later went on to work at SpaceX, specifically on its Starlink satellites, according to The Wall Street Journal. He later worked for Musk again at X, where he focused on artificial intelligence.

AUTHOR

Thomas English

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Trump Reportedly Looks To Privatize U.S. Postal Service

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President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly looking to privatize the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), three people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post in a report published Sunday.

Trump has made known his desire to detach the USPS from the federal government in conversations at his Mar-a-Lago estate, sources informed the outlet, including with Howard Lutnick, his commerce secretary pick and co-chair of his presidential transition team.

In early December, Trump also talked with a group of transition team officials to feel out their opinions on privatizing the agency, one person told the outlet.

As mail volume declines for the Postal Service, the agency has reportedly lost $9.5 billion in the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, The Washington Post reported.

The outlet expressed concern regarding the potential effect on e-commerce of privatizing the Postal Service, naming Amazon, whose executive chairman Jeff Bezos reportedly plans to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.

As the Christmas season of mailing cards and packages approaches, the USPS, which many view as inefficient, has become a potential target of the incoming president’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Although DOGE co-leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have yet to publicly call for the privatization of the agency, it falls in line with their mission.

Members of the DOGE panel have reportedly “held preliminary conversations about major changes to the Postal Service,” according to the Washington Post.

Privatization of the USPS has become a “prominent target” of federal cost-cutting as Republican lawmakers and Trump allies plan major reforms, the outlet noted.

Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the incoming chair of the DOGE subcommittee, said Friday on X that the USPS wasting money “has to stop.”

The Postal Service only received 93 Oshkosh trucks as part of the Biden-Harris administration’s multibillion dollar plan to give 60,000 electric vehicles to the federal agency in the name of climate change, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

The Postal Service was established roughly one year before the country in 1775. Benjamin Franklin was appointed as the first U.S. Postmaster General.

The Daily Caller reached out to the USPS and the Trump transition team for comment, but did not hear back.

AUTHOR

Julianna Frieman

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Five Government Programs That Musk’s Government Efficiency Agency Could Put On The Chopping Block

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Federally-funded progressive pet projects and wasteful spending alike could be on the way out if Elon Musk succeeds in his quest to improve the administrative state’s efficiency.

Right-of-center policy experts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they hope Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will improve federal data collection practices and cut wasteful expenditures. Musk took to X on Thursday to express his openness to reeling in federal spending on transgender research and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.

In July, the United States of America’s debt surpassed $35 trillion for the first time in history, with the balance expected to exceed $36 trillion in the near future.

Over the past year, the DCNF has collected dozens of examples of wasteful or otherwise strange programs the Biden-Harris administration has pumped public funds into, feeding the deficit. Here are five examples of what could come under scrutiny from Musk’s efficiency agency.

1. Improper Payments

The Biden-Harris administration is on track to have paid out over $1 trillion in improper payments by the time President-elect Donald Trump takes office and the Department of Government Efficiency gets to work in January 2025. Federal guidelines define an improper payment as any disbursement “made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount or for the wrong reason.”

Common examples of improper payments include erroneous payments made through the Medicaid and Medicare systems, misallocated COVID-19 aid, benefits paid to dead people and taxpayer funds lost to fraud. Large sums of improper payments are not a problem unique to the Biden-Harris administration. During Trump’s first administration, the government disclosed $814 billion in inflation-adjusted improper payments.

Not all improper payments are totally lost after being sent out. The Biden-Harris administration managed to recover about $51 billion of the $235.7 billion it erroneously disbursed in 2023.

Both parties have expressed concern about the magnitude of improper payments put out by the federal government, with a bipartisan group of legislators in the House pushing the Improper Payments Transparency Act, a bill introduced in May that would require the president’s budget request to identify common payment errors and formulate ways to address them.

2. Tax Dollars Funding LGBT Activism Abroad

Spokespeople for the State Department have previously told the DCNF that promoting LGBT inclusion in other countries is a “foreign policy priority” of the Biden-Harris administration, a statement supported by materials the agency publishes.

Under President Joe Biden, the State Department and The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have spent millions working to fund transgender surgeries, bankroll LGBT activists and engage pro-transgender in social engineering abroad.

USAID, for instance, gave $2 million to Asociacion Lambda, a Guatemala-based organization, to both engage in pro-LGBT activism and to provide people with “gender-affirming care,” federal records show. Asociacion Lambda attempts to influence elections in Guatemala and meets with government officials to engage in advocacy.

