America Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID) was established by President John F. Kennedy on November 3, 1961 with Govt Order 10973. Kennedy created USAID to implement the noble targets of the Overseas Help Act of 1961 and consolidate a number of present overseas help organizations and applications right into a single company beneath the US State Division.
The aim of the Overseas Help Act was clear. It said:
a principal goal of the overseas coverage of america is the encouragement and sustained help of the folks of growing international locations of their efforts to amass the data and assets important to growth and to construct the financial, political, and social establishments which is able to enhance the standard of their lives” and “that growth issues be totally mirrored in United States overseas coverage and that United States growth assets be successfully and effectively utilized.
In 1998, USAID cut up off from the State Division, turning into its personal stand-alone company. This finally led to USAID getting used as a software of the State Division and the CIA for home political agendas and overseas covert operations supposed to flee transparency and accountability. Thus, USAID’s unique mission turned corrupted.
On Inauguration Day, President Trump issued Govt Order 14158 to ascertain and implement the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE). Led by Elon Musk, DOGE hit the bottom operating. It instantly started reviewing and terminating tons of of wasteful contracts, leases, and grants throughout a number of authorities businesses.
Whereas DOGE has not but established a system to report operating value financial savings by company, it has arrange a “DOGE Clock” to offer stay monitoring of the price financial savings it’s attaining in combination. As of February 17, the DOGE Clock was reporting $49 billion in combination value financial savings. Not dangerous for under 28 days of cost-cutting work.
The one company that shortly caught the eye of the DOGE workforce for its stunning stage of waste, fraud, and abuse was USAID. Throughout a stay X Areas dialogue on February 3, Musk made the next feedback concerning the DOGE workforce’s evaluation of USAID:
As we dug into USAID, it turned obvious that what we’ve got right here just isn’t an apple with a worm in it, however we’ve got truly only a ball of worms. If in case you have an apple with a worm in it, you’ll be able to take the worm out. If in case you have an entire ball of worms, it’s hopeless. USAID is a ball of worms. There isn’t any apple. And when there is no such thing as a apple you simply must do away with the entire thing.
On the day prior to this, February 2, Musk posted a number of vital feedback about USAID on X:
“USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” and “USAID is/was a radical-left political psy op.”
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) authored an opinion piece in The Wall Road Journal on February ninth describing USAID as a “rogue company” that has a historical past of stonewalling congressional requests for details about its actions. Excerpts from Senator Ernst’s piece:
After maintaining its spending information hidden from Congress and taxpayers, USAID staff are actually protesting the evaluation of the company’s information by President Trump’s Division of Authorities Effectivity. It’s no shock that Washington insiders are extra upset at DOGE for making an attempt to cease wasteful spending than at USAID for misusing tax {dollars}. The query we ought to be asking isn’t why USAID’s grants are being scrutinized, however why it took so lengthy.
Criticisms of USAID by Musk and Senator Ernst are backed up with detailed lists of waste, fraud, and abuse uncovered by the DOGE workforce and congressional committees.
On January 31, DOGE reported on X that it had terminated seven DEI-related USAID contracts with a complete contract worth of $375.1 million. The Trump White Home issued a truth sheet on February 3 entitled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep” and the Home Overseas Affairs Committee adopted with a press launch on February 4 that listed quite a few egregious examples of wasteful USAID spending, akin to tens of millions of {dollars} spent selling DEI and LGBT activism in a number of international locations all over the world, and tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} paid to help poppy cultivation and heroin manufacturing in Afghanistan that benefitted the Taliban regime.
USAID growth applications are now not wished by recipient international locations in some instances. On February 2, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, posted the next on X:
Most governments don’t need USAID funds flowing into their international locations as a result of they perceive the place a lot of that cash truly finally ends up.
Whereas marketed as help for growth, democracy, and human rights, nearly all of these funds are funneled into opposition teams, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing actions.
At greatest, possibly 10 p.c of the cash reaches actual tasks that assist folks in want (there are such instances), however the remainder is used to gasoline dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.
Reducing this so-called support isn’t simply useful for america; it’s additionally an enormous win for the remainder of the world.
DOGE’s revelations about USAID’s wasteful and fraudulent spending on overseas support actions are solely a part of the story. Much more disturbing are its actions past overseas support into radical leftwing cultural and political activism. In accordance with former State Division official Mike Benz, this has been exacerbated in recent times with USAID’s embrace of disinformation campaigns and censorship efforts in collaboration with the State Division and the CIA.
Mr. Benz, founder and government director of the Basis for Freedom On-line (FFO), offered an in depth report of USAID’s censorship operation from USAID’s personal inside paperwork on March 14, 2024. Probably the most stunning revelation from Benz’s investigation is that USAID’s censorship program was applied domestically towards Individuals. Excerpts from the report:
USAID — the foreign-facing wing of the federal authorities that purports to make use of taxpayer {dollars} for ‘strengthening resilient democratic societies’ and exporting American democratic beliefs overseas — has been quietly pushing personal sector expertise corporations, media organizations, schooling ministries, nationwide governments and funding our bodies to undertake social media censorship practices, in keeping with newly revealed inside paperwork.
USAID’s 97-page proprietary ‘Disinformation Primer,’ labeled ‘for inside use solely’ was obtained by America First Authorized (AFL), a public curiosity legislation agency conducting a lot of main investigations and lawsuits into the censorship business and its authorities companion businesses, after a prolonged course of by which the US Division of State failed to answer a Freedom of Data Act (FOIA) request and was compelled to show over authorities paperwork after AFL succeeded in a proper lawsuit.
The USAID Disinformation Primer reveals an in depth compilation of the company’s advocacy for a few of the most economically damaging censorship methods — a lot of which had been deployed in America to throttle populists within the 2020 elections and afterwards — and endorses suggestions from a few of the most controversial censorship business establishments beneath scrutiny by the US Congress.
USAID’s ‘Disinformation Primer’ outlining its censorship promotion methods is dated February 2021, the primary month after the Biden administration took workplace after the 2020 election. It proposes censorship motion objects for just about each governmental, non-governmental and personal sector business actor throughout society…
Benz has defined in latest interviews with Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan that the CIA can’t lawfully interact in covert operations with out a presidential discovering; there is no such thing as a such requirement for USAID. Thus, Benz claims that the CIA and the State Division use USAID to hold out covert operations that they need hidden from the president and Congress.
Impartial journalist Michael Shellenberger corroborates Benz’s feedback in his February 3 Substack piece, “USAID’s Historical past Of Regime Change, Destabilization, And Censorship Justifies Its Closure By Trump” and expands additional on USAID’s funding of worldwide censorship. Shellenberger writes:
As a part of US authorities efforts to overthrow governments overseas, or just affect what they do, USAID has in recent times been funding censorship advocacy worldwide by way of its ‘Countering Disinformation’ program, which is a part of its Consortium for Elections and Political Course of Strengthening (CEPPS).
After DOGE uncovered USAID’s many years of intensive waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration shut down USAID’s head workplace in Washington, DC on February 7 and is reportedly planning to fireside over 10,000 USAID workers and retain solely 294. Each Trump and Musk favor abolishing USAID as an company and shifting any legit overseas support features into the State Division. Whether or not Trump has the authorized authority to abolish USAID by government order is legally questionable, however, at a minimal, Trump and Musk are proper to dramatically downsize USAID, restore its transparency and accountability beneath the State Division, and return it to the fundamentals of its unique mission, as envisioned by John F. Kennedy in 1961.
