The Department of Government Efficiency revealed Thursday that public school districts burned through hundreds of billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funds on expenditures that did “little” to help students.
“Schools have spent nearly $200B of COVID-Relief funds with little oversight or impact on students,” read a DOGE post on X.
The Elon Musk-led cost-cutting initiative highlighted more than half a million dollars in spending on just four projects deemed wasteful by DOGE.
In one instance, the Santa Ana Unified School District in California spent $393,000 in COVID-19 funds to rent out the Los Angeles Angels baseball stadium for high school graduation ceremonies.
Another unnamed California school district even purchased an ice cream truck with the pandemic relief money, according to DOGE, citing an investigation from the nonprofit group Parents Defending Education.
In Utah, Granite Public Schools spent roughly $86,000 in taxpayer money to cover accommodations at the luxurious Caesars Palace hotel and casino during an annual conference.
In another case, West Virginia’s Upshur County School District spent $60,000 in federal funds on swimming pool passes.
“All of this money was drawn with zero documentation,” according to DOGE. --->READ MORE HERE
The Trump administration changed course on Tuesday, deciding to keep the government's free COVID test program running, just minutes before the website COVIDtests.gov was set to shut down.
Earlier that day, The Washington Post reported that officials were preparing to end the program and possibly destroy tens of millions of unused tests worth more than a half-billion dollars.
But 12 minutes before the shutdown, Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced the site would remain active.
"With COVID-19 infections decreasing after a winter peak, we are in the process of regular discussions on closing this round of the COVID-19 test ordering program. At this point, the program is still open, and we will share additional updates as needed," he said in a statement.
Internal documents showed that HHS officials had been debating two options: Disposing of more than 160 million COVID tests, or continuing to ship them to U.S. households. The stockpile is maintained by the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR).
Only a small fraction of the tests had expired, and tens of thousands were still being ordered daily, Dawn O'Connell, an ASPR chief under the Biden administration, told The Post.
"It's expensive to stockpile these tests," she said. "Destruction costs a significant amount of money, but hanging on to them costs a significant amount of money." --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
Bay Area long COVID sufferers battle mysterious symptoms and medical skepticism
Assessing Claims That the CIA Supports the Lab-Leak Hypothesis for COVID
USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates
WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates
YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates
NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest
If you like what you see, please "Like" and/or Follow us on FACEBOOK here, GETTR here, and TWITTER here.
No comments:
Post a Comment