The State Department, meanwhile, funded the production of a play in North Macedonia where God is portrayed as a bisexual that has constant sex with hermaphroditic angels and communists are painted in a positive light.

“Americans are far from agreeing on how to deal with race, sex, and ‘gender’ in schools and workplaces,” Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Simon Hankinson wrote in a 2022 report. “Even when U.S. national consensus is there, restraint is always necessary in attempting to convince other nations that one’s own values should be theirs. The U.S. must balance the likelihood of convincing potential allies with the likelihood of hostile reactions to perceived interference or ‘cultural colonialism.’”

Other programs the Biden-Harris administration approved to push homosexuality and transsexuality abroad included bankrolling the creation of 2,500 “LGBTQI+ allies” in India, using tax dollars to “foster a united and equal queer-feminist discourse in Albanian society,” staging a film festival in Portugal featuring incestual and pedophilic themes, funding gay pride events across the globe and deploying public funds to support the work of “queer” Muslim writers living in India.

3. ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ Grants

In November 2022, the Biden-Harris administration released a memo defining indigenous knowledge as “a body of observations, oral and written knowledge, innovations, practices, and beliefs developed by Tribes and Indigenous Peoples through interaction and experience with the environment” that “is applied to phenomena across biological, physical, social, cultural and spiritual systems.”

From 2021 to 2023, the Biden-Harris administration approved more than $831.8 million in grants that encouraged the use of indigenous knowledge in service of achieving the Biden administration’s goals.

The Department of Commerce, for instance, earmarked $575 million in June 2023, asking third parties to utilize indigenous knowledge to help mitigate the impact of weather events caused by climate change. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, made an estimated $18.75 million available in August 2023 for grantees to apply “Indigenous knowledge methods,” alongside other approaches, as part of a program intended to test experimental methods of reducing drug overdose.

The 2022 Biden-Harris administration memo ordered agencies to “recognize and, as appropriate, apply Indigenous Knowledge in decision making, research, and [their] policies.” Agencies were also instructed to consult with Indian spiritual leaders and not to assume that indigenous knowledge is incorrect when “Western” science contradicts it, with the memo calling science a tool of oppression.

“When I start hearing things about how there’s this other dimension where, you know, the animals interact with humans at a different level of reality, that’s just not a thing,” City University professor and biologist Massimo Pigliucci told the Washington Free Beacon, in reference to their reporting on the subject. “You can believe that and you have the right to believe it but it’s not empirical evidence.”

4. DEI at the VA and Beyond

As hundreds of thousands of veterans were stuck on benefit waitlists, Biden’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took at least a dozen actions aimed at expanding DEI within the agency.

The VA had 378,000 claims from veterans that had been pending for at least 125 days at the end of 2023, according to the agency. In September 2021, shortly after Biden took office, the VA had just 210,854 claims that had been backlogged for the same length of time.

While the number of disabled veterans waiting on support grew, the Biden-Harris VA was focused on doing things like establishing an Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access Council, working on making its contractors more racially diverse and engaging in marketing campaigns aimed at reaching out to the “LGBTQ+” community and female veterans.

The VA is far from the only federal department that leaned into DEI in recent years as the various branches of the federal government collectively spend millions per year on diversity trainings. The Department of Health and Human Services alone spends tens of million per year on DEI programs and staff. Roughly a third of the funds disbursed by the National Science Foundation promoted DEI, according to a recent Senate Commerce Committee report.

5. Inventing Gay Landmarks

America’s national parks faced an estimated $23.3 billion maintenance backlog at the end of the 2023 fiscal year, according to a July report from the Congressional Research Service. While public parks languished, the National Park Service (NPS) diverted public funds to its “Underrepresented Communities Grant Program,” which is designed to diversify America’s historical landmarks to better include racial and sexual minorities.

During Biden’s tenure in office, NPS paid an array of government agencies and nonprofits to seek out “historic” LGBT locations to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. When NPS approves a landmark to be added to the National Register of Historic Places, its owner becomes entitled to special tax breaks, with many state and local governments offering special grant programs for such locations.

NPS, for example, paid out $75,000 to Washington State’s Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation for it to identify an “outstanding representation of queer history” and nominate it to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The service has spent $7.5 million on its Underrepresented Communities Grant Program since 2014, with Congress apportioning $1.25 million for the 2024 iteration of the program.

America’s national parks are billions of dollars behind on maintenance related to roads, buildings, water systems and campgrounds, according to the congressional report.

AUTHOR

Robert Schmad

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.