USAID
===
SEE PJT 2025
SEE RUBIO MAROCCO KID KILLERS MUSK DOGE
primary on doge trump attack 2 25 target} farm red states}:
SEE MUSK MIKE BENZ SOLOMON EMPOWER BS
jennica pounds tenpenny?
see VOUGHT
SEEsoft power vs china putin booted
founded by jfk
endorse by lindsey graham, rubio see JO
bak 6 26 to sort bs
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mcfaul vs China
last word msnbc
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TARGET BC DISGRUNTLED? PROJECTION? GLOB ELITE?
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MMA
Laura Ingraham claims there is a leftist “plan” to “overthrow” the government. What in the world is she talking about?
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/22/26
Republicans are panicking and right-wing media are desperately churning out “fear porn” as polls continue to point to a devastating midterm environment for their party with less than two weeks remaining before election day. From presidential rallies to Fox News primetime, MAGA stalwarts are trying to bolster their party’s turnout by warning Republican voters that if they do not go to the polls, their freedom and very lives may be at stake.
That increasingly deranged environment is generating a level of demagoguery that at times becomes simply absurd.
Fox host Laura Ingraham, for example, announced on her show Wednesday that if Democrats win control of the U.S. House and Senate, a leftist cabal of activists, journalists, “top former staffers” in the Obama and Biden administrations, and even Democratic governors will carry out a plot to force President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act as a mechanism to “dissolve” the U.S. Constitution and “crush their enemies.”
The argument that the left is planning to destroy the federal government if and only if Democrats triumph in the midterms makes a lot of sense as an attempt to scare Republicans to the polls but none at all as a plot in its own right.
Questions abound: Why in the world is this plan only enacted after Democrats achieve actual congressional power for the first time in Trump's second term? If there is clear evidence of a sweeping plot including “top” Obama and Biden officials, why is the best example Ingraham can point to former Obama White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen talking about protecting the Constitution with legal action? Why does the plan revolve around getting Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act — an outcome MAGA pundits like Ingraham herself have been lobbying for and Democrats have publicly opposed?
Lastly, why does Ingraham think this grand conspiracy is underway? We don’t really know — she cited no direct evidence for what on-screen Fox graphics described as “The Left’s Plan To Overthrow The U.S. Gov’t.”
But Ingraham’s claims align with a conspiracy theory that Jennica Pounds, a right-wing influencer who goes by the pseudonym DataRepublican and briefly worked for the Defense Department this year, floated over the weekend based on videos of activist meetings she obtained. Pounds’ claim of a leftist “operational plan” seems to be much less than advertised — but has nonetheless been trumpeted this week by prominent MAGA figures like Glenn Beck, Vince Coglianese, Jesse Kelly, and podcaster-turned-deputy-FBI-director-turned-podcaster Dan Bongino.
It’s the sort of wildly incendiary claim that should demand copious evidence before making it to the airwaves of a major news outlet — but Fox is a MAGA propaganda network devoted to Republican electoral victory at any cost.
Unpacking Ingraham’s evidence-free claim of a leftist plot
Ingraham built her conspiracy-minded edifice on a faulty foundation.
She began her opening monologue on Wednesday by using a deceptively cropped video snippet of Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) to allege that the former CIA officer had promised “punishment for young conservatives.”
While many on the right have tried to generate outrage based on that false interpretation, Slotkin had actually been discussing how providing “accountability” for mid-level enablers of the Trump administration’s corruption could disincentivize similar behavior in the future.
From there, Ingraham pivoted to arguing that Democratic victories would hasten the downfall of the republic. “If voters give Democrats control of the House and even the House and the Senate, the punishment that Slotkin alludes to will be severe,” she claimed, adding that such punishment would be “meted out not only against individuals and corporations that work with Trump, but against the democratic system itself.”
After explaining that an unnamed leftist “they” intend to “force Trump's hand and use Paris riots, perhaps, as their guide,” Ingraham laid out her understanding of the “plan.”
“Now, the radical left's current thinking is that if they're able to mobilize in huge numbers in the streets, President Trump, if it's nationwide, will decide to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows him to deploy the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement,” she said. “Activists will then claim widespread abuses as the military struggles to restore law and order. Then the press will collaborate with activists, amplifying their wild claims with video snippets on social media.”
“Then blue state governors — this is their dream — seeing the chaos, will unite to try to override federal authority, take over federal functions, and eventually even rewrite our Constitution or just dissolve it altogether,” she continued.
Ingraham went on to claim that “this scenario is being openly discussed among top former staffers of Obama and Biden, former government employees of agencies like USAID, and of course community organizers” — but provided no examples of anyone actually discussing such a scheme.
Instead, Ingraham claimed that the plot’s adherents say they’re “reforming the government” rather than “overthrowing it,” adding, “former USAID staffer Danielle Reiff makes it sound like utopia.” Ingraham then played a brief clip of Reiff appearing on a December edition of Dr. Paul Zeitz’s Revolutionary Optimism Podcast and saying: “You have to reform your institutions so that it, you know, that becomes the foundational framework for society. And so, we're going to have to, if we want to live in peace and deeper democracy, reform our legal frameworks to foster collaboration across divides and unity and diversity.”
The Fox host later described Eisen as “one of the godfathers of this effort” because he “advances the fraudulent claims that democracy is in crisis.” But she provided no evidence actually linking him to the supposed “plan,” instead airing a clip in which Eisen is asked if he thinks of his work as part of a “war” and replies, “Yes — peaceful, lawful, vigorous battle, you do have to think of it in those terms to stop what Donald Trump began after the 2020 election and has continued a coup against the Constitution.”
Ingraham concluded her monologue by suggesting that “the real tyrant” is not Trump but “Democrats like Slotkin, who want to remake the government to crush their enemies.”
Ingraham then brought on Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), telling him, “These conversations, this playbook, is real. They might not be able to get there in the next year or so, but they have that plot cooking.”
