Politics
DOGE Claims Credit for Killing Contracts That Were Already Dead
While George W. Bush was president, the U.S. Coast Guard signed a contract to get administrative help from a company in Northern Virginia. It paid $144,000, and the contract was completed by June 30, 2005.
Twenty years passed. Presidents came and went.
Last week, Elon Musk’s restructuring team, called the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, said it had just canceled the long-dead Coast Guard contract — and in doing so, saved U.S. taxpayers $53.7 million.
That claim, posted on the group’s “wall of receipts,” bewildered experts on federal contracting. And there were others like it. Even after Mr. Musk’s group deleted several large erroneous claims from its website last week, The New York Times found that it had added new mistakes — claiming credit for “canceling” contracts that had actually ended under previous presidents.
“These are not savings,” said Lisa Shea Mundt, whose firm, The Pulse of GovCon, tracks federal spending. “The money’s been spent. Period. Point blank.”
These mistakes do not mean DOGE has not made cuts to the federal government. It has, deeply, by pushing widespread layoffs of employees and cancellations of active contracts, and by helping instigate the demise of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
But the repeated errors have raised questions about the quality and veracity of the information that the Musk team is putting out, including whether it is being misled by other departments. The mistakes also seem to call into question the team members’ competence — whether they understand the government well enough to cut it while avoiding catastrophe.
“It’s obvious that they don’t understand,” said Eric Franklin, the chief executive of the firm Erimax, who advises the government on contracting procedures. His own firm was the subject of one of the errors on DOGE’s “wall of receipts.” Mr. Musk’s group claimed it had saved $14 million by canceling one of its contracts — which had ended in 2021.
“It’s really akin to a bull in a china shop,” Mr. Franklin said. “And what do you end up with? It’s just a big mess.”
At the White House, a senior administration official offered a partial explanation, saying the information on the wall of receipts had been provided by individual federal agencies — many of which have embedded staff members from Mr. Musk’s group. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to describe DOGE’s methods, said Mr. Musk’s group then checked the accuracy of the agency’s claims.
Why were there still so many errors? The official said individual agencies should answer that question. On its website, DOGE says it is trying to improve its data, and asks readers to notify it of potential errors.
Missing Identifiers
Agencies are under tremendous pressure to find budget cuts for Mr. Musk’s group to promote. The group has even created a “leaderboard” to measure which ones have eliminated the most.
But in databases of federal contracts, there are clues that this rush is not being well managed or adequately tracked.
In the past, the government has designated specific codes to track large batches of contracts across different agencies that relate to a common initiative, like the federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic. That makes it easier to find all the contracts involved.
But the contracts in the “wall of receipts” have no such signature. That omission may mean there are errors in both directions — not only with expired contracts that don’t actually save money, but also potentially with contracts that were canceled by the group’s effort but are not being counted.
Mr. Musk’s group has said that it has saved taxpayers $65 billion, by cutting contracts, leases, federal employees and other items in the federal budget. But it has itemized only two of those categories: cancellations of contracts and leases. When adding up DOGE’s claimed savings for each item, those categories collectively account for about $10 billion, less than one-sixth of the total.
When DOGE first published its list of canceled contracts, there were about 1,100 examples.
The five largest were wrong.
In one case, DOGE listed a contract worth $8 million as actually being worth $8 billion. In another, it mistakenly counted the same $655 million contract three times. In yet another, it erroneously said that a huge contract at the Social Security Administration had been fully canceled, saving $232 million. In reality, only a small project within that contract had been canceled. Actual savings: $560,000.
By last week, all of those claims were gone. DOGE revised the total savings from these five cuts from $10 billion down to about $19 million.
At the same time, Mr. Musk’s group also added about 1,100 new canceled contracts to the list.
Errant Links
Among the new entries were several that had ended before President Trump took office.
Mr. Musk’s group took credit for the cancellation of a $1.9 billion Treasury Department contract, for work on information technology at the Internal Revenue Service. But it had actually been canceled in November, when President Biden was in office.
The Treasury Department suggested this cut to DOGE in a post on X on Feb. 19. Two days later, The Times reported that it had been canceled before Mr. Trump took office.
Three days after that, DOGE went ahead and posted the Biden-era cancellation on its wall. The Treasury Department did not respond to questions about the contract.
DOGE also claimed credit for canceling two different Coast Guard contracts that had ended during the George W. Bush administration. In addition to the $53 million contract that ended in 2005, Mr. Musk’s group said it had saved $53 million more by canceling another contract with the same vendor. Public contracting data shows that one ended in 2006.
