Cocaine for moody rats and climate-focused drag show-on-ice top Rand Paul’s annual ‘Festivus’ list of outrageous government waste 

The US government wasted more than $1 trillion on kooky frivolous projects this past year — including by using taxpayer money to turn rats into coke fiends, according to Sen. Rand Paul’s annual “Festivus Report.’’

The Kentucky Republican’s anti-waste probe — named in honor of the day before Christmas Eve holiday immortalized by TV’s classic “Seinfeld’’ — revealed the truly bizarre “pet projects’’ approved by “members of both political parties” in 2024.

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It’s trillion-dollar-plus pricetag was Paul’s highest annual tally since President Biden took office in 2021.

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. 

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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. 

The NEA was also pilloried by Paul for spending $385,000 in federal dollars since 2015 on art displays for New York’s High Line park, including $40,000 on a 16-foot-tall pigeon sculpture that will soon grace the popular Manhattan strolling location. 

The report noted that $288,563 in precious taxpayer dollars was spent to create “affinity groups’’ among bird-watchers based on “who they are and how they identify.’’

The State Department also tossed a cool $3 million at encouraging girls in Brazil to become “climate leaders,” the report said.

Under a section titled “Ghost Towns on the Government’s Dime,” Rand raged that the “federal government spent $10 billion on maintaining, leasing, and furnishing almost entirely empty buildings.”

He also noted that the DHHS doled out a $5 million grant to study kids looking at Facebook ads about food.

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Another $20 million was wasted on a “Sesame Street’’ show in Iraq to promote “inclusion’’ and “mutual respect,” Rand said.

Nearly $250,000 also was spent to promote soccer in Serbia and the Maldives to keep potentially budding terrorists on the straight and narrow.

In addition, DDHS has spent $365,000 over the past several years to promote sideshows in various city parks nationwide, too, most recently awarding a $30,000 grant in 2024 for “free” circus art performances. 

One of the largest expenditures showcased in Paul’s Festivus waste report was a $12 million investment of taxpayer money on a pickleball complex in Las Vegas. 

The sprawling 5.4-acre, 30-court complex in Sin City was funded in part with money spent by the Department of the Interior and against the wishes of nearby homeowners, who “petitioned the city to vote against the agreement and consider moving the complex elsewhere citing concerns about noise nuisance, increased traffic and parking congestion, and an overall decrease in their quality of life and home value,” the report said.

Paul vowed to “work with Congress and the incoming Trump administration to cut this waste” in the coming year. 

“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,” he added, referring to President-elect Donald Trump’s new initiative to shrink the size of government.   

“And I will continue my fight against government waste this holiday season.”