Schmitt replied in part that “their march through the institutions is almost complete” and “the goal is absolute and total control” with “no room for dissent.”
“When you go vote, there’s a lot of issues that are on the table that you’re voting on, but I think a central issue is what the Democrats are willing to do with power,” he added. “They’re telling us all over again, and I think it’s terrifying and why this election is so important.”
Video
Citation
From the October 21, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle.
What “conversations”? What “playbook”? Who is supposed to be behind this “plan,” and how developed is it?
Ingraham didn’t say.
Where we think this is coming from
Jennica Pounds is a MAGA influencer with nearly 1 million followers who posts online under the moniker DataRepublican and is perhaps best known for accusing a Trump administration official who was attempting to hand her a scoop of trying to entrap her to commit a crime. Following that August debacle, she and the Pentagon disclosed that she had been secretly working as a special government employee for the Defense Department (according to Pounds, she applied for a credential as a “journalist” in the Pentagon press corps, received a press pass in April, held it until June, and joined the administration in July).
Soon after her Pentagon role became public, Pounds launched a website mapping left-wing groups called “DSA Explorer.” And on Sunday, Pounds (“fresh off her brief stint as a Special Government Employee with the Pentagon,” according to RedState’s writeup), claimed online that she had obtained access to a vast trove of transcripts and recordings of online meetings of progressive activists.
She then laid out a narrative that closely resembled what Ingraham ran with on Wednesday:
You've heard that the DSA is proposing structural reforms to America, including abolishing the Senate and imposing term limits.
What you not have heard is - there is an operational plan to put it all into action. If the Democratic Party sweeps 2026, then DSA will become “foot soldiers” in constant clashes with the administration to cross a “red line” or invoke a “doomsday scenario” - meaning, President Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, probably sometime in 2027.
Then, a lot of coordinated responses kick off, including delegitimizing the federal government itself and handing that legitimacy to Democratic governors. 2028 then becomes a vote on whether to keep America governance as-is or to burn it all down to appease a “young and brown” demographic.
But the 1-minute video snippet Pounds appended to her post does not show anything like a well-developed “operational plan” to do anything at all, much less one involving DSA “foot soldiers” plotting to force an invocation of the Insurrection Act.
Indeed, Pounds appears to be taking a series of disaggregated remarks from different people at different calls and events and weaving them together into a single coherent apocalyptic narrative. By her own subsequent admission, “almost nobody knows the ‘grand plan’ so to speak,” the various parties “simply agree to play a role.”
The video attached to Pounds’ original post, titled “April 10, 2026 - R2T core team call,” shows Reiff and Zeitz, from the podcast clip Ingraham aired, on an online video call with three other individuals. Zeitz recounts a recent meeting he and Reiff had with more influential figures at Governors Safeguarding Democracy, described as “a forum that convenes Democratic governors,” to discuss their “work around the emergency scenario planning.”
Reiff then says that they were asked in the meeting to develop “a panel of a couple of people who could talk to the governors, who could do a briefing for the governors and walk them through like the doomsday scenario and help them think through what their options are as a response,” and adds that such an opportunity would be “a huge breakthrough for us.”
That video and others Pounds released triggered a firestorm on the right, with influencers and podcasters largely adopting her narrative.
But Tim Pool, of all people, suggested she’d gotten out over her skis.
“Many people have asked me my thoughts on this and asked me what I think is going on, and I’ve said, listen, DataRepublican, with all due respect, coming out and just saying I have this data is not enough to launch a story,” he said on his show on Tuesday. “I cannot just come out and say hey, guys, someone says they’ve seen stuff the DSA is doing.”
That’s apparently a higher standard than Fox requires — because if Ingraham were aware of hard evidence of the leftist plot to destroy the country she claimed exists, she surely would have aired it. Instead, her coverage leaves so many obvious questions unanswered that it only emphasizes just how frenzied the network has become as it tries to concoct enough “fear porn” to save the GOP from electoral devastation.
Is it possible Pounds has a recording of random activists proposing something resembling her above plan? Sure, but that wouldn't be evidence of a grand conspiracy involving people with actual power and influence — and says nothing about the plausibility of such a plot, which in this author's opinion is frankly nonsensical.
//
Fox News is peddling election “fear porn” about Democrats to rescue Republicans
10/16/26
10/22/26
Peter Navarro rails at Fox News personalities: “Turn Fox off”
10/20/26
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duck 9 26
Meet Steve Davis, Elon Musk's cost-cutting crusader at Doge
- Feb 11, 2025Steve Davis, Elon Musk's longtime lieutenant, is now leading cost-cutting efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). Known for his relentless frugality at SpaceX, Boring Co, and X (formerly Twitter), Davis has a history of slashing budgets and negotiating hard bargains For over two ...
- WIRED
- https://www.wired.com › story › usaid-whistleblower-says-it-was-even-worse-than-people-knew
USAID Whistleblower Says It Was Even Worse Than People Knew
- Apr 22, 2026Political appointees wanted a quiet drawdown, the whistleblower says. DOGE wanted an execution.
- Revolving Door Project
- https://therevolvingdoorproject.org › wp-content › uploads › 2026 › 01 › DOGE_-From-Meme-to-Government-Erosion-Machine.pdf
DOGE: From Meme to Government Erosion Machine
- DOGE's attack on USAID effectively dismantled the agency, abruptly ending funding for thousands of humanitarian efforts, which forced staff across the globe to abandon their posts and return to the United States.
-=-=-
rww
How David Barton's Bogus History Is Shaping Trump Administration Policy
vid]
09/03/2026
by
From the moment President Donald Trump returned to the White House for his second term, Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton has played a key role in shaping the administration's actions, especially surrounding the celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary, which has been steeped in precisely the Christian nationalist pseudo-history that Barton ceaselessly promotes.
