Tag: foreign aid

How USAID Funded Hamas

The most striking aspect of President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) isn’t that unsavory aid recipients have misused taxpayer dollars. It’s that anyone is shocked by the revelations of waste, fraud, and abuse. After all, watchdog groups have sounded the alarm for years about misuse of USAID funds.

People shouldn’t just be enraged by USAID’s wasteful spending. They should also focus on what that spending supported—particularly when it promoted terror or aligned with Hamas’s interests.

Rather than being used to provide humanitarian aid and stabilize conflict-ridden regions—in accordance with USAID’s stated goal—American funds have often been funneled into corrupt, Hamas-tied institutions, with minimal oversight. A new multiyear study of USAID by the Middle East Forum identified $164 million in grants to radical organizations, including $122 million to those “aligned with designated terrorists and their supporters.” The MEF also found that “millions of federal dollars have been handed by USAID to organizations directly in Gaza controlled by Hamas, with government officials even visiting Gaza terror proxies’ offices and launching joint programs.”

The money has kept flowing, as the U.S. has distributed $2.1 billion in Gaza since Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages on October 7, 2023. But the warning signs predate October 7. The USAID’s Inspector General—now raising the alarm about Trump’s shutdown of the agency—has consistently voiced concern over lax vetting mechanisms and inadvertent terror funding in the region.

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Why was the US funding LGBT “Pride” marches in Ukraine?

There is an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization, for the uninitiated) called “KyivPride” that runs the annual LGBT “Pride” march in Ukraine, and has done so for approximately a decade. KyivPride, like many similarly situated organizations, received US government largesse through a dizzying array of funding mechanisms — mainly stemming from USAID, the agency to which a sledgehammer has now ostensibly been taken by the Second Trump Administration. Whatever else one may think of the recent developments around USAID, it’s simply factually correct to state that US taxpayers had previously been subsidizing LGBT activism in the Donbass — a fact that can only be seen as facially ridiculous when explained to the majority of Americans. Simply take a look at KyivPride’s own public website for confirmation of its highly fruitful partnership with USAID…

As much as the newly emboldened DOGE whiz-kid crew might want to take credit for dramatically unearthing and exposing these blunderous expenditures, the reality is they’ve long been available for public inspection. That they never aroused much scrutiny till now is perhaps the real scandal.

As the money has gotten doled out, the standardized LGBT acronym has concurrently grown (now approximating something like 2SLGBTQIA+, but who’s really keeping track anymore). US diplomatic personnel participated in a Ukrainian “Pride” march in September 2021, a few months before the Russian invasion, when there perhaps might’ve been some more pressing diplomatic matters to attend to. An annual report from USAID on its Ukraine-related activities, which I helpfully saved years ago before DOGE largely nuked the agency’s assets from the internet, boasts that these Pride Marches had been “safely conducted” in Ukraine since 2015 — a year after the Ukrainian government was overthrown in a violent putsch, and US funding for “civil society” organs in the country greatly accelerated.

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USAID accused of funding Boko Haram’s REIGN OF TERROR against Nigerian Christians

In a shocking revelation that has sent ripples across international borders, Nigerian politician Adamu Garba has accused the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) of funding Islamic terrorist groups, including Boko Haram and ISIS, in Nigeria. Garba, a prominent member of Nigeria’s All Progressives Congress, claims that USAID funds have been used to purchase weapons for these groups, which have waged a brutal campaign of violence against Christians in the region.

Boko Haram, often operating under the guise of Fulani herdsmen, has terrorized northeastern Nigeria for years. Their tactics include burning homes, killing men, and kidnapping and raping women and girls. A 2018 report by Voice of the Martyrs documented the displacement of over 300,000 people and the deaths of more than 500 individuals in that year alone. Garba’s allegations suggest that these atrocities were bankrolled, at least in part, by U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Garba’s claims align with recent statements by U.S. Congressman Scott Perry, who during a February 12 hearing titled “The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud,” accused USAID of misdirecting 697 million to terrorist organizations. Perry highlighted a specific example in which 136 million intended for the construction of 120 schools in Pakistan vanished without a trace.

“I mentioned this before that Boko Haram, ISWAP, and most of these terrorists, the weapons they get are actually funded by some clandestine foreign operators,” Garba stated in a video posted on his X page. “The exposé about USAID has confirmed that Boko Haram and all these terrorists are getting their weapons through the funding from USAID.”

