The Department of Government Efficiency says 104 DEI contracts have been scrapped across 25 federal agencies, saving taxpayers over $1 billion.
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has announced that the department has already canceled 104 contracts related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across a bevy of federal agencies, saving taxpayers over $1 billion.
Headed by Elon Musk, the nongovernmental advisory commission provided the DOGE operational update in a Jan. 31 post on X, which features a list of 25 federal agencies along with a corresponding number of DEI-related contracts that have been canceled.
The Department of the Treasury led with 21 canceled contracts, saving $25,247,783, followed by the Department of Health & Human Services, which canceled 15 contracts worth $28,187,448. Notably, the Office of Personnel Management canceled three contracts totaling $494,956,233, averaging about $165 million per contract. In total, the canceled contracts have saved taxpayers $1,000,060,792, according to DOGE.
Trump officially established DOGE with a Jan. 20 executive order, renaming the United States Digital Service, an agency formed under President Barack Obama, to the United States DOGE Service. Initially, Trump tapped biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE alongside Musk, but that changed when Trump’s team announced that Ramaswamy would no longer be part of the initiative.
In a recent interview, Musk said that he hopes that DOGE can cut up to $2 trillion in federal spending, with his latest Jan. 31 operational update for DOGE indicating that this effort is beginning to bear fruit.
DOGE’s update targeting DEI aligns with President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order that aimed at dismantling DEI programs within federal agencies. The order mandates the immediate closure of DEI and DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) programs, saying they are “illegal and immoral” and that they’ve led to “immense public waste” and “shameful discrimination.”
“That ends today,” Trump wrote in the order. “Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.”
Later, in line with Trump’s order, the Office of Personnel Management began directing all agencies to take immediate action to roll back DEI, including canceling any related training and firing DEI staff.
By Tom Ozimek