Barton is a right-wing political activist who masquerades as a historian, despite possessing no academic training or credentials. As such, his indifference about presenting accurate history is prevalent throughout the countless false claims he makes regarding the supposedly Christian foundation of our country. Nonetheless Barton has been highly influential to powerful figures like House Speaker Mike Johnson, other members of Congress, and those inside the Trump administration.
Earlier this week, Barton appeared on a National Awakening Livestream hosted by right-wing pastor E.W. Jackson's Staying True to America's National Destiny organization where he revealed how the false history he promotes played a role in the Trump administration's devastating shut down of USAID.
"I was asked to go to the State Department [to] address the senior officials State Department and show them what the Founding Fathers thought about foreign aid," Barton reported. "It was really easy: The Founding Fathers did not believe in foreign aid. The nations take care of themselves."
"In World War II, that changed because when Hitler took all of Europe, he destroyed all those nations," Barton continued. "He destroyed Poland, Romania and Bulgaria and all those nations and they had been so impoverished [from] all the constant bombing that went on and so that's when we created what was called the Berlin Airlift. We started sending humanitarian supplies to all those who were starving in Europe."
"The Germans bombed every city that's there, there's nothing left [so] let's help them rebuild their cities," he added. "And so that Berlin Airlift turned into the first real foreign aid that we did and since post-World War II, we have kept that going, helping every nation in the world we can possibly find."
This represents a perfect example of how Barton weaponizes his own disregard for historical accuracy in pursuit of his right-wing political agenda, as the Berlin Airlift was not an effort to provide foreign aid to European nations ravaged by war—that was the Marshall Plan—but was rather a literal allied airlift operation begun in 1948 to provide aid to millions of residents of West Berlin who had been cut off by a blockade imposed by the Soviet Union.
Unconcerned about the inaccuracy of what he had just taught, Barton went on to claim that until Trump came along, "USAID money was going into prop up Marxist governments and socialist governments and leaders who were tearing their countries apart" and bragged that since the administration cut off USAID funding, "all the elections we've had Central and South America and elsewhere have all gone to conservative leaders."
Eventually, Barton made clear that he doesn't actually oppose the U.S. government distributing foreign aid, provided that it is given out to Christian organizations, as the administration is now doing.
"Just two weeks ago, USAID said, 'All right, we're now going back to do humanitarian stuff, only humanitarian stuff. We're not gonna mess with the governments. We're gonna help people,'" Barton said. "And so what are they doing? They said, 'We're gonna give money to things like Samaritan's Purse—Franklin Graham—we're going to let them distribute the need because a Christian group will reach out and meet the needs of the people.' They're not going to get into creating a new government or revolution. And so many of these Christian organizations now will be the recipients of the USAID money and it will go to actually getting people on the ground helped."
ref 1 USAID officially shuts down and merges remaining operations with State Department
ref 2
11 25
Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande.
Gawande—a surgeon, author, and distinguished professor in residence at Ariadne Labs, which he co-founded—served in the Biden administration as the assistant administrator for global health at USAID. He wrote a Nov. 5 article in the New Yorker about the devastating impact of the loss of USAID funds around the world. He was also featured in an accompanying short documentary called “Rovina’s Choice,” which he co-executive produced, that told the story of how one mother living in a Kenyan refugee camp tried to save her severely malnourished daughter after U.S. support dried up.
In the article, Gawande cited an analysis in The Lancet that estimated that USAID assistance—aimed at combatting diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and polio, reducing maternal and child deaths, and fighting malnutrition—had saved 92 million lives over two decades.
The dismantling of USAID, according to models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children,” Gawande wrote. He noted that the toll will continue to grow and may go unseen because it can take months or years for people to die from lack of treatments or vaccine-preventable illnesses—and because deaths are scattered.
“We are now witnessing what the historian Richard Rhodes termed ‘public man-made death,’” Gawande wrote.
The documentary told the story of how Rovina Naboi, a single mother of nine children, took her daughter Jane, whose health has deteriorated due to malnutrition, to a clinic and stayed with her there for 10 days. But she felt compelled to leave with Jane—still seriously ill—because she learned that her other children, left alone at home, had not eaten for days. Arriving home, Naboi managed to find food for her other children. But Jane died the next day.
The clinic’s chief medical officer, Dr. Sila Monthe, commented on Naboi’s predicament—having to choose between leaving the hospital with Jane, or staying while her other children starved. “That is a decision that no mother should ever have to make,” she said.
Read the New Yorker article: The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands
Watch a Democracy Now! interview featuring Gawande: Dr. Atul Gawande: Hundreds of Thousands Have Already Died Since Trump Closed USAID
About The Author
Karen Feldscher
venez earthquake
romania poland, bombing airlift
How David Barton's Bogus History Is Shaping Trump Administration Policy
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balt banner
Elon Musk’s gutting of USAID rips through Baltimore humanitarian groupsMeredith Cohn and Jasmine Vaughn-Hall
2/5/2025
Jhpiego, headquartered in Fells Point, is in turmoil over the Trump administration’s move to gut a funding source: USAID. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Baltimore Banner)
National security experts say the country will be less safe
The work of two Baltimore organizations charged with improving the health of millions of people around the world screeched to a halt this week when they lost their main funding source, the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Johns Hopkins University-affiliated Jhpiego and Center for Communication Programs have received stop-work orders, affecting at least 4,400 employees worldwide and programs that treat people with cancer and HIV, train local doctors and ensure the health of newborn babies in poor nations.
Seeming to cement the pause, virtually the entire staff of USAID was told Tuesday night by the Trump administration’s main cost-cutter, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, that they would be off the job by Friday and workers abroad would be brought home.
“It’s frightening,” said a worker at Jhpiego, who did not want to be named. The worker said staff was still reporting to work and were told they’d be paid at least until the end of February.
