The U.S. Department of Government Efficiency on Saturday released an exhaustive report card on its recent cost-cutting investigations, some of which have targeted dark sectors of the federal bureaucracy which haven’t seen oversight in years or decades.

Much of the department’s focus under Elon Musk has been trained on the United States Agency for International Development, a swollen catch-all for international spending ostensibly meant to improve America’s standing mostly within developing nations. However, the surfacing of certain USAID line items has prompted conservatives to express fury at how spending on gender reassignment, children’s shows, and political training initiatives are in the country’s best interest.

DOGE spotlighted $729 million in some of the most controversial items found while investigating USAID, “all which have been cancelled,” according to a post by the agency’s X account. Among them are some head-scratching expenses for programs like “Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision,” where the United States spent $10 million.

In another, the ultra-liberal University of California at Berkeley was awarded $9.7 million to develop “a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills.” $2.3 million was dedicated to a vague Cambodia initiative described as “strengthening independent voices.”

Others are sure to be defended by USAID supporters as essential ingredients to building democratic institutions elsewhere around the world. However, the costs are staggering: $486 million for a “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening” program, $22 million for an “inclusive and participatory political process” in Moldova, and $21 million for voter turnout in India.

Another approximately $50 million was spent on similar initiatives in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Mali.

On average, USAID doles out about $40 billion around the world each year, according to the BBC, much of it on programs that Musk and President Donald Trump claim are laden with waste and fraud. Some of their allegations have run true: in the case of a judge who recently paused the administration’s plan to pull offline gender-related government websites, his wife was found to have been receiving grants from USAID to buttress her nonprofit’s work with children in Ethiopia.

If Musk and Trump are allowed to continue their reforms of USAID, the agency’s 10,000-employee headcount could be reduced to as little as 290. Other profligate spending items highlighted by DOGE have included hundreds of thousands of dollars spent with news outlets like Politico and Reuters, which Republicans have argued showered the Biden-Harris administration with favorable coverage.

Similar cost-cutting efforts are being implemented across the federal government. President Trump has made public his intention to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, which maintains around 4,400 employees, and is preparing to furlough or fire 15,000 employees at the Internal Revenue Service.

Some of the discoveries by DOGE defy belief. Last week Musk, standing in the Oval Office with Trump, revealed that the federal government’s retirement program is based in a limestone mine built shortly after World War II; there, hundreds of employees shuttle paperwork files in a byzantine maze of shelves, an antiquated process that limits federal retirements to 10,000 per month.

[H/T Trending Politics]