As Elon Musk, President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) eliminate wasteful spending, examples continue to come out of the woodwork. Great Britain News reports in late 2022, the U.S. State Department donated $25,000 to Rainbow Migration, a company providing legal advice to LGBT people seeking asylum in the UK.
Although Trump’s efforts to shut down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were paused on Friday due to legal challenges, Musk intends for the State Department to acquire the disbanded agency in the near future.
The department also approved an additional $40,000 towards the Edinburgh International Book Festival to fund a number of interviews “engaging with social issues around gender identity and inequality, racial equity, and diversity”.
In 2024, another $20,000 was given to “Classical Pride”, a concert series in London that highlighted the “importance of LGBTQ+ music and musicians to classical music, giving classical music a place in the wide-ranging Pride celebrations”.
Among similar examples of government waste at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave a few additional examples during a press conference. Leavitt pointed out the Biden administration allocated millions of taxpayer dollars to left-wing, progressive programs including $1.5 million to advance Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in Serbia, $47,000 for a “trans opera” in Colombia, $32,000 for a trans comic book in Peru, and $70,000 to produce a DEI musical in Ireland.