Jhpiego was founded more than a half-century ago and has a focus on improving health for women and children. From its office in Fells Point, it manages hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from USAID and other federal agencies and philanthropic organizations, reaching more than 40 countries at any one time.
Humanitarian groups are in turmoil, the worker and a Washington-based USAID employee told The Banner. They did not want to be named because they didn’t have permission to comment and feared retribution by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Both said they worried about their careers — and have deeper concerns about the future of the work they have been doing in some of the most unstable and poorest parts of the world. The programs save countless lives, they said, but also aim to protect the health and security of Americans.
“The level of experience that could be lost is massive,” the staffer said, “and the effects enormous.”
Alice Payne Merritt, a former deputy director of the Center for Communication Programs, said the organization could have thousands of staff globally at any one time. There are about 150 employees at the Baltimore headquarters and nearby offices who oversee some $100 million in programs in 40 to 50 countries.
The group works with local partners to ensure that people learn about and receive HIV/AIDS medications, as well as nets to protect children from malaria, a leading cause of death among children in Africa. It trains local officials to continue that work.
Read More
Trump froze grantmaking for health research. Now Maryland is shivering.
Jan 27, 2025
There’s room but no refugees: How Trump has upended Maryland’s resettlement system
Feb 2, 2025
Other countries benefit, and so do Americans, she said.
“COVID, malaria, mpox, Ebola, all those things came here from other places. If we can contain them in one place, it stops them from spreading here,” she said. “If humanitarian aid is gutted, we can’t do anything.”
USAID’s budget of about $40 billion is less than 1% of the federal budget, and international development experts say that’s a relatively small investment for the return.
Allyson Bear, a Baltimore-based international development expert and former USAID foreign service officer, said USAID is one of the three legs in the national security stool, along with State Department diplomacy and Defense Department military power.
“USAID changes hearts and minds; it’s a soft power that helps us gain allies,” she said. “We go to these countries and ask them to accept this aid for them, but it’s really for us.”
She said U.S. workers, for example, have largely prevented Ebola cases here despite multiple outbreaks in other parts of the world over the years.
Days ago, Ebola broke out in Uganda, “and we’re not there,” she said.
Leaving so abruptly can make the governments, public health workers and the public in those countries feel betrayed, she and others said. They could welcome adversaries such as China, which could gain a foothold in enough places and replace the United States as the biggest superpower.
That can play out in many ways, including when there is another pandemic, like COVID-19, and Americans can’t put themselves first in line for supplies and therapies.
“What happens when China moves into the top spot and bosses us around?” Bear said.
The moves to gut USAID was called “puzzling” by Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume, adding the approach to governing had “seemingly no regard for deliberate or thought-out reform.”
It was called “illegal” by Sen. Chris Van Hollen after he and other Maryland Democratic lawmakers, including Reps. Jamie Raskin and Johnny Olszewski Jr., were denied entry into USAID’s headquarters in Washington.
Lawmakers say funding is a constitutionally designated duty of Congress and there already are several lawsuits to stop the dismantling of federal agencies.
The blunt cuts also extend to other organizations in Baltimore, including academic institutions that rely on billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health for biomedical research and humanitarian nonprofits that focus on aiding refugees and those seeking asylum.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Gerry Connolly (R.-Va.), joined by fellow lawmakers and employees and supporters of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), hold a press conference outside USAID headquarters on Monday in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Baltimore is home to several organizations that assist refugees and asylum seekers, and officials also fear massive cuts, further threatening jobs, the area economy, and risking harms to international relationships.
One of those organizations, Global Refuge, a nonprofit formerly known as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services that helps immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, defended its work after Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn called it a “money laundering operation.”
A reply from Elon Musk said DOGE was “shutting down these illegal payments.”
Global Refuge condemned the “false accusations lodged against our humanitarian work.”
The team at Global Refuge participates in a training at the office last month. (Kaitlin Newman/The Baltimore Banner)
Executive orders and memos issued by the Trump administration have canceled travel for thousands of approved refugees and ordered resettlement agencies receiving federal funds to stop providing services to refugees already here.
There is a lot of anxiety about what is coming, said Tim Young, spokesman for Global Refuge.
“It’s good to know that we are not alone in this,” he said.
===
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Aug. 25, 2026,
For 17 months, the State Department has promised to deliver proof of a long-promoted conspiracy theory about its own agency: that its officials routinely censored conservative Americans. This week, it failed that mission, as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers released a trove of documents that proved nothing.
The conspiracy theory has grown during President Donald Trump’s second term, providing the State Department with a rationale for dismantling the offices that once studied and countered foreign disinformation campaigns, for firing officials with decades of experience and for shuttering entire departments.
The effort was first led by acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Darren Beattie, a former far-right academic who had been fired from the first Trump administration after he attended a white nationalist conference. Beattie claimed the DOGE-style decimation of the State Department was necessary to rid the agency of officials who were tied to a baseless conspiracy theory known as the “censorship-industrial complex.”
Promoters of the censorship-industrial complex — a secret but somehow sprawling partnership between the Biden government, journalists, academics and civil society groups, aimed at silencing conservative Americans — have repeatedly failed to prove their case, in congressional investigations and in the courts, including the Supreme Court. Still, the theory persists.
Beattie had no evidence for his unfounded claims that the State Department had participated in that conspiracy, but in March 2025, he launched an investigation inside the State Department that he said would reveal all. Beattie requested the files, emails and other communications of State Department officials, including any records with seemingly random keywords like “Black Lives Matter,” “great replacement theory” and “Pepe the Frog,” as well as any communications with figures Beattie believed to be part of the conspiracy. (These included The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, Bill Gates, disinformation researcher Nina Jankowicz and some 60 others, including this reporter.)
In the official announcement for the closure of the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC), Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Mike Benz, a former pseudonymous racist YouTuber and chief architect of the censorship-industrial complex theory, that a reckoning was coming. It would be driven by evidence, disclosed in the model of the “Twitter Files,” a 2022 dump of internal Twitter records that Elon Musk gave to selected writers to show the alleged censorship of conservatives. (It didn’t.)
