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‘Ice-Skating Drag Queens’: Sen. Paul’s Annual ‘Festivus’ Report Finds $1 Trillion+ In Government Waste

Each year, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) pays homage to “Seinfeld” with a tradition that allows him to highlight his own small-government fiscal principles.

This year, he had plenty to discuss in his “Festivus” rant, as Newsmax reported:

“This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12,” Paul wrote in the report. “That’s over $1 trillion in government waste, including things like ice-skating drag queens, a $12 million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more! No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.”

Paul expressed his support for the new initiative to eliminate government waste led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy writing: “As always, taking the path to fiscal responsibility is often a lonely journey, but I’ve been fighting government waste like DOGE before DOGE was cool. And I will continue my fight against government waste this holiday season.”

While hundreds of millions was listed in misused COVID PPP funds, some of the more ludicrous government programs called out include The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spending $419,470 to determine if lonely rats seek cocaine more than happy rats, $3 million on “girl-centered climate action” in Brazil, $288,563 to create safe spaces for bird watching groups, and $123,066 to teach youths in Kyrgyzstan how to “go viral.”

Paul teased the report earlier in the week with a GIF of the episode that inspired his annual report:

He went on to release a flurry of posts documenting which examples of wasted taxpayer dollars should be included. Here’s just a sampling of that thread:

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Paul also shared some media coverage of his report:

The New York Post also broke down some of the contents:

One of the most mindboggling spending line items involved the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, which spent $419,470 on a New York University study to “determine if lonely rats seek cocaine more than happy rats.”

Paul’s report does not note if scientists were able to determine which rats went for the blow.

Perhaps more disturbing is the more than $2 million in government grants given to Cornell University over the past two years to infect cats with COVID-19 — and then kill them when experiments on whether the felines can transmit the disease are done.

“Since January 2022, Dr. [Anthony] Fauci’s NIAID and the USDA have given Cornell University $2.24 million to study whether felines can contract and transmit COVID-19 … Not only is this a waste of over a million in taxpayer dollars, but the experiments have led to the suffering and death of over thirty cats,” the report states.

Another questionable use of taxpayer money came from the National Endowment for the Arts, which awarded a $10,000 grant to ice-skating drag queens.

The Bearded Ladies Cabaret –  a self-described “queer cabaret arts organization” – won the dough in support of its climate change-themed ice-skating performances.

The so-called “Beards on Ice” show features “polar bears, drag queens, and a character dubbed ‘Nonbinary Parental Guardian Nature’” and hopes to bring climate awareness to anyone attending the performance, according to the report.

Here’s a clip of the senator discussing his report in a Fox News Channel appearance:


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