Garba questioned the whereabouts of $824 million in USAID funding allocated to Nigeria last year, which was ostensibly intended for child mortality and education programs. “When did the money come in, where did it go to?” he asked. “These monies go to the funding of Boko Haram and kidnappers that are used to kill and destroy our land.”

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‘Disinformation’: Democrats refuse to believe USAID bankrolled transgender operas, woke activism

Confronted with almost $200 million in questionable spending by the U.S. Agency for International Development, congressional Democrats said it was just a pathetic excuse to cut off foreign aid.

The Democrats would not voice support for spending taxpayer dollars on transgender operas, “DEI musicals” and promotion of LGBTQ causes around the world. Instead, they said they didn’t believe it.

“I’d like to see the evidence,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told The Washington Times when asked about her stance on USAID’s culture war activism.

Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia chalked it up to “mis- and disinformation” from the White House.

“Even if what you say is true, it makes up such a minute portion of federal taxpayer dollars,” he said, insisting that his constituents support U.S. foreign aid. “The value of the expenditures outweighs by far any mistakes that may have been made in terms of individual line items.”

Mr. Johnson and several of his fellow Democrats said the benefits of “soft power” of foreign aid make it all worthwhile.

Democrats have been outraged by President Trump’s moves to shutter USAID after Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency revealed the spending.

The questionable programs bankrolled by USAID included roughly $75 million spent on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in foreign countries.

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Wife of Federal Judge Who Threw a Wrench in Trump’s Agenda Has a Curious Connection to USAID: Report

The wife of a federal judge who blocked President Donald Trump’s decision to shutter government websites that promoted gender ideology founded an organization that received funds from the United States Agency for International Development, an agency that the administration is currently targeting.

U.S. District Judge John Bates issued a decision on Tuesday ordering federal health agencies to restore pages about transgenderism they had pulled after a Trump executive order about “gender ideology extremism.”

He reasoned that the websites were removed without any publicly provided rationale or opportunity for recourse, an apparent violation of the law, according to Politico.

“No backend remedy could ameliorate the inability to provide all required care during an appointment time to a patient who cannot return in the future,” Bates wrote.

The ruling came as left-wing organizations and elected officials challenged Trump administration efforts to address wasteful and fraudulent projects in government.

After the ruling, however, Shore News Network noted that Bates’ wife, Carol Rhees, started a nonprofit called Hope for Children in Ethiopia.

The organization has received funds from USAID, one of the agencies facing scrutiny under the government efficiency effort.

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GOP Rep. Tim Burchett Says Democrats Are “Terrified” Because DOGE is Going to Find a “Paper Trail” of Money That Went Overseas and Ended Up Back Into Pockets of Lawmakers

Congressman Tim Burchett (R-TN) said the Democrats are terrified of Elon Musk and DOGE because there is a “paper trail” of money that went overseas and right back into their pockets.

“You’re going to see a paper trail come back to Washington, DC. That’s why a lot of people are nervous. You’ll see a lot of retirements. They are stealing from the American taxpayer and now they’ve got their hand caught in the cookie jar, and all they can do is attack Elon Musk,” Burchett said on Fox News.

It is all hands on deck to stop Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing federal data so the Trump Administration can cut wasteful government spending.

A coalition of Democrat state attorneys general recently filed a lawsuit to stop Elon Musk from accessing federal data.

Blue states such as Arizona, Michigan, Rhode Island, New Mexico, California, Massachusetts, and others filed a lawsuit arguing President Trump violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution when he created DOGE and gave Elon Musk ‘unchecked power.’

Democrats have also been holding protests and lashing out at Elon Musk.

86-year-old Maxine Waters, the Democrats’ top attack dog, called Elon Musk a “gangster” and a “thief.”

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USAID’s Troubling Ties to the Woke Nonprofits That Called the Shots in the Biden Administration

The U.S. Agency for International Development wasn’t just spending your hard-earned tax dollars on transgender operas overseas—USAID also has troubling connections with the leftist pressure groups that infiltrated and advised the Biden administration.

My book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” exposes the woke activist groups that fed staff into the administrative state and pushed woke policies on the bureaucracy.

As President Donald Trump released information about USAID’s corruption, I started to notice a few familiar names from my research.

The American people should understand just how connected the woke enterprise is to the federal bureaucracy, and USAID provides a powerful example of those ties.

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Connect the Dots: Trump, Public Health, and the Third World

After several years of enduring all of the ‘woke’ progressive conspiracy theories regarding President Trump, I had come to believe that their favorite recreational activity was to go to a museum that had a Jackson Pollock painting hanging on the wall, in order to stare at it for hours trying to connect the dots. It got to the point that I began to think that the ‘drip method’ was actually a term that described the people viewing the paintings, rather than a description of Pollock’s painting style. 

