The Department of Government Efficiency’s website quietly removed nearly one billion dollars in what it claims to have “saved” through canceled contracts, grants or leases this past week.
In the latest example of altering figures on the agency’s website, staffers at DOGE seemingly updated its claimed savings overnight on Tuesday, erasing approximately $962 million, according to NOTUS.
The largest of the disappeared cuts made this week, identified using the Wayback Machine, appears to be a $1.1 billion contract with the Acacia Center for Justice. The group provided legal services for unaccompanied immigrant children who enter the U.S. DOGE initially claimed the termination would save $367 million, but now the contract isn’t listed at all.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore services at the end of last month, but Acacia Center for Justice told NOTUS its services had not been resumed.
On several occasions, the DOGE website has been updated to get rid of claimed savings that were later found to be inaccurate. NOTUS identified more than 600 grants that had been removed from DOGE’s website over the last few weeks in addition to dozens of contracts and leases. Almost all were removed during a two-hour window between midnight and 2 a.m. on Tuesday this week, according to NOTUS.
The latest string of corrected savings arrives after Elon Musk, the de facto head of DOGE, lowered expectations of the group’s savings from $1 trillion to $150 billion by the end of the fiscal year.
Musk’s role in the administration is to help identify “waste, fraud and abuse” within agencies and departments and make cut suggestions to President Donald Trump. It was part of the overall goal to reduce federal spending.
However, much of his and DOGE’s work has been subject to scrutiny as he makes sweeping cuts with little to no explanation or misrepresented information. Many of the “receipts” on the list of savings do not include itemized information, making them difficult to track.
Other cuts DOGE has claimed on its website predate the current administration, according to NOTUS.
