The Capital Research Center (CRC) has released a report detailing what it considers the top ten most questionable uses of federal funds by nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations. The findings are part of CRC’s DOGE Files project, which aims to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending.
The list begins with a $25,000 State Department grant awarded in 2021 to Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes for “The Opera As One,” an opera designed to raise awareness about transgender issues. An additional $22,020 came from nonfederal sources. According to CRC, this project became a focal point for criticism during the Trump administration. “President Donald Trump himself was shocked by the ‘trans opera,’ sarcastically quipping about it in his address to Congress as part of a long list of absurd State Department grants illustrating what DOGE was trying to prevent,” the report states. White House officials also cited the grant as an example of spending that the new agency would target.
CRC reports that its own investigation first brought attention to this grant in 2023 as part of a broader review into over $100 million spent by the Biden administration on transgender-related programs. The data collection effort later served as a model for the DOGE Files initiative.
Second on CRC’s list is a series of grants distributed through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, established under the Inflation Reduction Act with $27 billion allocated for green energy initiatives. Rather than distributing funds directly, EPA awarded large sums to nonprofits such as Coalition for Green Capital ($5 billion), Inclusiv ($1.9 billion), Climate United Fund ($7 billion), Opportunity Finance Network ($2.3 billion), and Power Forward Communities ($2 billion). CRC highlights potential conflicts of interest involving leadership overlap between these organizations and federal agencies. “Instead of distributing the funds itself, the EPA immediately began shipping the money out—or ‘throwing gold bars off of the Titanic’ as one EPA staffer was described it on a hidden camera—to a series of nonprofits,” according to CRC’s report. The organization notes that after public scrutiny and legal challenges, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin cancelled these grants.
Other groups named include Church World Service (CWS), which received $375 million in federal grants for refugee resettlement and advocacy activities; National Harm Reduction Coalition, recipient of over $2.4 million since 2020 for drug harm reduction programs; Solidarity Center, an AFL-CIO affiliate whose budget is almost entirely funded by government grants; Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), noted for its role in policy debates over electrification and fossil fuels; National Urban League; UnidosUS; various redacted USAID grantees receiving billions without full disclosure; and TransLatin@ Coalition.
CRC claims that CWS deleted its Platform on Racial Justice from its website following exposure by DOGE Files but says it has archived copies documenting calls for policies such as ending cash bail and defunding police: “Shortly after the DOGE Files report exposed the insanity of its Platform on Racial Justice, CWS deleted the document from their website. However, Capital Research Center had already archived a copy.”
Regarding harm reduction efforts funded by HHS through groups like National Harm Reduction Coalition, CRC describes taxpayer-funded messaging that includes advice on safer drug use rather than abstinence: “This isn’t drug ‘harm reduction,’ it’s taxpayer-funded drug normalization.”
Several organizations highlighted have seen significant portions or even majorities of their budgets sourced from government grants—such as Solidarity Center at 99 percent or TransLatin@ Coalition at 50 percent—and some are currently involved in lawsuits challenging funding cuts or program changes.
For more details on these findings and other examples identified by CRC researchers, visit their official site at https://capitalresearch.org/.
