Should U.S. taxpayers have to pay for a “news” story that blames America’s decades-long trend away from Christianity and churchgoing on an “allergic reaction” to conservative Christianity and President Donald Trump?

That’s one of the questions raised by Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.), whose office released its eighth annual report on government waste, “Federal Fumbles,” on Wednesday. The annual report uncovered billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse across virtually every sector of government.

The report noted that anti-Christian bias sometimes pervaded coverage from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the U.S. Agency of Global Media (USAGM). “USAGM oversees Voice of America (VOA) and the office of CUBA Broadcasting (OCB), broadcasting news to regions with limited press freedom. In [fiscal year] 2024, $956 million was spent showcasing United States government scandals and weaknesses within our country.”

“For example, an article in 2024 focused on whether President Trump’s Christian faith is contributing to the decline in Christianity in America,” found the report. “This is not a winning strategy for advancing America’s interest throughout the world.”

The story in question — “Why Americans are losing their religion” by Dora Mekouar, which VOA published on April 23, 2024 — quotes University of Notre Dame political science professor David Campbell, who said “a primary” reason Americans are fleeing churches is their “allergic reaction to the religious right” in general — including one politician, in particular.

“Increasingly, in many Americans’ minds, religion equals the religious right, or equals the Republican Party, or maybe equals support for [former President] Donald Trump. And if that’s what religion is, for many people, they don’t want any part of religion,” said Campbell.

The story went on to quote Sam Abrams, a social sciences professor at Sarah Lawrence College, asserting that “extreme conservative rhetoric about things like abortion and the role of women is pushing young women away from [church attendance and faith] and turning them atheist, agnostic and into ‘none’ or ‘nothing.’ … [T]he phenomenon of the extreme right has pushed people away very, very quickly.”

That was but one of the broadcasting agency’s harmful use of taxpayer funds, said the report. “In addition to publishing negative stories about America, between 2010-2020 USAGM did not address security concerns found by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Many staff members had not been adequately vetted before they received security clearances. Consequently, OPM has revoked USAGM’s authority for security clearances,” noted the annual list of government waste.

“We must have strict oversight,” the report concluded. “[T]axpayers should not be forced to pay for news that harms the reputation of our country.”

Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) recently reintroduced the No Propaganda Act (S. 519), which would end taxpayer subsidies to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB “funnels federal funding into public media outlets like NPR and PBS. Although it is supposedly a private organization, CPB raked in $535 million from congressional appropriations, with $357.9 million going to TV grants and $119.3 million for radio expenses,” reported the Lankford deep-dive.

Lawmakers have sponsored legislation to defund or abolish the left-leaning public news agency since at least efforts led by the late Rep. Phil Crane in the 1990s. But conservatives believe the opportunity presented by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has introduced a real opportunity for whole-of-government cuts.

“We’ve got reinforcements with DOGE,” Lankford told “Washington Watch” hours after the release of the report, which is subtitled “A Playbook for DOGE.”

When Americans see their taxes withheld each pay period, “they expect that to go to roads and education and national defense,” said Lankford. “They’re not expecting that to go to a Chinese solar company” like Trina Solar, which — the report pointed out — could cash in on $1 billion in subsidies by building a massive panel factory in Texas. “We should probably be doing that here in the United States, not actually subsidizing a Chinese company for that,” Lankford contended.

Aside from blatant, taxpayer-funded political propaganda during an election year, Lankford’s office found additional waste, fraud, and abuse littering the federal budget, including:

• $236 billion in improper payments — federal funding that should never have been made — with $100 billion going to Medicare and Medicaid overpayments, inaccurate recordkeeping, and fraud.
• Between $191 billion and $400 billion in pandemic Unemployment Insurance fraud or abuse.
• $10.5 billion in improper payments from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the food stamp program, because its department did not comply with the Payment Integrity Information Act.
• $2 billion in foreign aid assistance to Afghanistan since the terrorist Taliban regime assumed leadership.

Multiple sections of the playbook branch out from wasteful spending to cover energy policy, Joe Biden’s attempted student loan bailout, and illegal immigration.

For instance, the report notes the way the Biden-Harris administration drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), intended to be tapped only during times of massive national emergency, such as war. After the Biden administration clamped down on energy production, it released nearly 300 million barrels of oil from the SPR to try to slow the rise of gasoline prices. “Now the Reserve is running on fumes, having dropped to 346.76 million barrels, compared to the 638.08 million barrels that were there under the first Trump Administration,” said Lankford’s office. “After tapping into the Reserve, the Biden Administration only refilled 47.06 million barrels — or 15% of what was taken to cover his anti-energy policies.” New Biden-Harris administration rules require reductions in natural gas production of up to 90%, the report stated.

With the release of the annual waste overview, Lankford follows the footsteps of his predecessor, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who published a compendium of wasteful federal spending from 2008 until 2015, which he eventually dubbed “The Wastebook.” Lankford has published his “Federal Fumbles” report since November 2015, roughly the same time as Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) began compiling the “Festivus Report,” a holiday-season edition of what until then had been known as “The Waste Report.”

The most recent “Festivus Report” found U.S. taxpayers funded a podcast that promoted Satanism, which equated demonic possession with baptism in the Holy Spirit, and equated pagan animal sacrifices with Christians partaking in the Lord’s Supper. It also exposed a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for the Bearded Ladies Cabaret to put on an ice-skating performance to promote belief in catastrophic, man-made global warming. Both stories received little coverage in the media, secular or Christian.

“A lot of this just goes away when people see the light of day,” said Lankford. “Why doesn’t every single office in Congress assign their staff to go pursue waste and expose it?”