Experts say the full impact of DOGE cutting tens of thousands of federal contracts and agreements may never be fully known and the controversy remains.
Elon Musk’s DOGE lights out
DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, promised significant savings. It was disbanded with eight months remaining on its founding charter.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk appeared at a White House press conference on February 11, 2025, to defend his plan to reduce “waste” in the federal government with the Department of Government Efficiency.
For several months last year, the team he assembled and their accomplishments within federal agencies dominated headlines. At President Donald Trump’s request, Musk posed for cameras with a chainsaw to show off the department’s cost savings.
Although the dust-up over DOGE has died down, hundreds of legal actions are underway over many of the approximately 30,000 canceled grants and contracts. USA TODAY analyzed the cuts reported during the first 9.5 months of the new administration to examine the extent of the reported cost savings.
Based on the latest accounting information provided on DOGE’s website (last updated October 4), here’s what we know:
- Sixty-four agencies, departments, or federal agencies had grants or contracts terminated or early terminated.
- DOGE reported that the canceled agreements saved $110 billion. This equates to approximately $323 per U.S. resident.
- Nearly 30% of grants and contracts were already paid in full before termination, resulting in either no immediate savings or less than $1 in savings.
- The cuts affected Americans in Puerto Rico, Guam, and Washington, D.C.
- The pace of layoffs reached a high of more than 16,000 in February and March 2025, but slowed to just 373 in September.
- Termination of subsidies and contracts, as well as freezes not included in the data, continue this fiscal year.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the contract review would bring accountability back to the federal government “that has been needed for many years.”
But for local governments, libraries, museums, and other community anchors, every measurable cost reduction came at a cost, both in dollars and in lifesaving medical care, government disruption, research derailment, and uncertainty.
Experts told USA TODAY that the full direct and indirect cost of DOGE’s layoffs and cancellations will likely never be fully known, and the toll they have taken on Americans and poor people around the world will likely never be known.
“It was just a hurricane that went through the government, a tornado across every agency,” said Scott Delaney, co-founder of Grant Witness. Grant Witness was founded in the midst of the DOGE cuts to track canceled and frozen grants at the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the savings created by DOGE or whether its efforts had the desired effect.
Impossible to know the full extent of DOGE reduction
Delaney, a former Harvard University scientist whose Alzheimer’s research funding was also included in the cuts, said it’s difficult to summarize specific cuts because federal spending is so difficult to track. “They messed things up in a way that can’t be repaired by being so inaccurate,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll ever really know the full extent of the damage.”
The long-term costs of subsidies and contract cancellations are not tracked by DOGE, and the numbers keep changing.
The available data does not include agreements the administration has been ordered to repair by courts or deals it has negotiated with universities such as Columbia and Harvard.
It also doesn’t take into account frozen subsidies, which are much harder to track, Delaney said.
“It’s very important to understand that just because DOGE says it did it doesn’t mean it actually did it,” he said.
The amounts reported by DOGE are widely debated.
But Delaney said DOGE’s data, even if incomplete, is important because it helps shed light on the scope of events across the federal government.
Delaney and others acknowledge that the federal grant process had many flaws before DOGE made the cuts. “We should always strive to do better,” he said, “but we should do it in good faith and not out of mere hostility toward government or the scientific enterprise more generally.”
Is it a wasteful expense or an important one?
In May, the Environmental Protection Agency canceled a $20 million flood mitigation grant intended to stabilize riverbanks in the small Alaska Native village of Kipnuk. The project was recommended by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is intended to reduce erosion associated with thawing permafrost and increased coastal flooding events.
Just five months later, in October 2025, when Typhoon Haron hit Alaska’s remote coast, Kipnuk was one of several villages affected by disastrous storm surge and flooding.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin defended the criticism, saying that even if plans had not been halted, the project would not have been completed and would not have prevented “the destruction and tragedy caused by such a large and destructive storm.”
His post suggesting that the cancellation would have prevented “$20 million of our hard-working American taxpayers” from being washed away into the Kuskokwim River infuriated Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
“I’m completely offended that there are people who say protecting Alaskan communities is a waste of taxpayer money,” Murkowski said in an October speech.
“We are Americans,” she said. “Everyone affected is an American who deserves to be treated with that level of respect.”
How to stack numbers by state
DOGE, which was rebranded from an existing division, sent employees into Trump’s office shortly after his second inauguration, demanding access to computers and searching for grants and contracts using keywords such as “equity,” “gender,” and “climate change.”
