Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is cheering the Department of Labor’s (DOL) cancelation of $577 million of what it deemed taxpayer-funded “America Last” grants – including a $3 million DEI grant for the little-known country of Lesotho.
“Great work today by @USDOL @SecretaryLCD @Sonderling47 cancelling $577M in “America Last” grants for $237M in savings,” DOGE wrote Wednesday in a post on Elon Musk’s X.com social media platform.
After praising Labor Dept. Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Deputy Secretary Keith Sonderling for making the cuts, the DOGE post provided a list of some of the U.S. Labor Department’s most curious Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) expenditures in foreign countries:
Great work today by @USDOL @SecretaryLCD @Sonderling47 cancelling $577M in “America Last” grants for $237M in savings, including:
- $10M for "gender equity in the Mexican workplace"
- $12.2M for "worker empowerment in South America"
- $6.25M for "improving respect for Worker's rights in agricultural supply chains" in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador
- $5M for "elevating women's participation in the workplace" in West Africa
- $4.3M for "assisting foreign migrant workers" in Malaysia
- $3M to "enhance social security access and worker protections for internal migrant workers" in Bangladesh
- $3M for "safe and inclusive work environments" in Lesotho
Of the countries where the U.S. Labor Department is spending American taxpayers’ money to fund things – like “gender equity,” “empowerment,” and agricultural “respect” – in foreign workplaces, the tiny, land-locked country of Lesotho appears to be the most obscure.
Listing wasteful government spending during his address to Congress back in March, President Donald Trump joked that Lesotho is a country “nobody has ever heard of”:
“$8 million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of.”
Completely encircled by the Republic of South Africa, Lesotho is a poor, tiny, landlocked country bereft of natural resources consisting of two-thirds mountains. Additionally, the leading cause of death in the country is HIV/AIDS among females and Tuberculosis among males, all of which suggests ensuring diversity and gender equity might not be tops among Lesotho’s need for foreign aid.
TRUMP EXPOSES INSANE SPENDING:
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 5, 2025
- $2 billion for free housing & cars for illegal aliens
- $45 million for DEI scholarships in Burma
- $40 million for "social & economic inclusion of sedentary migrants"—no one knows what that is
- $8 million to promote LGBTQI+ in Lesotho—a country… pic.twitter.com/lRPHgijacI