Keep Factually independent
Whether you agree or disagree with our analysis, these conversations matter for democracy. We don't take money from political groups - even a $5 donation helps us keep it that way.
Did the Doge cuts result in 88 children a day dying?
Executive summary
Estimates published by advocacy groups and some researchers attribute roughly 300,000 excess deaths — “mostly children” — to cuts tied to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a figure repeated by outlets and organizations (see The Lancet-linked figures reported by First Focus/ASPPH and multiple trackers) [1] [2] [3]. Sources show widely varying tallies (e.g., trackers reporting ~174,000 child deaths as of May 11) and significant methodological uncertainty about what DOGE actually cut and what money was ultimately de-obligated, making a precise “88 children a day” calculation not uniformly presented in the reporting [4] [5] [6].
1. The headline numbers being circulated and where they come from
Several organizations and media pieces cite an aggregate estimate of about 300,000 deaths tied to DOGE-era cuts, and they often say most victims were children; First Focus and ASPPH summarize work that points to that ~300,000 figure and warn of millions more at risk [2] [3]. Independent trackers like the Impact Counter cited in commentary pieces reported different interim totals — for example, one tracker’s estimate of 174,001 child deaths by May 11 — showing the raw counts vary across groups doing this tallying [4] [7].
2. How “deaths per day” claims are derived — and why they can be misleading
A straight-line conversion from a cumulative death estimate to “deaths per day” (for instance, dividing 300,000 by a time window) is mechanically simple but hides major assumptions: it presumes causation, uniform timing, and accurate attribution to DOGE actions alone. Reporting and trackers note both immediate program disruptions (e.g., USAID freeze) and projected medium-term impacts (e.g., The Lancet’s projection that millions of under-5s could die by 2030 from broader effects), which are different types of calculations and cannot be collapsed into a single, unambiguous daily rate without methodological clarity [8] [2] [1].
3. What the reporting says about attribution and methodology
Multiple accounts emphasize that the numbers are estimates often generated by researchers, advocacy groups, and “impact trackers” that combine program interruption data with epidemiological models of what those programs prevented [7] [4] [2]. The New York Times and other outlets have highlighted that the Trump administration’s accounting and the opaque execution of DOGE’s changes make it hard even for Congress to verify how much money was actually cut or reallocated — a key limitation when attributing downstream deaths [6] [5].
4. Disagreements among sources and political context
Political actors and prominent figures disagree about scale and culpability. Bill Gates publicly warned that DOGE cuts endangered children; Elon Musk and DOGE supporters denied direct lethal effects, disputing specific causal claims [9]. Advocacy groups such as First Focus and academic coalitions have been explicit in linking DOGE/USAID disruptions to high child mortality figures, while journalism outlets like Reuters and analyses in TIME and Newsweek stress opacity in the accounting and contested savings, which complicates direct attribution [10] [11] [8] [5].
5. What reputable outlets add about verification limits
Investigations by outlets including Reuters and The New York Times flag that DOGE frequently overstated savings, that some reported cuts were not formally de-obligated, and that the department’s rapid actions were often poorly documented — all facts that diminish confidence in simple mortality tallies tied solely to DOGE directives [6] [5]. TIME reported internal USAID memos projecting “hundreds of thousands” of excess deaths from effective shutdowns, indicating internal concern but not supplying a single independently validated daily-death rate [8].
6. How to interpret the “88 children a day” figure given available reporting
Available sources do not present a widely accepted “88 children a day” number as an independently verified metric; rather, they show multiple cumulative estimates (e.g., ~300,000 deaths total, or tracker counts like ~174,000 child deaths) from different groups and modeling approaches, which could be converted into daily averages over chosen intervals but would depend entirely on start/end dates and modeling choices [4] [2] [1]. Because the underlying data, time windows and causal attributions differ across sources, a single daily-death claim must be read as an approximate derivative of contested estimates, not as a settled, universally validated fact [6] [5].
7. Bottom line and what to watch next
Multiple credible organizations and trackers report large numbers of excess deaths linked to foreign-aid and USAID disruptions tied to DOGE actions; the most-cited headline figure is about 300,000 deaths “mostly children,” but methodology varies and independent verification is limited [2] [3] [1]. Readers should watch for peer-reviewed studies or audits that clarify time windows, the degree to which funds were legally rescinded versus temporarily frozen, and independent counterfactual modeling — those will be necessary before translating cumulative estimates into a robust “X children per day” statistic [6] [8].