Matt Bernstein

I just always wanted to do the Breaking Points intro.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity.

I'm Matt Bernstein.

We have a great show today.

What do we have, Crystal?

I wanted an indeed we do.

Last year, at the direction of a newly re-elected Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the world's richest man, established the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, named after the 54-year-old's favorite internet meme.

Elon Musk, whose wealth could single-handedly end world hunger,

was on a mission with Doge to cut what he viewed as wasteful government spending and lower the federal deficit.

This was perhaps most notably done at the behest of Executive Order 14151, which Donald Trump signed the day he entered office in 2025, and which required the termination of all activities relating to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

What does that mean exactly?

Today, we may or may not find out.

Elon Musk hired a group of 20-something-year-old young men, and over the course of a few months, they terminated thousands of federal grants, gutted entire federal agencies, and upended countless people's lives and careers.

Doge immediately ended USAID, which brought humanitarian assistance in the form of life-saving medicine, education, food, and water to people in some of the most impoverished parts of the world.

According to the New York Times, one canceled grant, quote, provided an education program in Nepal to keep girls in middle school to avoid early forced marriages.

When that grant was canceled, parents in Nepal could no longer afford to keep their girls in school.

The National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH, a federal grant-making agency that supports research, education, and public programs across the country, was gutted by 97% in 22 days.

Cuts included museum air conditioning funding, newspaper digitization, documentary filmmaker grants, and more.

By the end of 2025, Fortune estimated that the number of jobs destroyed by Doge-related cuts was 400,000.

A few of the groups whose grants were cut due to DEI, including the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association, filed a lawsuit seeking to reinstate their funding.