At the risk of being guilty of the thing I’m denigrating (a favorite tactic of the left), I will attempt to connect some dots. Considering that I’ve been called far worse than a drip over the course of my lifetime, I consider this to be a fairly low-risk exercise.

A number of reporters, including some who write for Brownstone Journal have legitimately expressed concern that third-world countries would bear the brunt of the withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization (WHO). Areas of concern include public health programs to address HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria. I share these concerns, but I will now connect a few dots to see whether these concerns are overblown.

First, I’ll provide some context. The immediate justification for US withdrawal from the WHO relates to activities surrounding their corrupt and incompetent handling of the Covid pandemic response. However, it’s been fairly obvious that ever since Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, he has viewed all multilateral agreements as a ruse to rip off the US for billions upon billions upon trillions of dollars. Other examples include the Paris Accords, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, NATO, and former trade agreements with Mexico and Canada.

In some cases, the pacts were too costly to continue US participation, while others could be salvaged if negotiated by people who were looking out for America’s best interests. By any reasonable measure, Trump handled these matters fairly well during his first term and has earned the right to continue this process during his second term.

Getting back to WHO and the Covid response, one of the things that happened in Africa was that funds were diverted from HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria programs in order to give Covid jabs (I refuse to refer to these shots as a vaccine) to a population with a median age of 26. This was a double whammy in that funds were diverted from programs that had been helpful in order to provide a treatment that harmed and killed more people than would have occurred if nothing had been done. The WHO was a major player in implementing these policies. The results for HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, and Covid have been uniformly disastrous, and this doesn’t include the collateral damage that occurred, which may turn out to be even worse than the direct harms.

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Slovak PM Robert Fico Writes to Musk – Was Fico’s Would-Be Assassin Radicalized by USAID Media?

Populist pro-Trump Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot outside a meeting in May 2024. He barely survived the attempted assassination.

The neoliberal activist and aspiring poet who shot Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was moved by disagreement over funding for the Ukraine War.

Did USAID money lead to the assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico? The patriotic, MAGA-style leader of the Slavic country has asked Elon Musk for information on the funding of Slovak “non-“governmental organizations and media by the US International Development Authority (USAID).

In a letter to the head of the Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE), Robert Fico asked for details of  USAID grants that may have been used for radical political propaganda in his country. Fico has previously charged that Soros media may have contributed to the radicalization and calls for violence that led to his near-assassination 2024.(The name Fico is pronounced “feet so”.)

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Why USAID No Longer Makes Sense

The Trump administration’s decision to decimate USAID, the foreign assistance agency, has sparked a fierce debate in Washington. While Republicans on the hill and in the media have largely directed their ire against the left-wing ideological character of USAID programs, most of their Democratic counterparts have defended the agency on humanitarian grounds. 

The White House, however, has offered the correct, most urgent view: USAID largely fails to advance American national interests, and Washington can no longer afford to spend taxpayer dollars on programs that don’t benefit Americans.

Reasonable people may disagree about the merits of particular USAID programs, but it’s clear that a large portion of funding goes to meddling in the internal affairs of other countries—presented as benign “governance” projects. In fiscal year 2023, $16.8 billion of the total $43.4 billion of USAID obligations were in this category, which has included such projects as bankrolling “independent media” in Ukraine and pouring tens of millions into elections in Georgia. Perhaps these efforts did some good, but the catastrophe that American meddling has helped produce in Ukraine, and the victory of a pro-Russian party in Georgia’s recent parliamentary elections, suggest that USAID can no longer reliably advance U.S. interests in Moscow’s sphere of influence.  

Of course, USAID has also funded genuine humanitarian projects that have saved lives, such as the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). But even commendable humanitarian projects may not be worth the burden they place on the American taxpayer, meaning partisan debate about them is legitimate and indeed necessary. So long as people in North Carolina and Los Angeles are suffering from recent environmental tragedies, sending their hard-earned money to foreign lands does not sit right with many Americans.

Lost in the domestic hysteria of the moment is a more frank consideration of the sustainability of U.S. primacy in a changing global landscape. Washington doesn’t use USAID just to save lives, but also to expand and sustain American power globally. But if the “unipolar moment” is over and the world is now bipolar or multipolar, American cultural influence—sometimes called “soft power”—deserves reconsideration no less than the hard stuff.

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