You Won’t Believe How Much DOGE’s Latest Cuts Have Actually Saved

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is once again lying about how much money it’s saving for American taxpayers, The Intercept reported Friday.

DOGE’s wonky wall of receipts claimed that it saved $231,864,794 by cancelling an I.T. contract between the Social Security Administration and Leidos, an engineering company. DOGE claimed the total value of the contract was $1,033,638,089.

The Social Security Administration confirmed to The Intercept that the real savings were limited to work on the Gender X Marker Project, which sought to add ‘X’ as a gender option on U.S. passports. The project was canceled last month as part of Trump’s anti-trans executive order insisting the federal government would only recognize two genders. At the time, DOGE claimed canceling the contract could save the government more than $1 million.

But DOGE’s cut didn’t save the government $1 million, let alone the nearly $232 million the agency now claims on its website. In reality, the cut only saved $560,000, a spokesperson from the Social Security Administration told The Intercept.

“The task order referenced on the DOGE receipt website includes numerous I.T. development efforts, one of which was Social Security’s former Gender X Marker project,” Darren Lutz, the SSA spokesperson, said. “While the overarching task order was not terminated, we continue to assess and identify other projects under this task order that may be cancelled or streamlined to create further cost savings.”

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the head of government affairs at the watchdog Project on Government Oversight, slammed DOGE’s sloppy work.

“This, to me, is just part and parcel of the amateur-hour nature of what DOGE is doing,” he told The Intercept. “They’re going to destroy more than they help. It’s absolutely counterproductive.”

Earlier this week, it was discovered that DOGE somehow added a couple of zeroes when claiming to have cut one ICE contract worth $8 billion. In actuality, the contract was worth only $8 million. Even as DOGE’s accounting discrepancies are uncovered, the total savings touted by DOGE on its website remains at $55 billion—and that number becomes more dubious with every passing day.

The Trump administration’s Federal Aviation Administration firings are much worse than they initially let on.

Politico has reported that the 130 terminated FAA workers last month included critical employees who directly and indirectly reinforce all of the FAA’s moving parts to keep passengers safe. The Trump White House had previously stated that no “critical” employees had been fired.

Concerns about aviation safety have been compounded since 67 people were killed when a passenger plane collided with an Army helicopter at DCA outside Washington, D.C., in January.

“I would argue that every job at the FAA right now is safety critical,” aviation safety consultant Jeff Guzzetti told Politico. The firings “certainly [are] not going to improve safety — it can only increase the risk.”

One recently fired employee was an aeronautical information specialist who helped plan airplane routes, or “highways in the sky.”

“Air traffic controllers cannot do their work without us,” the employee said anonymously to Politico on Wednesday. They went on to state that their fellow FAA workers were “targeted just as a senseless line item on an Excel sheet.”

“To put it frankly, without our team ... pilots would quite literally be flying blind,” they said.

The Rolling Stone’s Andrew Perez reported that other cut positions included “lawyers who help keep drunk or reckless pilots out of the skies,” “employees who track potential new flying hazards like cranes,” and staffers in charge of medically clearing pilots.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and the White House provided no actual specifics regarding what positions were emptied. Rather, they chose to talk down to Americans who just want to be assured that their next flight will land safely.

“No air traffic controllers nor any professionals who perform safety critical functions were terminated,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, directly contradicting Politico’s reporting. The FAA is already understaffed.

Now that he’s back in office, Donald Trump is looking to finalize one of his former agenda items: nixing the United States Postal Service.

The president is expected to issue an executive order “as soon as this week” that would dissolve the Postal Service’s governing board and place it under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to several sources that spoke with The Washington Post in a story published Thursday.

During an emergency meeting on Thursday, the postal board issued instructions to sue the White House should it attempt to remove members of the board or alter its independent status, the Post reported. Two of the group’s Republican members—former Trump official Derek Kan and former RNC Chair Mike Duncan—were conspicuously absent during the meeting.

Restructuring USPS into the folds of the Commerce Department would probably violate federal law, according to postal experts that spoke with the Post.

The U.S. Postal Service is practically as old as the country. It was developed by the Second Continental Congress during the American Revolution, and Benjamin Franklin was appointed as its first postmaster general.