Rubio said the job now was to “document what happened.”
“Because one thing is to say it in a broadcast like this, another thing is to actually put it on paper,” he said.
This week, Rogers, Beattie’s replacement, finally had something to share.
According to a series of posts on X, some since deleted, Rogers messaged Jennica Pounds, a self-described analyst who goes by the moniker Data Republican, known for creating massive, if amateur, data troves used to allege government waste, fraud and abuse, which made her a favorite of Musk’s.
Pounds said she thought Rogers was handing documents about Cuba, but got “shoved a bunch of hard copy documents to leak” about the GEC.
“I wanted to give you the option of ‘breaking’ the story as sort of a gift,” Rogers told her, according to a direct message that Pounds posted.
Then things got weird. Pounds has been a reliable vector for the Trump administration to push its narrative that a so-called deep state, or shadow government, was operating in secret and against the best interests of its citizens. But when she received the State Department’s “gift,” Pounds determined that it was a plot by Rogers to entrap her into committing a crime, asserting that releasing or reporting on the documents would be illegal.
Rogers responded “lol” and released the documents herself in a series of 35 posts that borrowed the breathless cadence of the Twitter Files, drawing ominous connections between GEC emails, international projects to combat foreign disinformation, and nongovernmental coalitions. It all implied the existence of a censorship-industrial-complex operation — without proving it. Rogers’ document dump got little attention from right-wing media.
More articles
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Resigning labor secretary falsely claims there was a ‘deep state’ conspiracy against her
“There were State Department employees sharing news articles. Diplomats had communicated with foreign governments. And somewhere in the rubble was a project examining ‘gendered disinformation’ that had been — wait for it — announced at the Summit for Democracy and published on the State Department website,” former senior foreign service officer Orna Blum wrote sarcastically on Substack.
Pounds seemed to agree with the former State Department official.
“The actual documents were nothingburgers,” she posted.
Neither the State Department nor Pounds responded to requests for comment.
The debacle may show that the half-decade of unproven censorship claims has exhausted their audience.
“The under secretary is yet again twisting decontextualized snippets of emails and long-public documents to try to propagate a conspiracy theory,” said Renée DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University. As the former research manager for the Stanford Internet Observatory, DiResta has long been a boogeyman of the censorship-industrial complex theory.
“The mass censorship claims were a hoax,” DiResta said.
Over the weekend, some of the State officials pushed out in last year’s purge lit up Signal chats, commenting on Rogers’ rollout of the long-promised proof of the conspiracy that had cost them their jobs and hollowed out the agency where they had spent their careers. One former senior official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told MS NOW: “In the end, it’s not the greatest consolation on earth to find out that the people who wrecked 10 years of your work and your career are a bunch of galaxy-level dipshits.”
The release did reveal something, however: an unintentional revelation about an undisclosed relationship between a federal agency and Pounds, a professed independent researcher who has often criticized others, without evidence, of being “a fed.”
In her posts, Pounds alleged that Rogers was trying to threaten her employment, revealing along the way that since July she had been a special government employee of the Department of Defense. Before that, Pounds had been provided credentials as a member of the Pentagon’s hollowed-out press corps.
A Defense Department official confirmed her employment but declined to give further details.
Brandy Zadrozny is a senior enterprise reporter for MS NOW.
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dogebag thot just did abortion
50k Jul 2, 2026
Tommy talks to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof about Elon Musk’s lies about DOGE and USAID. Want Pod Save the World ad-free? Subscribe to Friends of the Pod: https://www.crooked.com/friendsFor a transcript of an episode of Pod Save the World, please email transcripts@crooked.com.
not even show orphan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-znjjUWXb9Y&t=36s)
2:08
2 minutes, 8 seconds
Yeah, it is. I want to ask you about that reporting. Yeah, I think all all total like 83% of USA ID programs were canceled. 94% of the staff were laid
2:15
2 minutes, 15 seconds
off. Some were rehired by the State Department, but that was after a long independent process. So, the suggestion that, you know, it they destroyed it.
2:23
2 minutes, 23 seconds
They fed into the wood chipper. Exactly what Elon said. That's right.
mom bled no fuel ambo, mal bed net holes, no rx, dr nirse grow casavas
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1ST TEST POST DOGE, venez earthquake?
new ap
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and DAVID RISING
Updated April 4, 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — Day after day, Chinese rescue teams haul children and elderly people from collapsed buildings as cameras beam the thanks of grateful survivors around the world. Russian medical teams show off field hospitals erected in a flash to tend the wounded.
Notably absent from the aftermath of the 7.7-magnitude earthquake in the poor Southeast Asian nation Myanmar: the uniquely skilled, well-equipped and swift search-and-rescue teams and disaster-response crews from the United States.
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, rescuers move a survivor out from a collapsed building in the aftermath of an earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar, Monday, March 31, 2025. (Cai Yang/Xinhua via AP)
At least 15 Asian and Western government rescue teams have landed crews reaching hundreds of workers in size, alongside initial pledges of financial aid reaching tens of millions of dollars, as the death toll of the March 28 quake tops 3,000, Myanmar’s government says. Cameras showed Vietnam’s team on arrival, marching square-shouldered to the rescue behind their country’s flag.
While Myanmar’s military junta and civil war have posed challenges, the U.S. government has worked with local partners there previously to successfully provide aid for decades, including after deadly storms in 2008 and 2023, aid officials say.
The American government dwarfs other nations’ rescue capacity in experience, capacity and heavy machinery able to pull people alive from rubble. But in Myanmar after the most recent quake, the U.S. has distinguished itself for having no known presence on the ground beyond a three-member assessment team sent days after the quake.
