The Truth About 9 Claims Donald Trump, Elon Musk And DOGE Have Made About Government Waste

Tech billionaire Elon Musk and his squad at the Department of Government Efficiency have taken a chainsaw to the federal budget in President Donald Trump’s first 100 days, creating a backlash among some Americans who say the efforts go too far and earning praise from others who say thy don’t go far enough.

DOGE isn’t a government agency. It came about in one of Trump’s executive orders. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and Trump’s largest campaign donor, is DOGE’s public face. Musk does not get paid for his work to cut waste from the federal government, which allows him to maintain control of SpaceX, Tesla and other large companies that receive billions of dollars in federal contracts.

The operation has faced widespread criticism for moving to ax crucial government programs and services without first taking the time to understand their value to the American public. Below are claims and facts surrounding DOGE cuts and initiatives that are circulating on social media and elsewhere.

Massive Unemployment Fraud?

Claim: Musk and DOGE claimed victory over waste Monday, saying they had uncovered massive unemployment fraud. DOGE said on X that 24,500 dead people as old as 115, about 28,000 children ages 1 to 5, and one yet-to-be-born person illegally claimed unemployment benefits totaling $354,000.

Facts: This is true, but not a new finding. The fraud was previously uncovered by the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General, The Associated Press reported.

The Social Security Act of 1935 enshrined unemployment benefits in federal law, but handed broad control to states to administer their own unemployment systems. However, special relief programs, such as expanded COVID-19-era benefits, injected more federal involvement and a flood of new beneficiaries into the system.

About two weeks after Trump signed the COVID unemployment relief bill into law on March 27, 2020, the Department of Labor warned in a memo to state officials that the program was “a target for fraud with significant numbers of imposter claims being filed with stolen or synthetic identities.”

The memo offered an option for states trying to protect a person whose identity was stolen to fraudulently collect unemployment benefits. To preserve a record of the fraud but keep innocent people from being linked to it, states could create a “pseudo claim,” the memo advises.

Those “pseudo claims” led to records of toddlers and centenarians getting checks. The Labor Department's inspector general tallied some 4,895 unemployment claims from people over the age of 100 between March 2020 and April 2022, but another departmental memo explained that the filings stemmed from states changing dates of birth to protect people whose identities were used.

“Many of the claims identified ... were not payments to individuals over 100 years of age, but rather ‘pseudo records’ of previously identified fraudulent claims,” the 2023 memo says.

Is DOGE Coming For Social Security?

Claim: Musk and DOGE plan to cut or eliminate Social Security benefits.

Facts: This is false, although Musk has made no secret of his contempt for Social Security, which he claims is a “Ponzi scheme.”

The Social Security program is a separate, legally protected trust fund, and the government is obligated to pay benefits to those who qualify. The government can’t directly take funds from the trust fund, and Trump has promised it won’t be touched.

Still, budgeting and other decisions can indirectly affect the program. For example, new restrictions require in-person social security filing.

Retiree advocates say that the change will negatively impact older Americans in rural areas, including those with disabilities, mobility limitations, and those who live far from SSA offices and have limited internet access.

The plan also comes as the agency has or plans to lay off up to 50 percent of its workforce and shutter 47 SSA offices, many of them in the South and Southeast.

Do 300-Year-Old Dead People Get Benefits?

Claim: Tens of millions of dead people over 100 years of age and as old as 300 are getting Social Security benefits.

Facts: Both Trump and Musk have made this assertion. While it is true that improper payments have been made, including some to dead people, the numbers thrown out by Musk and the White House are overstated and misrepresent Social Security data.

Part of the confusion comes from the agency’s use of the COBOL programming language, which defaults to a reference point of more than 150 years ago when birthdate data is missing or incomplete, The Associated Press explained.

Also, the agency’s inspector general said in March 2023 and July 2024 reports that the SSA hadn’t established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but were not marked as deceased.

However, it's unclear if all of these individuals were receiving benefits.

“The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” said Lee Dudek, Social Security’s new acting commissioner.

Do Immigrants Get Social Security?

Claim: The number of non-citizens who received Social Security numbers jumped from 270,000 in 2021 to more than 2 million in 2024, representing 5.5 million people in all.

Facts: This is true, but lacks context. It’s also legal, despite a portrayal by Musk and his colleague, venture capitalist Antonio Gracias, that immigrants were illegally collecting federal benefits and voting. Both are false, according to Poynter’s PolitiFact.

Musk also said that undocumented immigrants during the four years of the Biden administration were part of a “large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible, ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States.” PolitFact previously rated that as “Pants on Fire!”