Since then, the Postal Service has reinvented itself again and again, keeping up with the myriad shipping demands of the American public and supporting trillions of dollars in commerce.

It also “generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations,” according to USPS’s website.

Still, that hasn’t prevented America’s public mail system from becoming a favorite target of the president. In 2020, Trump argued that the Postal Service should be dismantled to prevent voting by mail. That was in the throes of Covid-19, when the agency asked Congress for a $25 billion cash injection to offset losses caused by the pandemic.

That trend has continued through the decade, though the agency’s losses have been slightly less egregious. In November, USPS said it had lost $9.5 billion in the prior fiscal year—$3 billion more than it did in 2023—blaming noncash contributions to workers’ compensation for the bulk of the deficit.

The agency, which is in the midst of a 10-year overhaul, has reportedly made regaining its financial footing a chief priority. Still, the path ahead is not an obvious one. In November, Postmaster Louis DeJoy (a Trump appointee) warned that there would be “many economic, legislative, and regulatory obstacles for us to overcome.”

Meanwhile, Trump and his allies are slashing and hacking federal programs in order to afford an extension to his 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

A Republican member of Congress thinks that Donald Trump’s executive order spree has gone too far.

Representative Troy Balderson, whose district comprises areas in central and southeastern Ohio, said Thursday that the president’s orders are “getting out of control,” adding that Trump and Elon Musk are exceeding their authority.

“Congress has to decide whether or not the Department of Education goes away,” said Balderson at the Westerville Area Chamber’s business luncheon. “Not the president, not Elon Musk. Congress decides.”

Balderson said that he respected Trump, the need for executive orders, and the right to investigate government agencies, but that “Congress has to do their work.” The congressman was endorsed by Trump since his first run for Congress in 2018, in a district that has voted Republican going back at least 46 years, so his opinion shows that Trump’s actions are becoming unpopular even among Republicans.

Trump’s new commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, confirmed Wednesday that the president plans to make cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, all programs that are popular with Republicans as well as Democrats. If Trump follows through on those cuts, Republican voters in areas like Balderson’s district could lose patience with Trump and the GOP by the time the 2026 midterm elections come up, and perhaps even in 2028.

Representative Robert Garcia hit back at threats from the Department of Justice and criticized the agency for trying to “silence” lawmakers speaking out about Elon Musk.

Earlier this week, Garcia received a letter from the DOJ regarding comments he’d made on CNN about opposing Musk’s takeover of the federal government. “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy,” Garcia said.

Ed Martin, the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, had responded as if the California Democrat might’ve made an actual threat on the DOGE czar’s life.

On a recent episode of the IHIP News podcast, Garcia wasn’t buying it.

“We as members of Congress should have the right to oppose an administration that we disagree with,” Garcia said during the Thursday episode.

“It’s important for folks to be able to know that Democrats need to be in a fight. This is a fight that we’re in for our very democracy. And the fact that the Trump DOJ now wants to silence members of Congress, because we’re actually willing to take on Elon Musk is quite dangerous.”

On the podcast, Garcia insisted he hadn’t used fighting words, and that the government was attempting to silence his dissent.

“And I think that that’s something we’re really, really concerned about—that the Department of Justice has essentially said we cannot use metaphors, we cannot use figures of speech, we cannot talk about actually fighting the policies of the Trump Administration. And if we do so, we’re going to face prosecution,” Garcia said.

“So, incredibly disturbing. But we’re not going to be silenced. We’ve got to push back, and this is a moment for us to be really tough and aggressive.”

A Republican congressman was booed and heckled incessantly at his own town hall Thursday, as Trump’s sweeping federal cuts have begun to hurt the very same Republican constituents who voted for them.

At his town hall in Suwanee, Georgia—in a district Trump won by 22 points—Representative Rich McCormick was faced with hundreds of voters who were deeply disturbed by his complicity—as well as the rest of the Republican Party’s—in allowing Elon Musk and DOGE to transform the federal government in just weeks.

One person told McCormick he had done a “disservice” to his constituents. “You don’t think I’m going to stand up for you?” the lawmaker replied, as the town hall booed him. Another pressed McCormick on what he’ll do to “rein in the megalomaniac in the White House.”

