Sen. Rand Paul released a report on Monday outlining more than $1 trillion in government waste from the past year.

The 2024 “Festivus” report highlighted various instances of wasteful government spending from the federal government, including a pickleball complex in Las Vegas and a cabaret show on ice. This year marks Paul’s 10th annual report.

“This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12,” Paul, R-Ky., 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.”

The Department of the Interior spent $12 million on the Las Vegas pickleball complex, according to the report. Interior also spent $720,479 on wetland conservation projects for ducks in Mexico.

“I have a lot of problems with federal spending, and now it’s time to hear all about them,” Paul wrote in the report.

The National Endowment for the Arts awarded the Bearded Ladies Cabaret a $10,000 grant to support a cabaret show on ice skates focused on climate change, according to the report. The NEA also spent $365,000 to promote circuses in city parks, the report states.

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The havoc wrought by Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina brought disaster to homes and families, but that has not stopped Democrats from blocking the approval of emergency early voting sites in the heavily Republican area. The refusal to act forced the GOP-led state legislature to intervene.

Democrat-run local elections boards in McDowell and Henderson counties have failed to approve additional early voting sites in the disaster-stricken area, despite increasing calls for more access to voting. Both counties voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

“Ensuring the right to vote is upheld for western NC citizens devastated by Hurricane Helene should be a non-partisan issue,” western North Carolina native Clay McCreary said, according to The Carolina Journal. McReary is North Carolina political director of Restoration of America, an organization that has been advocating for additional voting opportunities in the disaster area. “We simply cannot allow the people of western North Carolina who have lost so much to lose their voice in the political process.”

Meanwhile, Democrats in nearby deep-blue Buncombe County, home to Asheville, have already given the go-ahead for new voting locations to replace the ones damaged by Helene, bringing the county’s total to 10.

Despite being mostly out of the news cycle, destruction in western North Carolina is still extreme, and the area has not yet recovered.

Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled General Assembly are now being forced to compel the two counties to open up more voting locations so that the people affected by Helene are not being disenfranchised by the Democrats in power.

The new law will require counties to open one early voting site per 30,000 registered voters in the Helene-affected region, and must be operational from Oct. 29 to Nov. 3. Henderson represents western North Carolina’s second-largest population next to Buncombe.

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