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A Trump administration website dedicated to “tracking government waste” links to a blank, placeholder web design template for a fictional architecture firm.
The site, waste.gov, which was reportedly created last week, appears to be part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) campaign to purge agencies and cut federal spending.
So far, however, the site has remained almost indistinguishable from a sample WordPress page, 404media reported, noting the irony that the template speaks about the architecture firm having a “diverse” clientele, meaning it likely wouldn’t comply with White House orders striking diversity, equity, and inclusion work from the federal government.
After the status of the website was reported in various news outlets, waste.gov shut down and only became accessible via a password.
The website snafu comes as DOGE faces mounting questions about the supposed waste and fraud it claims to be uncovering.
During a tense press conference on Wednesday, when asked for proof of the alleged malfeasance the administration was uncovering, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt held up printed out contracts she said showed contractors who went “against the president’s policies.”
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“We are not trying to hide anything,” she told reporters. “We have been incredibly transparent and we will continue to be.”
The previous day, Musk answered questions from the Washington press corps for the first time since he arrived in the White House and began overseeing cuts and mass firings at agencies nearly a month ago.
“We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible,” Musk said, pointing to the DOGE account on X, which frequently posts claims about purported fraud and terminated contracts the group has pursued without providing any additional evidence or documentation, or links to government data that was already publicly available before Trump took office. “So all of our actions are maximally transparent.”
“I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization,” he added.
The official DOGE website, meanwhile, is largely an embedded feed of the X account. On its “Savings” page, the site has a message reading, “receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine’s day” with a heart emoji.
Announcements around alleged fraud and waste aren’t the only place DOGE is facing questions about its commitment to transparency.
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Critics have argued the effort has attempted mass firings and cancellation of federal spending, with little public information available or congressional oversight about the extent of the changes or who is serving in the DOGE effort.
Musk, by serving as a “special government employee,” has been able to sidestep some financial disclosure rules most federal workers have to follow.
Watchdogs have also argued that the billionaire’s unprecedented influence over federal spending raises conflict of interest concerns, since Musk’s companies do billions of dollars of business with the federal government and are regulated by the same federal agencies he’s in the process of overhauling.
Musk has also criticized legislators who take issue with the DOGE effort, calling California congressman Ro Khanna a “d***” on X after the Democrat said he’d like to see the billionaire face questions under subpoena in Congress.
Many of those hired at DOGE are unknown to the public, though press reports uncovered a 25-year-old staffer who reportedly wrote on social media he supported “eugenic immigration policy” and hate against people of Indian descent.
