Florida taxpayers watched their government fund "Transgender Humility" training with public money – and Ron DeSantis just put an end to it.
That discovery was only a fraction of what Florida's DOGE team uncovered after one year of digging through state and local government books.
Now he's handing every Republican governor the exact playbook – and what they found inside government budgets is worse than anyone expected.
Florida DOGE Uncovered DEI Spending and Illegal Alien Subsidies in Local Government
Governor Ron DeSantis launched the Florida Department of Government Efficiency in 2025 through Executive Order 25-44, mirroring the federal DOGE model and deploying data-analysis technology to audit state agencies, universities, and municipal governments.
Local governments across Florida weren't just wasting money – they were using taxpayer dollars to push a radical agenda on government employees.
Florida DOGE investigators found workers at county and municipal agencies being run through "Transgender Humility" training sessions built around a "wheel of power/privilege" that designated certain ethnic groups as inherently superior to others.
In other jurisdictions, local governments were funneling taxpayer dollars directly to immigration lawyers defending criminal illegal aliens.
SB 1134 shut it all down – banning counties and municipalities from spending government funds on discriminatory DEI programs.
The ideological rot ran deepest at Florida's universities.
Auditors pulled more than 74,000 syllabi and 100,000 research articles, scanning for the left-wing content that had been quietly embedded in the curriculum for years.
SB 266 and SB 7044 cut off the funding.
Florida DOGE Found Nearly $1 Billion in Wasteful Government Spending
The money trail was just as damning.
Since its launch in 2025, Florida DOGE has identified nearly $1 billion in waste and abuse at the local government level and returned more than $878 million to the federal Treasury.
The task force did it with a lean operation – primarily three full-time employees supplemented by volunteers and interns, working on a six-figure budget.
Three technology partners drove the results.
Echelon audited Lee County's school district and identified up to $80 million in potential savings through contract reviews alone – and another $8 million by eliminating 170 unnecessary positions spread across 30 departments.
Vulcan Technologies ran full payment transaction audits across the entire state, uncovering spending patterns that bureaucrats had buried for years.
Local Florida governments are now adopting Vulcan's system voluntarily.
Among the specific spending abuses Florida DOGE documented in its January 2026 report: Miami-Dade County had budgeted a $9 million "art allowance" for a detention center and committed $125 million to a climate-related power program for cruise ships.
Jacksonville had allocated $54 million in a capital improvement plan for bicycle infrastructure.
Orange County paid $322,000 for a "discrimination in government contracting disparity study."
Miami-Dade also maintained a $2 million Office of New Americans – a taxpayer-funded support office for illegal aliens.
The State DOGE Playbook Is Ready and Property Tax Relief Could Follow
The State Leadership Initiative and the Florida DOGE team presented the State DOGE Playbook in Washington, D.C. last month – a step-by-step guide any red state can implement.
Other states have started their own efficiency programs, but the gap is enormous.
Texas's Office of Regulatory Efficiency has produced more than 400 reductions in administrative code.
Oklahoma's DOGE office has generated $19 million in cuts.
Florida's program is approaching $1 billion identified – with three full-time employees.
Florida succeeded where the federal effort stalled: it passed actual laws, forcing local governments to comply rather than waiting on Congress to act.
That's the difference – and Republican governors now have the exact template in hand.
Property taxes are a major financial concern for voters across every red state – and DeSantis made the connection explicit: local governments crying poor while burning millions on DEI programs and illegal alien support offices are the reason homeowners are getting squeezed every year.
Cut the waste, and the pressure on property taxes follows.
Every blue state continues running fraudulent programs that have never delivered on a single promise, bleeding taxpayers dry while the bureaucracy grows.
Red states have no excuse anymore.
The playbook is written.
The only question now is which governors have the spine to use it – and which ones will keep letting their states drift toward the same fiscal disaster bankrupting California and Illinois.
Sources:
- Noah Wall, "Florida's DOGE Is Delivering," The American Mind, August 1, 2026.
- "Florida's DOGE Is Working Thanks to DeSantis," The Daily Signal, July 13, 2026.
- "The DOGE Effect: Making Government Lean Again," The Daily Signal, May 21, 2026.
- Governor Ron DeSantis Press Release, "Governor DeSantis and CFO Ingoglia Highlight Excessive Local Government Spending," Executive Office of the Governor, October 2025.
- "Florida Returns $878 Million in Funds for DOGE Effort," First Coast News, March 2025.