The resulting purge involved thousands of contractors and grant recipients, including more than 500 universities. Long-planned projects, half-finished work, and ongoing research studies saw their funding disappear.
At least 5,400 of the grants and contracts that were terminated by early October could be categorized by specific states, such as local governments or universities. Of these, the total “savings” reported by DOGE include at least:
- $13.7 billion to state governments
- $4.6 billion to universities
- $1.2 billion for local governments
- $440 million donated to indigenous peoples and tribes
Among the layoffs that are easily tied to specific states, three of the four most populous states had the greatest number of subsidy and contract cuts.
- 600 – New York
- 440 – California
- 310 – Texas
The states with the greatest financial losses are:
- California – $1.9 billion
- Texas – $1.8 billion
- Florida – $1 billion
- Minnesota – $858 million
However, states with smaller populations had the highest per capita losses:
- South Dakota – $187 per person, $166 million total
- Alaska – $177 per person, total $129 million
- Minnesota – $150 per person, $858 million total
- Colorado – $123 per person, $708 million total
Dallas County, Texas, saw $4 million in federal funding cut, leading to layoffs and the cancellation of community vaccinations, according to a federal damage tracker by the Partnership for Public Service.
Cuts at all levels of government “put a wrecking ball on everything,” said Monica Medina, NOAA’s former principal deputy assistant secretary and former assistant secretary of state.
“It will be nearly impossible for state and local governments to make up this difference,” Medina said. She and others say the effects will last for years.
Which federal agencies and departments have seen the biggest cuts?
In the first nine months, contracts and grants were terminated at 64 agencies, departments, and other federal agencies.
Contract scrutiny has been blamed for numerous delays across the government, including delays in emergency response during disasters, allowing the Bureau of Meteorology to repair faulty pipes, and allowing wildlife biologists to conduct field surveys.
- The newly renamed Department of the Army reportedly scrapped at least 850 agreements, totaling about $14 billion in savings.
- The Department of Health and Human Services has terminated more than 4,300 agreements, including funding earmarked for decades of medical and cancer research. DOGE reported savings of $25 billion.
- The largest number of layoffs (more than 5,900) occurred with the dissolution of the Agency for International Development (USAID). Dozier reported “savings” of $28.3 billion.
USAID worked to prevent infectious diseases such as HIV and provided medicine and water to people in countries suffering from war, famine, and drought.
Mr. Trump, Budget Director Russell Vought and other Republicans cited examples of wasteful spending at USAID, including those identified in past audits and inspector general reports, and those that were later debunked.
Former USAID officials and other public health experts say closing USAID came at a significant human cost. Health economist Brooke Nichols of ImpactCounter.com estimates that layoffs and disruptions led to more than 788,000 deaths.
According to Reuters, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said no lives have been lost as a result of the cuts.
Litigation and challenge
In addition to dozens of lawsuits filed by states against the administration, many other grant recipients are also challenging the cancellation, said Gillian Blanchard, vice president of the nonprofit group Lawyers 4 Good Government.
“All of these grants are mandated and mandated by Congress,” said Blanchard, who works with the nonprofit Climate Change and Environmental Justice Division, which assists more than 600 organizations in administrative and Federal Claims proceedings.
“Somebody signed on the dotted line and fulfilled their obligation, and then a government agency or department just illegally lifted it,” she said. “In many cases, the reason was as basic as a change in administrative priorities, but in many cases this is illegal.”
“Right now, millions of people across the country are suffering,” Blanchard said.
In November, the White House refuted reports that DOGE no longer exists, saying it was still active. The newspaper cited DOGE’s X post and quoted Scott Kuper, director of human resources management, who called the report “fake news.”
The post said DOGE canceled 78 wasteful contracts, saving taxpayers $335 million compared to the previous week. Similar updates were shared in subsequent weeks, but the data available for download on the website has not been updated since October 4th.
Vought said there was always a vision for DOGE to be organized within a government agency. By June, its leadership had been decentralized to departmental heads, but it has benefited from DOGE’s consulting, he said.
When Musk left the White House in May 2025 after four months as a special civil servant, he acknowledged that DOGE might not reach the $1 trillion goal it once predicted, saying, “There’s a lot of inertia in government when it comes to cutting costs.”
Dinah Boyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, covers climate change, weather, the environment and other news. Contact us at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal..
