White House flags top USAID boondoggles under Elon Musk's microscope

The White House on Monday released a list of projects overseen by the top U.S. aid agency it identified as "waste and abuse" as Elon Musk's cost cutters seek to dismantle the decades-old provider of foreign aid. 

Musk, a "special government employee," according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, oversees the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Despite its title, DOGE is not a government agency but has been tasked by the White House's executive office with dismantling top spending initiatives, and the billionaire's most recent target is the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

"For decades, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous - and, in many cases, malicious - pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight," the White House said Monday. 

According to a list released by the White House, USAID allocated millions of dollars for programs the Trump administration considers controversial and that frequently involved diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives launched during the Biden administration.

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At the top of the list was a $1.5 million program slated to "advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities" and a $70,000 program for a "DEI musical" in Ireland.

Initiatives that supported LGBTQI programs were also flagged as an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds, including $47,000 for a "transgender opera" in Colombia, $32,000 for a "transgender comic book" in Peru and $2 million for sex changes and "LGBT activism" in Guatemala.

Fox News Digital could not independently verify the initiatives detailed by the White House in Colombia or Guatemala. The White House referenced reports about these programs by the Daily Mail, the Daily Caller News Foundation and other outlets. 

The White House also detailed spending initiatives that launched during Trump's previous administration, including a 2017-2019, $6 million agreement that it said was intended to "fund tourism" in Egypt. 

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However, the link referencing the Egyptian program detailed how it was intended to build on previous investments in North Sinai that provided potable water and wastewater services to hundreds of thousands of people and would provide further "access to transportation for rural communities and economic livelihood programming for families."

The White House also outlined USAID's funding for coronavirus research, including millions of taxpayer dollars supplied to EcoHealth Alliance for coronavirus research, support for contraceptive initiatives and programs that it said benefited terrorists in several countries. 

The future of USAID remains unclear, though the doors to its headquarters were closed Monday, and thousands of employees across the globe sat waiting to hear whether they still had jobs after the apparent Musk takeover.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been named the acting director, and he agreed Monday with the White House that the agency needed an overhaul.

"The president made me the acting administrator," he told Fox News. "I've delegated that power to someone who is there full-time, and we're going to go through the same process at USAID as we're going through now at the State Department."

Questions remain over whether the White House has the legal authority to dismantle an independent agency, and Democratic lawmakers on Monday joined agency employees who stood outside the headquarters protesting the shutdown despite having been told to remain at home. 

Rubio took issue with the protests and referred to them as "rank insubordination."

"The goal was to reform it, but now we have rank insubordination," he said. "Now we have basically an active effort - their basic attitude is, 'We don't work for anyone. We work for ourselves. No agency of government can tell us what to do.'"