McCormick’s comments on Medicare and Medicaid also drew immediate backlash. “If you don’t do something with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which is 75 percent of our budget—”

This comment, a far cry from the Republicans’ earlier promise not to touch these programs, led to an uproar from the crowd, as some constituents even yelled out “no it isn’t” in response to the 75 percent line McCormick rattled off. Others implored him to tax billionaires rather than cut programs that people use every day.

“If you cut all of your military, and all of your discretionary spending, you still have a shortfall. We are heading towards a cliff,” McCormick continued before being overpowered by angry citizens again. “Google it right now,” he implored.

When asked about the hundreds of Atlantia-based CDC employees working on bird flu recently fired by DOGE, McCormick had the gall to tell the crowd that many of them were easily replaced by AI.

“Why is a supposedly conservative party taking such a radical, and extremist, and sloppy approach to this?” one constituent asked pointedly.

“I’m in close contact with the CDC,” McCormick replied. “They have about 13,000 employees…. In the last couple of years, those probationary people, which is about 10 percent of their employee base … a lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI.”

This led to another string of boos and jeers from his constituents. McCormick got to be so bothered by the heckling that he compared his own base to January 6 insurrectionists, telling the crowd they were similar to “Jan. 6ers who are yelling just as loud as you.” This led to another round of boos.

Scenes like this one may become more and more common as Trump and Musk sign checks that lower level Republican politicians have to cash.

Even the nation’s most salacious conservative tabloid can’t get behind Donald Trump’s recent Kremlin talking points.

The New York Post issued a front page rejection Friday to the president’s recent claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy—a democratically-elected wartime leader—is a “dictator.”

“This is a dictator,” the Post headline read, pasted over an image of a deflated Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Post’s multipage spread focused on 10 “Ukraine-Russia war truths” that the paper claimed Americans were ignoring “at our peril.” They included facts that Putin started the three-year war, that Putin “invaded” Ukraine in pursuit of “conquest,” that Ukraine is fighting for its independence, that Zelenskiy is not a dictator, and, perhaps most importantly, that Putin is.

“Putin is a dictator,” reported the Post. “Putin has ruled Russia with an iron KGB fist since coming to power in 1999. He has ruthlessly quashed independent media, ended free and fair elections, crushed civil society and killed his political opponents. And not just inside Russia, but around the world. People who live inside Russia and express any opposition to the war are imprisoned.”

Over the last week, the White House has continued to relegate Kyiv to the sidelines of a potential peace deal that will decide Ukraine’s future. The U.S. and Russia opened discussions at a meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday seeking a conclusion to the bloody conflict, but the assembly conspicuously excluded Ukrainian leadership.

While speaking at a NATO summit last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explicitly outlined that the Trump administration’s peace talks with Russia had taken several bargaining chips “off the table.”

That included Ukraine’s possible NATO membership (something the military alliance had promised in 2008), the possibility of a U.S. presence in Ukraine to enforce postwar security guarantees, and the end of NATO missions to Ukraine. He also added that it would be “unrealistic” for Ukraine to return to its pre-war borders, effectively ceding land to Moscow.

The announcement came as a complete 180 on American and NATO policy regarding the eastern European country, and left U.S. allies and defense experts reeling. The deal, per Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, amounted to Russian propaganda and was practically “written in the Kremlin.”

On Friday, Politico noted that Trump had caved to Russian talking points several dozen times, closely aligning the U.S. president with the foreign dictator.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Steve Bannon decided to perform a Roman salute, commonly associated with Nazi Germany.

Bannon subtly made the gesture during his speech at the conference, raising his right arm with his palm outstretched, facing downward to cheers from the audience.

“The only way that they win is we retreat, and we’re not going to retreat, we’re not going to surrender, we’re not going to quit. Fight, fight, fight!” Bannon said, extending his arm into the salute. “Amen!”

The move is a reminder of Elon Musk’s own apparent Nazi gesture at Donald Trump’s inauguration last month. Like Musk, Bannon supports far-right political movements around the world, including the AfD party in Germany. But unlike Musk, Bannon is on the outside of the Trump administration, and is in fact in the midst of a feud with the tech mogul, even calling Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant” in a recent interview.

“He wants to impose his freak experiment and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, tradition or values,” Bannon told the conservative website UnHerd on Tuesday.

