‘MOGE’ audit uncovers nonprofits’ ‘incredibly wasteful’ spending of taxpayer funds: state official

EXCLUSIVE: An audit by Mississippi state auditor Shad White found several instances of “incredibly wasteful” expenditures of state HIV/AIDS grants, as President Donald Trump has been criticized for cutting similar funding via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

White said his report shows funds meant for HIV/AIDS issues were spent by some recipients on a “Queer-ceanara” – a “Latinx pride month event” based off the Spanish term “Quinceañera” for a girl’s 15th birthday celebration.

“We’ve been following the model that President Trump and DOGE set in digging into taxpayer funds here in Mississippi,” White told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview about updates to what is being called “MOGE,” or Mississippi’s version of Elon Musk’s DOGE government efficiency work.

“We’re particularly looking now at grants that are being passed from state agencies over to nonprofits, and our latest findings are really just a slap in the face to taxpayers, unfortunately,” he said.

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“So what we started doing is digging into grants that were designed to pay for tests, to test people for HIV/AID – and so those grants were flowing through the Mississippi Department of Health… And when you dig into how [some] nonprofits are spending the money, you see that it’s incredibly wasteful.”

White said taxpayer funds meant for constructive means were also spent on cab rides in the overnight hours 1,000 miles away in New York City over a several-day period.

“[That] looked like bar-hopping,” he said.

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White remarked that if that kind of funding “abuse” could happen in a red state like the Magnolia State, it may only be the tip of the iceberg compared to more financially permissive blue states.

“Our audit shows that when you dig into how this money is actually being spent, it’s not actually helping people with HIV/AIDS. It’s not helping to test folks for HIV. It’s instead just being wasted.”

At the same time, the Trump administration’s National Institutes of Health has been under fire for similar cuts in its own DOGE efforts, with one CNN report citing a critic claiming “people will die.”

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The network looked into changes made in a Health and Human Services database, and one source said they had been getting texts from concerned people.

Back in Jackson, White said the HIV/AIDS funding audit is only the latest in his office’s wide-ranging efforts to curb waste or fraud in terms of state taxpayer monies.

“DOGE has highlighted in particular how grants passed down from the federal government to state governments, and then to non-profits, are really a massive, massive fraud risk,” he said.

“Our audit here proves that the craziest kind of stuff that you see at the federal level and the craziest stuff that may see in California or New York is happening in red states too. Every single state needs to be following President Trump’s lead.”