Top 5 most outrageous ways the government has wasted your taxes, as uncovered by Elon Musk's DOGE

When Trump signed an executive order establishing the agency on his Inauguration Day, DOGE set an ambitious goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. 

"A small agency called the United States Institute of Peace is definitely the agency we've had the most fight at. We actually went into the agency and found they had loaded guns inside their headquarters - Institute for Peace," a DOGE staffer told Watters. "So by far, the least peaceful agency that we've worked with, ironically. Additionally, we found that they were spending money on things like private jets, and they even had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban. This is real. We don't encounter that in most agencies."

USIP did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's inquiry. 

Granite School District in Utah spent their COVID-relief funds on $86,000 in hotel rooms for an educational conference at Caesars Palace, a ritzy Las Vegas casino, while Santa Ana Unified in California spent $393,000 to rent out a Major League Baseball stadium, according to a report by Parents Defending Education and shared by DOGE. Granite School District has since denied "any impropriety for having our educators participate" in the Las Vegas conference.

The cost-cutting department also revealed that schools spent $60,000 of COVID-relief funds on swimming pool passes, while a California district used its funds to purchase an ice cream truck.

"They were basically partying on the taxpayers' dollars," Musk told Watters on Thursday. 

Ernst said that under the Biden administration, USAID awarded the $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshop to produce a show called "Ahlan Simsim Iraq" in an effort to "promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups." 

GAO's analysis revealed that of the 16 government agencies reporting improper payments, 75% of the waste found was concentrated in five programs: $54 billion from three Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Medicare programs; $31 billion in HHS Medicaid; $16 billion from the Department of the Treasury's earned income tax credit; $11 billion from the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; and $9 billion from the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Restaurant Revitalization Fund. 

DOGE has announced over the last few months that it has cut hundreds of millions in DEI contracts. 

The Defense Department has been working with DOGE to slash wasteful spending, DOD spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video posted to social media.

Parnell listed some of the initial findings flagged by DOGE, much of it consisting of millions of dollars given to support various DEI programs, including $1.9 million for holistic DEI transformation and training in the Air Force and $6 million to the University of Montana to "strengthen American democracy by bridging divides."

The Trump administration announced earlier this month it is slashing millions of dollars in DEI grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of its overall DOGE push.