The Trump administration and the GOP more broadly are robbing taxpayers by slashing social services and calling it “savings.” Programs funded by our tax dollars that pay for education, food assistance, and healthcare are being characterized as “wasteful” while they demand hundreds of billions more to further feed the war and deportation machine and to line their own pockets.
In March the USDA under Trump canceled $500 million in food deliveries to low-income individuals across the country provided by the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, which provides an additional $500 million in food assistance to school children was also cut.[i] The Oregon Food Bank told Portland TV station KATU they “conservatively estimate a loss of $7 million total” in lost funding.[ii] Thousands could starve across the country.
What could possibly be a better use of taxpayer dollars than feeding hungry children? The DHS believes a $50 million Gulfstream 5 jet for the private use of DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem[iii] is one example since they claim the jet she owns now is “outdated.” The Pentagon also just today accepted a gift of a Boeing 747 from the government of Qatar that will require hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer dollars to covert into an Air Force One plane for the president. Of course, Trump doesn’t see this as “wasteful” spending because he benefits.
Healthcare is also on the chopping block. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump’s Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services has fired 20,000 public health experts, cut cancer research by over 30%, and is seeking an additional cut of $12 billion in federal health grants that help states fight infectious diseases, provide mental health services, addiction treatment, and life-saving vaccines.[iv] On May 14th, he told Congress, “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me,” yet he remains Secretary, affecting the healthcare for millions.
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk has similarly targeted agencies focused on environmental protection, food safety, early childhood programs, teacher training, and grants for centers that help students with disabilities. Musk stated in an interview with Joe Rogan in February, he believes social security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and he later erroneously claimed 40% of social security calls are fraudulent when in truth, a fraction of 1% are fraudulent.
In March Musk made plans to force social security recipients to go to the social security administration building to verify their identity or use two factor identity verification, which presents a challenge to older folks with mobility issues and a lack of familiarity with technology. The goal, of course, isn’t to reduce fraud but rather to reallocate the money earmarked for social security to endeavors that benefit the Trump administration. DOGE simultaneously canceled an IT contract for the Social Security Administration, claiming this saved taxpayers nearly $232 million when, in fact, it only saved about one million dollars.
In February DOGE cut $900 million from the education department to cripple the Institute of Education Sciences and Education Innovation and Research grants,[v] and the Trump administration is continuing to punish universities for not promoting their own ideologies. On April 15th Democracy Now reported the Trump administration froze “$2.2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University, after the Ivy League institution defied Trump’s order to eliminate all DEI initiatives and further crack down on Palestinian rights protests, including reporting international students to federal authorities. Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a letter to the school community Monday, “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. … No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”[vi]
DOGE and the rest of the Trump administration have made almost no cuts to the Pentagon, the most wasteful spender of all. The Intercept reported in February,
‘Somehow, the mammoth Pentagon workforce has been largely exempt. The Pentagon is swimming in personnel of all sorts — most of them devoted, in some way, to killing people and destroying things. The department has more than 700,000 full-time civilian workers, about one-third of the total federal civilian workforce, as well as 2.5 million troops — including more than 1.2 million active-duty personnel. The Department of Defense also employs around 500,000 civilian contractors. These people and their benefits cost taxpayers tons of money. Yet the department announced that it was cutting a mere 5,400 probationary workers this week and will put a hiring freeze in place. Uniformed military personnel are, however, exempt.”[vii]
Ironically, rather than cutting funding for nuclear weapons programs, DOGE fired scores of nuclear weapons safety experts, (perhaps with the vain vision of creating Tesla brand nuclear safety robots to save on labor costs?) They quickly claimed this was a “mistake” and scrambled to rehire them, along with researchers they fired responding to an outbreak of bird flu.
Musk has received 13 billion dollars worth of federal government contracts in the last five years. In essence, this is corporate welfare and yet he calls people receiving federal assistance to survive parasites.
Aside from burning the social safety net, both Musk and Trump are gutting government agencies that are investigating him. Four days into his second term, Trump fired 17 inspectors general, including the Office of Government Ethics, which had pending requests to investigate Musk for conflicts of interest. NPR reported in February, “at least 11 federal agencies have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Musk’s companies.”[viii]
When former Twitter employees were wrongfully dismissed during Musk’s takeover of the website, they filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. In response, Trump fired several of the National Labor Relations Board commissioners, so the Board “can no longer act on recommendations from the staff to file a lawsuit against the target of any investigation, or to agree to a settlement if there were to be a settlement proposed.”
In February Musk essentially shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) because he is planning to use Twitter, now branded “X”, to offer financial services, which would give the bureau direct jurisdiction over his company’s operations. In the same month, DOGE cut the budget of the Department of Interior and laid off thousands of employees, in part, because it has investigated Musk’s SpaceX launches for environmental damage.
The SEC is also investigating Musk for failing to disclose his initial purchase of 5% of twitter, which allowed him to buy additional shares at a $150 million discount. A lawsuit was filed against him and now two of the members of the SEC who voted for the litigation have been dismissed.
Journalist Eric Lipton noted in February “The Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, EEOC, NLRB, the FEC are all regulating him or paying him, at the same time as he has this immense power to help decide what their regulatory powers and budgets are.” The absurd conflicts of interest are obvious.
Musk and Trump both present themselves as “anti-government,” which is an egregious lie. They are only against anyone in the government who opposes them or any department that provides help to common people, whereas every oppressive function of government like waging wars, building weapons, colonizing regions rich in natural resources, locking people in cages in profit, abducting immigrants and tearing families apart is not only supported by both but actively expanded. Despite all their talk, the state isn’t getting smaller; it’s getting bigger.