The federal government does issue Social Security numbers to immigrants who are legally authorized to work in the United States under the Social Security Administration’s enumeration-beyond-entry, or EBE program.

This is so immigrants can pay taxes.

But it doesn’t entitle immigrants to register to vote in federal elections, nor are they immediately eligible for Social Security benefits.

Arithmetic Errors

Claim: Musk and his DOGE squad claim on a so-called “wall of receipts” that they have saved the federal government $65 billion based on contract cancellations, firing workers and “fraud detection.”

Facts: Budget experts say the actual savings is closer to $2 billion, PBS reported.

News outlets detected basic multibillion-dollar arithmetic errors. For example, CBS News first reported that the same $650 million USAID contract was listed three times; The Intercept first reported that a Social Security contract listed as $232 million was instead for $560,000; and a supposed $8 billion ICE contract was, in fact, an $8 million contract — and that was a credit line, according to PBS White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López.

Taylor Jones, whose company, CulturePoint provides leadership in management training, was listed as having a $10 million contract with the government. It’s actually a $100,000 credit line with no guaranteed payment, and the agreement was never signed, Jones told PBS.

Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute and the chief economist for former Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican, told PBS the savings identified by Musk’s team would pay for 1/75th of 1 percent of the entire national debt.

“I have not found any legitimate evidence of fraud in the spending that Elon Musk has highlighted,” she said. “I have found expenditures that a lot of people wish the government wouldn’t engage in, such as DEI contracts and Politico subscriptions. But that doesn't make them fraudulent. It just makes them policies that certain people would not like us to be spending money on.”

Are VA Benefits Targeted?

Claim: Musk and DOGE are cutting benefits to veterans.

Facts: This is partially true. DOGE is implementing budget cuts and streamlining operations within the Veterans Administration, but direct benefits to veterans are largely not being cut.

DOGE had planned to terminate 875 VA contracts, but later reduced the number to 585 after a revolt by front-line VA employees who said the cuts would put safety at the agency’s nearly 1,400 hospitals and clinics at risk, NBC News reported.

On Monday, DOGE said it had cut an “unreasonably priced” $15.3 million contract for a salary survey and data analysis. In all, according to a Wednesday update, DOGE has cancelled 47 contracts with a “ceiling” value of $87.5 million, leading to savings of $30.2 million.

Among them are a $3.4 million contract for an “aviation advisor in Kenya,” DOGE said in a post on X.

Is Michelle Obama On The Payroll?

Claim: A Facebook post claimed that DOGE discovered former first lady Michelle Obama has been receiving a monthly $122,000 payment from the General Services Administration since 2009.

Facts: DOGE never claimed this, according to PolitiFact, which discovered the posts were flagged as part of Facebook owner Meta’s efforts to combat false information on its news feed. That was before the company’s decision to cease fact-checking earlier this year.

The claim originated from the “America’s Last Line of Defense” satire page and its website counterpart, Dunning-Kruger Times. PolitiFact said both are operated by Christopher Blair, “a prolific satire writer whose posts often become viral without the original, satirical context.”

Transgender Men Menstrual Cycles?

Claim: USDA, DOGE and social media posts said that a $600,000 grant canceled by the USDA was for the study of “menstrual cycles in transgender men.”

Facts: The university behind the study said it was focused on the development of feminine hygiene products made of natural fibers to “benefit all biological women,” according to FactCheck.org.

$1.2M Super Bowl Sex, Drinking Study

Claim: DOGE Senate Caucus Chair Sen. Joni Ernst blew the whistle on $1.2 million in funds to study the sex and drinking habits of Super Bowl viewers.

Facts: This is true. However, the National Institutes of Health-funded grants date back to 2014 and 2017.

The first grant, for $563,800, was approved for the study, “Super Bowl Sunday: Risky Business for At-Risk (Male) Drinkers.” The latter study, titled “Super Bowl Babies: Do Counties with Super Bowl-winning Teams Experience Births Nine Months Later,” received $710,000.

Fact-Checking Resources To Bookmark

Before you go, here are a few fact-checking websites to bookmark and consult anytime you’re skeptical about claims you’re hearing or reading online.

• FactCheck.org from the Annenberg Public Policy Center;
• PolitiFact, from The Poynter Institute for Journalism Studies, a nonprofit journalism and research organization;
• Snopes, a misinformation-fighting website whose fact-checkers include writers, editors and web developers.
• Washington Post Fact Checker; and
• NPR FactCheck.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.