President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force is once again touting all the cuts it's made to streamline the federal government — but this time it's bragging about the elimination of relatively small-dollar programs that protect and clean up lower-income areas from debilitating pollution and other hazards, NOTUS reported on Tuesday.
In many cases, the report said, the "crushing cuts" it's highlighting were rescinded simply because they included blacklisted pro-inclusion words that got caught up in Trump's crusade to eliminate diversity programs.
"The 33 grants listed as DOGE’s greatest hits range from addressing traffic congestion in New York to maternal morbidity research," reported Mark Alfred. "What many of them have in common, though, is a focus or even a brief mention that the money benefits minority groups. Almost all of the grants listed on DOGE’s 'greatest hits' list have a single word or phrase in their title that appears to have been their death knell, such as 'inclusive,' 'racial equity,' 'structural racism' or 'transgender.'"
This aligns with reporting earlier this year that the National Science Foundation under Trump was flagging any funding request for a study that simply used words like "woman," "systemic," or "trauma" — which would potentially create barriers for a bunch of funding for hard-science and medical research that uses those terms in a non-political context.
Likewise, many of these DOGE-eliminated grants were addressing serious problems, including an EPA project to clean up hazards in Thomasville, Georgia that expose low-income residents to lead, radon, sewage, and other hazardous waste. Another that got the axe was a $1.5 million award for Emory University and the Morehouse School of Medicine to study elevated maternal mortality in Georgia.
"Another listed grant had been awarded to a coalition of universities to fund research into reducing transportation congestion," noted the report. "Prior research by the same coalition has already been put in use to extend the lifespan of infrastructure in New York City, the group says, and prompted a 2021 state law aimed at reducing congestion by ticketing overweight trucks." However, the research stated as one of its goals to address "inequities on different population segments," language which likely made it a target for elimination.
DOGE, which has so far saved only a negligible amount of taxpayer money and frequently had to update its reports to remove math errors, continues on despite the departure of its brainchild, tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has since fallen out with Trump over his opposition to the newly-passed tax cut megabill.