So why did Bannon make the gesture Thursday at CPAC? Is he worried that Musk is stealing some of his neo-Nazi followers? Is he sending the message that he’s the real neo-Nazi, unlike the DOGE leader? It remains to be seen what Bannon’s angle is, but one can be sure it’s based a racist, fascist worldview.

Just one month into his presidency, Donald Trump appears to be imagining an extended stay at the White House.

Speaking at the Republican Governors’ Dinner Thursday night, Trump underscored the significance of the 2026 midterm elections and claimed that he’d “raised $608 million in three weeks”—funds that he implied he could use to support “some of his friends” for reelection.

But in the midst of the overt nod, the president also suggested that a third term could still be on the table.

“So we’ve got that money, and I got to spend it somewhere, and they tell me I’m not allowed to run,” Trump said. “I’m not sure. Is that true? I’m not sure.”

The MAGA leader would be 82 years old in 2028. It’s currently unclear if Trump was telling the truth or bluffing when he said he had raised more than half a billion dollars for other Republican candidates, but Federal Election Commission reports for the first quarter of the year will be due in March.

Conservative lawmakers have already started to pave the way for the unconstitutional takeover. In January, Representative Andy Ogles filed a joint resolution to amend the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment so that the executive branch leader could serve “for up to but no more than three terms.”

Trump “has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal,” the Tennessee Republican said in a statement at the time. “He is dedicated to restoring the republic and saving our country, and we, as legislators and as states, must do everything in our power to support him.”

Also on Thursday, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon issued his own missive to keep Trump in power for an additional four years.

“The future of MAGA is Donald Trump!” Bannon said to a roaring crowd. “We want Trump in ’28. That’s what they can’t stand. A man like Trump comes along only once or twice in the country’s history. We want Trump! We want Trump!”

Staying in power longer than legally allowed is a pipedream that Trump has already mused about several times. In a private meeting with the House Republican conference in November, the 78-year-old openly joked about running for a third term, telling the crowd that they could “figure something else out.” He also suggested at the National Rifle Association convention in May that he could follow in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s footsteps, asking the crowd, “Are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?”

Still, the idea has an almost zero percent chance of becoming reality. As outlined in Article V of the Constitution, any such change requires at least two-thirds of the Senate and the House to agree on the modification, with that change then requiring ratification by a minimum of three-quarters of states in the nation.

A second approach to repealing the term-limiting amendment could be via a Constitutional Convention, though two-thirds of states would need to support the motion to have one at all, and any proposed changes to an amendment would still require ratification by three-fourths of the states.

No matter how many times he tries, Donald Trump just can’t seem to get this one geography question right.

During an address Thursday evening at a dinner for Republican governors, Trump once again exposed just how geographically challenged he is.

“How about BRICS, you know the BRICS states—there are like six of them? And they were trying to destroy our dollar,” Trump said.

Trump continued, saying that BRICS wanted to establish their own currency, perhaps the “won,” which he suggested was Chinese currency (but is actually South Korean), and that Joe Biden had been unwilling to do anything about it.

“So when I came in, the first thing I said is, ‘Any BRICS state that even mentions the destruction of the dollar will be charged a 150 percent tariff. And we don’t want your goods, we don’t want to partake,’” he said.

“And the BRICS states just broke up. I don’t know what the hell happened to them. We haven’t heard from them lately.”

This is the third time Trump has attempted to complain about BRICS while revealing that he doesn’t actually know anything about it.

Last week, Trump claimed that the BRICS nations were “breaking up very rapidly” after he’d threatened them with a 100 percent tariff if they did anything to undermine the dollar (interesting that the number has since magically increased.) The president listed China before adding, “I don’t even know that they’re a member of BRICS,” which it is.

Last month, just hours after entering the Oval Office, Trump falsely suggested that the ‘S’ in BRICS stood for Spain.

Trump still seems confused about how many member states there are, and which ones. The members of BRICS are Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and new additions Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, UAE, and Iran.

BRICS did not break up. In fact, Trump’s America First isolationism could serve to strengthen groups such as BRICS, who can fill the power vacuum left by the American absence from international forums—like the 2025 G20 Summit, which the U.S. has already declined to attend.