“We all worried what would be the human impact” of President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development, said Lia Lindsey, a senior humanitarian policy adviser for Oxfam, which scrambled to provide tents, blankets and other aid to quake survivors.
Now, Lindsey said, “we’re seeing it in real time. We’re seeing it in increased suffering and increased death.”’
A retreat from decades of American policy may be fueling the absence
The United States, the world’s largest economy, long saw its strategic interests and alliances served by its standing as the world’s top humanitarian donor. Myanmar’s quake is as close to a no-show as the nation has had in recent memory at a major, accessible natural disaster.
Current and former senior private and government officials say the Myanmar disaster points to some of the results — for people in need on the ground, and for U.S. standing in the world — of the Trump administration’s retreat from decades of U.S. policy. That approach held that Washington needs both the hard power of a strong military and the soft power of a robust aid and development program to deter enemies, win and keep friends and steer events.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Europe for a NATO gathering, rejected a suggestion that the administration was ceding influence abroad by canceling thousands of its aid and development contracts, including for disasters. He told reporters that those complaining were the aid groups, which he accused of profiting off past U.S. aid.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio talks to the reporters at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
“We will do the best we can,” Rubio said Friday. “But we also have other needs we have to balance that against. We’re not walking away.”
He pointed to “a lot of other rich countries in the world. They should all be pitching in and do their part.” deflection SOP
Leading Senate Democrats wrote Rubio this week, urging him to scale up U.S. disaster aid to Myanmar — and fast. Separately, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke of watching a news broadcast of the disaster showing Chinese government teams at work.
“It hurt my heart to see where, instead of a USAID ... team leading the response, there was a team from the PRC that was being celebrated for having saved some people in the rubble,” Coons said.
The 2 1/2-month-old Trump administration, through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams, has frozen USAID funding, terminated thousands of contracts and is firing all but a handful of its staff globally. It accuses the agency of waste and of advancing liberal causes. The Myanmar quake is the first major natural disaster since that work started.
The Trump administration and some Republican lawmakers say they will reassemble a reduced slate of aid and development programs under the State Department, fitting their narrower interpretation of work that serves U.S. strategic and economic interests.
The first announcement of help came days later
Days after the Myanmar quake, the U.S. made its first announcement of help: It was sending a three-member assessment team of non-specialist advisers from a regional USAID office in Bangkok, Thailand. Coincidentally, like hundreds of other USAID staffers around the world, the three had received layoff notices from the Trump administration on March 28 within hours of the quake, current and former USAID officials confirmed.
The administration also promised $2 million in aid, and announced another $7 million Friday. But there’s a much larger number at play.
That $9 million total is dwarfed by the roughly $2 billion in payments for previously rendered services and goods that the Trump administration has owed nonprofit humanitarian groups and other contractors and government and nongovernment foreign partners, aid officials say. The Trump administration abruptly shut down USAID and State foreign assistance payments — including for work already done — on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.
Combined with abruptly terminated aid contracts and the freeze on the USAID and State aid and development payments, the U.S. back debt is forcing larger aid operations and businesses to scale back their services to people in need and to slash staff. Some smaller organizations were driven out of business. That was even before the Myanmar quake.
Under court order, the administration is slowly making good on those back payments.
In the meantime, nonprofit groups are having to draw on reserve funds they would normally use for sudden unplanned disasters like the Myanmar quake to pay the bills that the U.S. should have paid, said Lindsey, the Oxfam official.
Michael Dunford, World Food Programme Country Director in Myanmar, hands aid boxes to earthquake survivors at Ottara Thiri Hospital in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Diego Fernandez/World Food Programme via AP)
Asked about the burden that the non-government organizations — another name for aid groups — say USAID’s unpaid back bills are placing on their work, the State Department said in an email, “The U.S. government cannot comment on how NGOs manage their financing.”
Typically, the United States itself would have provided $10 million to $20 million in the initial phase of response to a disaster like the Myanmar quake, with more later for long-term aid and rebuilding, said Sarah Charles, who ran disaster response and overall humanitarian affairs at USAID in the Biden administration.
“We have a long history in Burma,” Charles said, adding, “It’s an environment that the U.S. government has been operating in over the last many decades.”
Normally, the United States also would have had 20 to 25 specialized disaster workers on the ground in as few as 24 hours, Charles said. That number would have jumped to 200 or more if USAID had flown in urban rescue teams from California and Virginia. They deploy as self-contained units, with dog handlers and the capacity to feed and provide clean water to the teams, Charles said.
The Trump administration preserved contracts for the California and Virginia rescue teams under pressure from lawmakers. But the contracts for their transport are believed among the thousands of USAID contracts that the administration canceled. That left the U.S. no quick way to move search-and-rescue crews when disaster struck, Charles said.
Britain has pledged $13 million in aid and said it will match up to $5 million in private donations, and China and others have promised financial aid. At least 15 countries sent in dozens or hundreds of rescuers or aid workers, including Russia, China, India and the United Arab Emirates, according to Myanmar officials.
China shares a border and close ties with Myanmar. Chinese rescuers had their first success Sunday, fewer than 48 hours after the quake, when they joined hands with local people to pull an elderly man from a badly damaged hospital in the capital city of Naypyitaw.
By Wednesday, Chinese rescuers had pulled out nine survivors, including a pregnant woman and a child. In Mandalay, Chinese rescuers saved a 52-year-old man who trapped for nearly 125 hours.
---
USAID KIA EST NOAH E
---
MOJO
The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda is one of the largest in recent history. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been nearly 1,000 suspected cases and more than 200 suspected deaths. The disease is spreading quickly, and public health workers say they have struggled to contain it because funds for the US Agency for International Development and other aid efforts have been cut by the Trump administration.
The US State Department insists that President Donald Trump’s cuts did not contribute to the delayed response to the outbreak. Tommy Pigott, a spokesman, told the New York Timeslast week, “It is false to claim that the USAID reform has negatively impacted our ability to respond to Ebola.”