Deniece Peterson, a senior director of federal market analysis at the firm Deltek, said that both contracts were part of a larger spending agreement with a $53 million spending limit. In all, she said, the Coast Guard paid the vendor about $35 million over several years. All of its work under that agreement was completed by 2011, and federal contracting data shows that no bills remain outstanding and no more money was expected to be spent.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, did not offer an explanation for why the department had claimed $106 million in savings from ending these two long-dead contracts. Instead, she responded to questions from The Times with an email saying: “We’re certainly excited about $100 million + in taxpayer savings.”
And then there were the links on the DOGE website that led to different contracts than those touted.
DOGE claimed it had saved $149 million by canceling a contract for three administrative assistants at the National Institutes of Health worth about $1.4 million.
The link, however, led to the page of an unrelated contract with a different company that supplies refrigerated gases used in laboratories. That contract, which does not appear to be canceled, was worth only $118,000.
After being asked about the errors, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services said DOGE was working to correct the website.
Emily Badger contributing reporting.
Former President Barack Obama urged universities to resist attacks from the federal government that violate their academic freedom in a campus speech on Thursday.
He also said schools and students should engage in self-reflection about speech environments on their campuses.
“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right?,” he said during a conversation at Hamilton College in upstate New York. “Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?”
“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.”
Mr. Obama’s comments came as the Trump administration has threatened universities with major cuts. It took away $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University in March. It later suspended $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania, and said this week that it was reviewing about $9 billion in arrangements with Harvard and its affiliates.
At Harvard, where the university has made efforts to respond to Republican criticism and concerns from Jewish students and faculty, more than 800 faculty members have signed a letter urging their leadership to more forcefully resist the administration and defend higher education more broadly.
Universities have received critiques from all sides, including those outside of leadership, saying they should do more. But the stakes are high, and large portions of endowments are often earmarked for specific causes that make dipping into them as a rainy-day fund difficult. Johns Hopkins, for example, has a significant endowment, but still laid off 2,000 workers in the wake of federal cuts.
Many universities have seemed to be at a loss about what to do. But some presidents, including those at Brown and Princeton, which have also been told they will have millions in federal grants canceled, have said that they would fight back against the administration, sometimes framing it as a fight for academic freedom.
Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, called the targeting of Columbia University “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”
Mr. Obama’s advice to lean on the endowment in the face of threats and stand on principle was also endorsed by his former Treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, in a guest essay this week in The Times. “Believe me, a former president of Harvard,” Mr. Summers wrote, “when I say that ways can be found in an emergency to deploy even parts of the endowment that have been earmarked by their donors for other uses.”
To many on the right, and even some on the left, one reason Mr. Trump is attacking higher education is because universities have become politically weakened, partly because they haven’t taken the free-expression concerns of conservatives seriously.
In his remarks on Thursday, Mr. Obama also called on law firms, which have also faced threats from the Trump administration, to stand for their principles, even if they risked losing business.
Mr. Obama told the crowd, which included college students, that everyone should stand up for the rights of others to say wrong and hurtful things.
“The idea of canceling a speaker who comes to your campus, trying to shout them down and not letting them speak,” Mr. Obama said, according to a transcript on his Medium account, “even if I find their ideas obnoxious, well, not only is that not what universities should be about, that’s not what America should be about.”
He added, to applause, “You let them speak, and then you tell them why they’re wrong. That’s how you win the argument.”
Trump on Friday shared video of a recent airstrike on Houthi rebels, writing, “They will never sink our ships again.”
“These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis! They will never sink our ships again!”
The black and white aerial footage appeared to show a group assembling before a massive blast leaves nothing but a crater.
The Trump administration has been conducting daily airstrikes on the Iranian-backed rebels for the last 20 days following renewed Houthi threats against Israeli vessels last month after Jerusalem cut off humanitarian aid headed for the Gaza Strip.
IRANIAN-BACKED HOUTHIS SHOOT DOWN THIRD US REAPER DRONE AS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES DAILY STRIKES
Following the strike, all that was left was a crater. (Donald Trump/Truth Social)
Late last month, the group took responsibility for attacks on the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and several U.S. warships in the Red Sea.
The Houthis have also shot down three U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones since March 3, sources previously told Fox News.
The State Department put forward sanctions after the Houthis shot down the first Reaper in early March, and on Tuesday, the State Department announced sanctions on “financial facilitators, procurement operatives, and companies operating as part of a global illicit finance network supporting the Houthis.”
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told CBS’ “Face the Nation” late last month: “These guys are like al Qaeda or ISIS with advanced cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and some of the most sophisticated air defenses, all provided by Iran. Keeping the sea lanes open, keeping trade and commerce open, is a fundamental aspect of our national security.”
