The US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) no longer exists, but that doesn’t undo the harm done to millions of queer people. The department was initially run by the clown of a billionaire Elon Musk after he donated around $250 million towards president Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
Musk left the role this past May due to mass boycotting of his businesses due to his participating in foreign aid cuts and terminating thousands of federal jobs.
Despite having eight months left on the contract, the department itself has now officially been disbanded.
Many of the department’s responsibilities have been taken over by the Office of Personnel Management, leaving many to wonder what DOGE added at all. Though, according to Advocate, what DOGE actually accomplished was upending hundreds of thousands of lives, particularly members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Back in August, the Trump administration fired around 300,000 federal workers, attributing the vast majority of the decision to DOGE. The Williams Institute reported in January that LGBTQ+ people account for 8% of all federal workers, or about 314,000 people.
Additionally, the terminated employees included 2,000 staff members of USAID. It’s estimated that as of June, more than 640,000 people (at least two-thirds of which being children) internationally have died since losing USAID support.
These cuts evidently resulted in many people losing access to medication that treats HIV and other diseases, and many activists were forced to flee LGBTQ+-hostile countries due to the end of U.S. legal support.
Besides the terminations, through DOGE, the Trump Administration discarded over 270 grants ($125 million of unspent funds ) through the National Institutes of Health, targeting gender-, sexuality-, and diversity-focused research. Many of which focused on queer and trans youth, specifically BIPOC folks.
This led to the cutting of programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that monitored the HIV epidemic, as well as removing their specialized drug-resistant STI testing lab and $70 million in funds for the HIV prevention network Adolescent Medicine Trials Network.