To make matters worse, the GOP is currently trying to pass a reconciliation budget bill that would cut Medicaid funding by $715 billion and push 13.7 million people off Medicaid over the next ten years.[ix] The proposal would also prohibit Medicaid from funding services at clinics that also perform abortions, such as Planned Parenthood, and it would reduce federal funding to states that use their own funds to provide Medicaid coverage to undocumented children.[x] The bill additionally seeks to end the requirement for states to pay for Medicaid coverage for applicants whose immigration status is being verified.
The budget bill cuts $300 billion from the supplemental nutritional assistance program or SNAP by limiting SNAP eligibility to citizens and lawful permanent residents, forcing states to pay for part of SNAP benefits and administrative costs, changing work requirements for able-bodied SNAP recipients, and limiting future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan to one every five years, leading to decreases in the value of SNAP benefits as inflation occurs. The bill also prevents SNAP recipients from deducting internet expenses from their income, thereby reducing their benefits, and it eliminates the National Education and Obesity Prevention Program for SNAP participants.
The budget bill takes all this “wasteful” spending and puts it to “good use,” adding $140 billion to the Trump administration’s programs to abduct and deport undocumented people, $51.6 billion to complete the border wall, $45 billion for immigrant detention centers, and $27 billion to hire more ICE agents.[xi] The bill also calls for a $150 billion increase in the “defense” budget, which is already higher than the defense budget of China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Germany, Ukraine, France and Japan combined.
The current proposal includes $20 billion that would go, in part, to creating a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield consisting of 400 to 1,000 satellites that would sense missiles in the atmosphere, and 200 additional attack satellites equipped with missiles or lasers that would shoot them down. Musk’s SpaceX is partnering with Palantir and drone manufacturer, Anduril, to bid on key parts of the Golden Dome. SpaceX has proposed the government pay for access to the technology rather than own the system outright, which would allow for faster development without Pentagon protocols.
The reconciliation budget bill also gives $2 trillion in tax breaks disproportionately to the highest earners. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the bill will increase the national debt, which is now close to $37 trillion by another $3.3 trillion. To avoid defaulting, the bill raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, pushing the problem down the road until they decide to spend more and raise it again. The budget bill is to be voted on tomorrow, Thursday, May 22nd and should be met with fierce resistance.
The tariffs Trump has put in place will exacerbate this economic crisis and won’t benefit anyone. Trumps obsession with tariffs displays his exceptional ignorance about the economy. Of course, America is reliant on imports as it is primarily a service economy, not a manufacturing economy. Manufacturing can be done more cheaply in foreign countries where labor laws are lax, nonexistent, or not enforced. While it would be more sustainable and just to localize the economy, reducing dependence on imports, tariffs will have the opposite effect intended. They will hurt US manufacturers as most rely on raw materials imported from abroad, which will become more expensive as foreign suppliers increase their prices to offset the tariffs. These increases in costs will translate into higher product prices for American consumers, which we are seeing already.
Trump is upsetting his own allies, such as Larry Fink, billionaire and CEO of Blackrock, the world’s largest investor in weapons manufacturing, who announced that the US may already be experiencing a recession due to Trump’s tariffs. The only people who stand to gain are those in Trump’s inner circle who know what he’s going to do next or those who closely follow his social media. For example, right before implementing a 90 day pause on tariffs, Trump posted on social media “Great time to buy!” causing the stock market to regain much of the losses it experienced due to the tariffs. His supporters who took this advice collectively made millions.
Trumps childlike fixation with tariffs seems to stem from his idolization of President William McKinley elected in 1896. McKinley helped pass the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 as a Republican member of Congress. Trump knows this much but he seems to be unaware these tariffs triggered a financial crisis that caused Americans to turn against the party and vote out ninety-three republicans in the next congressional election. Perhaps he also doesn’t know what happened to McKinley?
In Trump’s second inaugural address, he lauded McKinley’s implementation of high tariffs and his brazen colonial ambitions, seizing a piece of Panama to build the Panama Canal. Though not mentioned in the speech, McKinley also made the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Hawaii US territories during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Trump is making similar nineteenth-century-style claims against Panama, Greenland, and Canada (a country the US has twice tried to conquer in its history but failed both times).
Trump’s death cult is hellbent on enriching themselves at the cost of us and the planet. They want to turn back the clock to a far more openly racist and genocidal time in American history. It couldn’t be clearer we’re facing a cruel, sadistic, vindictive, and vile administration, and yet we are surrounded by his sycophants. We must ask ourselves, what are we going to do about it? Because waiting around for 2028 to elect some equally or slightly less horrendous parasite isn’t going to cut it.
Citations:
[i] The program helped food banks, schools, and organizations in disenfranchised communities to buy food from local farms and ranches.
[ii] Food banks in Oregon face challenges as USDA pauses $500 million in deliveries nationwide
[iv] RFK Jr tells Congress ‘people shouldn’t take medical advice from me’ | Robert F Kennedy Jr | The Guardian
[v] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/musk-doge-education-data.html
[vi] Trump Administration Freezes $2.2 Billion in Grants to Harvard, Citing DEI and Protests | Democracy Now!
[vii] https://theintercept.com/2025/02/28/musk-doge-pentagon-military-spending-f35/
[viii] How did Elon Musk become so powerful in the Trump administration? : NPR
[ix] RFK Jr. faces criticism, protest over $715B in Medicaid cuts | Healthcare Finance News
[x] What’s in the House GOP’s $2 trillion tax and spending bill?
[xi] What’s in the 2025 House Reconciliation Bill? Immigration and Border Security Highlights | American Immigration Council
Tools of Control 
Leave a reply to Lisa Cancel reply