The article critiques the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for failing to address real government waste, fraud, and abuse, highlighting examples like luxury jets and unnecessary spending while DOGE focused on ideological cuts.
Key Takeaways
•DOGE, intended to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, instead targeted disliked government areas and failed to reduce spending.
•Examples of waste include a $70 million luxury DHS jet, $2.5 million on flashy ICE SUVs, and extravagant Pentagon expenses like lobster and steak.
•The 'waste, fraud, and abuse' trope is misleading; balancing the budget requires major program cuts or tax increases, not just rooting out small overspending cases.
Perhaps it should have been looking more closely at President Trump’s Cabinet to find wasteful spending. Mandel Ngan / AFP / GettyThis is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
Readers’ faith in publications and writers relies on a belief that the information provided is true and accurate to the best of the writer’s knowledge. When I get something wrong, I owe it to you to correct myself. Today, I have that unpleasant task.
For years, I have argued that the idea of balancing the budget by eliminating government “waste, fraud, and abuse” was a canard. In 2020, I wrote that “there really isn’t that much waste, fraud, and abuse in the system.” In 2024, when President-Elect Trump announced the creation of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, I said that the phrase was a meme with no real substance to it—Trump claimed DOGE would save money in part by weeding out fraudulent uses of social services, an unrealistic strategy based on an exaggerated problem. Politicians invoked the phrase waste, fraud, and abuse because no one could possibly be against those things, but for the same reason, those things would have been eliminated long ago if they were common and easy to spot.
Three recent stories have forced me to wonder if I was just looking in the wrong places.
The first example of government waste is the luxury airplane that appears to have helped end Kristi Noem’s tenure as homeland-security secretary. NBC News first reported last month on the Boeing 737 that the Department of Homeland Security had leased and requested to buy for $70 million, along with two Gulfstream jets purchased for a reported $200 million. The 737 features “a bedroom with a queen bed, showers, a kitchen, four large flat-screen TVs and even a bar.” DHS claimed that the plane was intended for, among other uses, deportations; the government typically charters flights to deport people. Given the conditions that the Trump DHS favors for migrants in custody—my colleague Caitlin Dickerson recently wrote about one facility that had “an austere courtroom that reeked of bleach, and an airless cafeteria with a rancid smell”—this excuse is “far-fetched,” a DHS source told NBC. The plane seems like it could be described as waste, fraud (in the colloquial, if not also legal, sense), and abuse.
Even Trump, a walking advertisement for conspicuous consumption, reportedly found this a bit much, and the plane was a factor in Noem’s abrupt, um, reassignment to a newly concocted envoy role. The fallout from Noem’s departure has revealed another embarrassing case. The Washington Examiner reports that ICE’s former No. 2 Madison Sheahan spent about $2.5 million to buy a fleet of new SUVs and wrap them in flashy decorations with ICE’s name and logo. For reasons that should have been obvious, these vehicles are largely useless to an agency that tries to move secretively and usually employs unmarked cars. (This is perhaps one reason that ICE officials reportedly referred to Sheahan, whose previous experience was at Louisiana's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, as “fish cop.”) The agency is now trying to get rid of the white-elephant vehicles. This example looks like waste, though the fact that a big part of the SUV contract went to a prominent Republican donor means that it also looks a little like a kickback, which would constitute abuse.
Over at the Pentagon, a watchdog group’s analysis found some outlandish outlays: $98,329 on a grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, almost $9 million on lobster tail and crab, and $15.1 million on rib-eye steak—all from September alone. These, too, look like waste and abuse. Although the Iran war cost an eye-popping estimated $11.3 billion in its first week, and continues with no clear goal or strategy, at least it’s related to national defense.
These are just the appalling expenditures the administration isn’t advertising. What about the ones that are matters of declared policy? The administration has imposed tariffs that hurt American farmers who grow corn and soybeans. In response, Trump announced plans for a $12 billion bailout for farmers, which is both cynical and wasteful: government spending to fix a problem created by the government itself. His One Big Beautiful Bill Act also allocated $40 billion in subsidies for fossil-fuel producers, some of which are highly profitable.
When Trump launched DOGE, he promised it would root out waste, fraud, and abuse; its leader, Elon Musk, vowed to cut $2 trillion in federal spending. In practice, the DOGE team appears to have been intended mostly to attack areas of the government that Trump, Musk, and the budget director, Russell Vought, didn’t like. As an engine of efficiency or savings, DOGE failed miserably. CNN reported this week that DOGE cuts “have hampered the US government’s abilities to prepare for domestic emergencies; monitor terror threats; guard against cyber-attacks; broadcast US information into Iran; and quickly help US citizens stranded abroad.” Spending actually rose on DOGE’s watch. Maybe DOGE was just focused on the wrong things—some of its staffers don’t seem like the sharpest crew—but it’s probably not a coincidence that the top Trump aides who were spending frivolously escaped scrutiny.
These cases are relatively tiny in the scope of the federal budget—the Pentagon received more than $2 trillion in funding in fiscal year 2025. That’s another problem with the “waste, fraud, and abuse” trope: Contrary to what those invoking the phrase wish to suggest, balancing the federal budget would take much more than rooting out individual instances of overspending. It would require steep cuts to programs, real increases in tax revenue, or both. But the cost of government leaders participating in wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive behavior is high in ways not best measured in dollars.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said that Iran will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and warned the war could expand to new fronts. Attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf have surged as oil prices have risen above $100 a barrel, and millions of people are displaced across Iran.
The Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill to boost supply and lower costs—the largest housing legislation in decades—but its future in the House is uncertain.
A suspect is dead after driving a vehicle into a synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, and exchanging gunfire with security staff, authorities said. No one was seriously injured, though a security guard was struck by the vehicle and taken to the hospital.
Evening Read
One Food All Americans Can Agree On
By Yasmin Tayag
If nutrition is a sport, it has no casual fans. Supporters of Team Protein, the 2025 champions, are numerous and passionate, backed up by a sprawling industry of protein-supplemented products such as popcorn, soda, and cereal. Also popular is Team MAHA, captained by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which endorses “real foods,” especially red meat and dairy. The Dietitians are veteran players with an old-school strategy: going heavy on plants and light on saturated fats. Alongside underdogs like Team Keto and the Vegans, there are the Fiber-Maxxers, upstarts whose popularity has soared alongside sales of fiber-filled cookies, powders, and drinks.
As in any fandom, choosing one team can mean demonizing the others’ stars: MAHA partisans despise the Dietitians’ low-fat milk, and the Fiber-Maxxers sneer at Team Protein’s constipating supplements. Yet there is one player that any team would gladly welcome. It’s packed with fiber and protein. Kennedy would call it a “real food.” It’s plant-based, widely available, and incredibly affordable. It is the homeliest and humblest of foods: the bean.
