A social media post claiming that the US government would issue $5,000 stimulus checks, known as “DOGE dividends,” on a fictitious date in February appears to have misled some people online.
Anti-Trump PAC The Lincoln Project announced on X, formerly Twitter, that government appointee Elon Musk’s plans to send $5,000 to Americans from DOGE savings would be “coming out February 31st.”
However, the post, which has been viewed 5 million times, elicited responses that suggested not everyone was in on the joke.
While some X users got the joke, others wrote responses like, “Where are you getting this information from because they are not even 31 days in February,” and “To everyone?” followed by “Show when are they going to add the extra 2 days?”
The post even requested suggestions for a “Community Note,” the content moderation system launched after Musk purchased X, with users submitting warnings such as “There is no verified plan for President [Donald] Trump to send $5,000 to each taxpayer” and “February is 28 days long.”
There are only 28 days this month. The most recent leap year, with 29 days in February, occurred last year.
Musk and Trump said they would consider a proposal from investment firm CEO and conservative James Fishback to compensate Americans for “the egregious misuse and abuse of their hard-earned tax dollars that DOGE has uncovered.”
The estimated cost is $400 billion, nearly a quarter of the $2 trillion Musk claims he wants the government to save, a goal that economists have dismissed.
A Newsweek analysis of the 1,100 canceled government contracts listed on DOGE’s website yielded less than $7.2 billion in savings, or 1.8 percent of Musk’s target. DOGE claims its website records are outdated and that it has saved $55 billion.
Trump has stated that he is considering giving 20% of DOGE’s savings to Americans.
The response to the proposal has been mixed. House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed his concern at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland last week, saying: “Politically that would be great for us, you send everybody a check,”
“But if you think about our core principles, fiscal responsibility is what we do as conservatives, that is our brand.”
Any dividend payment would require a Congressional act, and prominent conservatives have already expressed reservations. Preston Brashers, research fellow for tax policy at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, questioned the inflationary impact, writing on X, “Love what DOGE is doing, but this is a bad idea.”
“There is no need to send ‘dividend checks.’ Slashing spending pays off in the form of lower inflation. But if the government issues stimulus checks, inflation will return with a vengeance.”
Checks delivered directly to households during the COVID-19 pandemic were found to have an inflationary effect. During Trump’s first term, the government issued two rounds of COVID-related stimulus checks, which the Federal Reserve Board reported contributed “to an increase in inflation of about 2.5 percentage points.”
The Lincoln Project, founded by moderate Republicans, has launched public relations campaigns and advertisements criticizing Trump. In 2022, the president lashed out at the group after they ran critical ads about him on Fox News. The PAC has described the modern Republican Party as a “nationalist cult” devoted to Trump.
DOGE came under new pressure this week when more than 20 civil service employees resigned, citing their refusal to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers stated in a joint resignation letter obtained by the Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