AFTER DEBILITATING STRIKES, TRUMP TELLS HOUTHIS: STOP SHOOTING AT US AND ‘WE WILL STOP SHOOTING AT YOU’
Trump said that the Houthis had gathered to plan an attack before the strike. (Donald Trump/Truth Social )
On Monday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the Houthis have been “decimated by the relentless strikes over the past two weeks.”
“Many of their Fighters and Leaders are no longer with us,” he continued. “We hit them every day and night — Harder and harder. Their capabilities that threaten Shipping and the Region are rapidly being destroyed. Our attacks will continue until they are no longer a threat to Freedom of Navigation. The choice for the Houthis is clear: Stop shooting at U.S. ships, and we will stop shooting at you. Otherwise, we have only just begun, and the real pain is yet to come, for both the Houthis and their sponsors in Iran.”
Trump told the Houthis earlier this week: “Stop shooting at U.S. ships, and we will stop shooting at you.” (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The terrorist network, backed by Iran, began escalating its attacks on Western ships in the Red Sea following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. Notably, security experts have pointed out the Houthi attacks are not indiscriminate as they do not routinely target Chinese or Saudi Arabian vessels.
Trump also issued a message to Iran on Monday and warned if the attacks do not stop, Washington will come for Tehran next.
Fox News’ Rachel Wolf, Liz Friden, Caitlin McFall and Landon Mion contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled for the Trump administration on Friday and lifted a judge’s order that had blocked the canceling of $148 million in grants for recruiting and training new teachers in California and millions more nationwide.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices granted the administration’s appeal and freezes the funding for now.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said he would have denied the appeal, and the court’s three liberals — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — filed a written dissent.
“In my view, nothing about this case demanded our immediate intervention,” Kagan wrote.
The majority did not explain its decision. In a brief, unsigned order, it said the plaintiffs did not “refute the Government’s representation that it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed.”
Trump administration lawyers had urged the court to rein in judges who were acting as “self-appointed managers” of the federal government.
In early February, Trump’s appointees at the Education Department reviewed pending grants aiming to end funding for “discriminatory practices, including in the form of DEI,” or diversity, equity and inclusion.
They decided to terminate 104 of 109 teacher training grants valued at about $600 million nationwide. They did so through form letters that said the grants “no longer effectuate … agency priorities.”
Led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, eight Democratic-leaning states filed suit in Boston and argued that Congress had approved the grants and that their sudden canceling was not “authorized by law.” The suit targeted about $250 million in canceled grants, and of those, about $148 million went to California.
Joining California in the suit were Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin and Colorado. No Republican-led states have filed suit.
Bonta’s suit relied on the Administrative Procedure Act, which forbids agencies from abruptly changing their regulatory policies without a clear and reasonable explanation.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun, a Biden appointee, agreed that the Education Department’s decision to abruptly terminate the grants was “arbitrary and capricious” and illegal under the Administrative Procedure Act. He said “there was no individualized analysis of any of the programs” that were terminated.
On March 10, he issued a temporary restraining order to maintain the status quo.
When a federal appeals court refused to lift that order, Trump administration lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court.
“This court should put a swift end to federal district courts’ unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of Executive branch fund and grant disbursement decisions,” wrote acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris in her appeal in U.S. Department of Education vs. State of California.
A statement from Bonta’s office said the Supreme Court order “does not conclusively resolve any of the issues in this case, and the preliminary injunction motion is still pending.”
“The Trump Administration is pursuing an anti-education agenda that would yank teachers out of schools and prevent new teachers-in-training who are close to being ready to serve our students from filling empty classrooms,” Bonta said in a statement. “While we would have preferred to maintain the [temporary restraining order], we respect the court process, and we look forward to continuing to make our case in the lower court.”
Bonta’s suit said the California State University and the University of California lost eight grants that were valued at about $56 million. The aim of the federal grants was to recruit and train teachers to work in “hard to staff” schools in rural or urban areas.
Among the canceled programs was a $7.5-million grant to Cal State L.A. to train and certify 276 teachers over five years to work in high-need or high-poverty schools in the Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified school districts.
Other cancellations included an $8-million program at UCLA to train at least 314 middle school principals as well as math, English, science and social science teachers to serve in several Los Angeles county school districts.
In a statement, California Teachers Assn. President David Goldberg criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“At a time when we are facing ongoing staffing shortages in our public schools, we should be devoting more resources to the recruitment and retention of educators, not holding critical resources hostage to push political agendas,” Goldberg said.
Times staff writer Daniel Miller contributed to this story.
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