But in March 2025, Nicholas Enrich, then an acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, testified before Congress that funding had been frozen, protective equipment could not be accessed, and an agency leader had characterized an Ebola outbreak in Uganda at the time as a “scam.”
Enrich told the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs that in February, his requests for funds to address Uganda’s ongoing Ebola outbreak had fallen on deaf ears. Tim Meisburger, who was then the head of USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, Enrich testified, “specifically noted that Ebola was a ‘scam’ because there had only been ‘one death.’” Enrich attempted to “explain that Ebola was still in an incubation period, and that we should see the response through,” but to no avail. Instead, he continued, his superiors decided to “deprioritize activities related to neglected tropical diseases, MPox, Polio, Ebola, and any monitoring and surveillance activities.”
Meisburger had previously made headlines in 2021, when he was serving as a deputy assistant administrator at USAID’s Bureau for Development, Democracy and Innovation. According to the Washington Post, he had told fellow staffers during a video call that the January 6 Capitol insurrection was caused by “a few violent people” and that “several million” others had been protesting peacefully. He was dismissed from his position after those comments came to light, but he was brought back into public office during Trump’s second term.
According to Enrich, the other high-ranking official present at his meeting with Meisburger was an assistant to the administrator for global health, Mark Lloyd, who also has a history of making controversial statements. When Lloyd was named USAID’s religious freedom adviser at the end of Trump’s first term in 2020, the Washington Post reported on Islamophobic comments he had previously made on social media, including calling Islam a “barbaric cult.”
As of June 2025, Meisburger had reportedly taken a new role with the Peace Corps, while Lloyd is still with USAID’s Bureau of Global Health. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Around the same time that Enrich was meeting with Meisburger and Lloyd, SpaceX head Elon Musk, who was then leading Trump’s US Department of Government Efficiency, took to X to brag about gutting USAID. “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” he tweeted in February. “Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”
---
HARVARD 700K? KIA? // LANCET
Elon's DOGE Disaster Was Much Worse Than We Realized
May 13, 2026 The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder
Live-streamed on May 4, 2026. Nicholas Enrich, former civil servant who worked at USAID under four administrations joins the program to discuss his new book: “Into the Wood Chipper: a Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID“
---
STUMBLE ON li
NOTE NON TITLE
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Have you lost track of what Elon Musk is doing? Pay attention. - YouTube
Have you lost track of what Elon Musk is doing? Pay attention.
thank you @jamelle-bouie for continuing to elevate this conversation in the public consciousness. We MUST keep talking about it. https://www.wired.com/story/usaid-whi...https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the...https://www.thelancet.com/journals/la...
---
MMA
Dozens of Project 2025 proposals appear to be included in the Trump administration's newest budget
Budget director Russ Vought was a key author of the extreme right-wing media initiative
Written by Sophie Lawton
Published 04/14/26
The proposed 2027 budget released by the Office of Management and Budget is filled with ideas that appear to be copied and pasted from Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. Russ Vought, the head of the OMB, was an architect of the extreme right-wing media initiative and its signature publication before being hired by President Donald Trump.
The 2027 budget proposes defunding a variety of “woke" policies (with the word “woke” appearing more than 30 times in the document), including, for example, Department of Commerce programs “focused on woke and meaningless initiatives" like prioritizing support and funding for LGBTQ businesses.
Similarly, in Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ forward to the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership, he calls for the next conservative administration to “make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors" by “deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists."
Other proposals from the 2027 budget go even further than what was suggested by Project 2025. For instance, Project 2025 concedes that Congress is unlikely to defund the Minority Business Development Agency and therefore “a conservative Administration is best served by approaching MBDA as a tool to be leveraged in the fight to deliver economic opportunity to all Americans." The 2027 budget suggests defunding the agency entirely.
Project 2025 calls for a conservative administration to restructure the Teen Pregnancy Prevention initiative so it does not serve as an “advocacy tool” to “promote sex, promote prostitution, or provide a funnel effect for abortion facilities." Trump's 2027 budget proposes completely eliminating the program.
The 2027 budget document also contains some language more forceful than what was seen in Mandate for Leadership, repeatedly referring to the Green New Deal as the “Green New Scam,” for example, while Mandateuses the somewhat softer “green subsidies” to describe environmental and related policies it calls to dismantle.
After spending months disavowing Project 2025 on the campaign trail in 2024, Trump hired dozens of people connected to the effort at the start of his second term and has continued to enact policies lifted directly from the Mandate for Leadership. Some of the more notable Project 2025 suggestions that have been implemented include dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and defunding programs related to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. According to the open source Project 2025 Tracker, the Trump administration has implemented around 50% of Project 2025's policy proposals so far.
...
=-=-
an 4 26
President Donald Trump’s choice to fight global hunger subscribes to a philosophy that will only make it worse.
Trump appointed Luke Lindberg, the Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, to lead the Rome-based World Food Program, which is the world’s largest humanitarian agency, according to a report by PassBlue. Yet Lindberg’s most recent job was rebranding the Food for Peace international food aid program as "America First" international food assistance. Under Trump the federal government has pushed for cuts to the McGovern-Dole program, which provides food assistance to low-income nations, as well as for Lindberg’s own Food for Peace program.
“Under the second Trump administration, funding for the World Food Program was slashed in half after the dismantling of USAID,” PassBlue reported. “The loss of $2.6 billion in US funding in the last year triggered the layoff of a third of WFP’s staff and a surge in malnutrition in some of the most fragile countries. Despite the cuts, Washington remains at the top of the donors’ list for WFP. This reality makes it more likely that Trump’s nominee will pull through the Senate confirmation hearings without major opposition.”
In addition to supporting Trump's funding cuts, Lindberg is also linked with unpopular food distribution methods. Both the World Food Program and other UN humanitarian agencies prefer to either provide cash or help local and regional governments obtain food, arguing that these approaches are cheaper, more efficient and less disruptive. But Lindberg advocates exporting US-grown commodities to provide the same international food aid.
“Sam Vigersky, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that recourse to the old practice of WFP procurement restricted only to US commodities is a strong possibility if an American leads the agency again,” PassBlue reported.
“The practice is inefficient in that it involves shipping grain at significant cost from America, which is rarely the most readily available or the cheapest source; nor is it always the locally preferred kind of grain,” Nick Coghlan, a former Canadian diplomat with experience in Sudan and South Sudan, told PassBlue.
He added, “Moreover, the practice seriously undermines regional food markets which would otherwise receive a useful boost; and it discourages more innovative WFP programmes that require cash injections.”
When Trump dismantled USAID, more than a million people were left without three months worth of food because $98 million in ready-made meals and other rations were abandoned in four warehouses by the administration.
“Contracts with suppliers, shipping companies, and contractors have been canceled since USAID was taken over by the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, with the White House saying the agency—with a relatively small budget of just $40 billion—was responsible for ‘significant waste,’” Common Dreams reported in May. “Since DOGE, run by tech billionaire Elon Musk, targeted USAID in one of its first full-scale attacks on a federal entity, the agency is being run by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”
In response to Trump’s attacks on food programs, a current federal official told NOTUS in July that Trump’s actions are a sign of America slipping into authoritarianism.
“Take it from those of us who worked in authoritarian countries: We’ve become one,” the official told NOTUS. “They were so quick to disband AID, the group that supposedly instigates color revolutions. But they’ve done a very foolish thing. You just released a bunch of well‑trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime.”
---
benz cornholed by jo 3 26
953,672 views Mar 8, 2026 #lastweektonight
John Oliver discusses the United States Agency for International Development, why the Trump Administration has gutted it, who is being impacted, and how the Cha Cha Slide can help us get to the bottom of this.
...0:21
the United States Agency for International Development or USAD. It was once described as the world's single
0:26
largest humanitarian donor, providing aid in the form of disaster relief, global health, food assistance, climate
0:31
resilience, education, and much more. And when Trump returned to the White House last year, he made it clear that
0:38
the agency was in his sights. USID run by radical lunatics.
0:44
It sounds so nice. US aid. Isn't that beautiful? But it's a whole big scam.
0:50
When you look at USA ID, that's a uh that's a fraud. The whole thing is a
0:56
fraud. Very little uh very little being put to good use. Okay, so set aside the irony of Donald
1:03
Trump of Trump University accusing anything of being a fraud. You can't
1:08
just call something a scam because you don't like it. I want to call low-rise jeans a scam. I feel like Peppa Pigs a
1:16
fraud. I believe radical lunatics run Jamba Juice. liquid fruit isn't a treat. It's cough syrup at best. But even I,
1:22
agonize, my feelings don't make any of those thoughts true. But Trump was fixated on USA ID and its spending,
1:29
which is a little surprising given it amounted to less than 1% of the federal budget. Yet Trump and Elon Musk quickly
1:36
dismantled the agency with Elon at one point proudly tweeting he'd spent the weekend feeding USA ID into the wood
1:43
chipper. And a lot of MAGA Republicans were ecstatic about that. Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson even made a
1:49
trip to DC to celebrate. I just got into Washington DC. I had to see it for myself to believe it. USID
2:01
is no more. Check it out. There we go. Got the duct
2:06
tape. Got the doors all closed off.
2:13
Got the Got everything all blacked out up there.
2:18
had to see it to believe it. The uh the consequences of Doge....num 1 selfie spot
...
:47
have issues. And even then, half of that was reclaimed. But even without knowing that, it's tough to take waste
9:53
allegations from Elon seriously, given his Doge team seem to have no idea what the programs they were cutting even did.
10:00
ProPublica recently revealed that people at the agency watch as their brand new chief of staff scrolled down a
10:06
spreadsheet of programs, turning rows red, yellow, or green every few seconds, never asking a single question. Then
10:13
realizing that the bread programs were slated to be cut, they frantically started editing descriptions so he'd at
10:18
least know what those programs did. And while the administration at one point insisted the programs would be spared if
10:25
they were considered lifesaving, just listen to this former USAD employee tell a Senate roundt how those decisions got
10:32
made. When we kept flagged a long list of awards that were needed for life- saving activities, we were told that the
10:38
problem was the names of those awards didn't make clear that they were life-saving. Um, it didn't have the word
10:45
life-saving in the name. And therefore, it was very hard for the secretary's team to to understand which awards
10:51
should or should not be terminated. And so, the implication was that if we had been more clear in the names that these
10:56
were life-saving awards, maybe then they would have been saved. Now, obviously that is stupid for a thousand reasons. first because
11:03
everybody knows that names aren't usually literal descriptions of what you are getting. It's the reason that
11:08
ketchup isn't called salty tomato inspired glo. Conjunctivitis isn't called on your finger then touched
11:14
your eye disease. And this show isn't called facts you read in a New Yorker 18 months ago with what seems to be a
11:20
middle-aged man. It's called poetic license. And it is notable that for all
11:27
the talk of fraud, even Jeremy Leuen, a Doge guy who eventually served as deputy administrator and COO of the agency and
11:34
who often personally decided which program should be axed, later admitted
11:39
his team didn't find much. You know, we talk about people talk
11:44
about fraud, right? Doge didn't find that much fraud at USAD. It's sort of a definitional question. What is fraud? In
...
SEE BENZ
2
the Trump administration has announced a new approach called the America First Global Health Strategy. It's supposed to
30:58
restart some forms of health rellated foreign aid, though no other kinds and only in some countries. with the central
31:04
idea being that they want local governments to take more agency over foreign aid. And honestly, I genuinely
31:10
hope it works. But we have very little in the way of specifics and it's going to be difficult to implement given this
---
WOW FREEPERS
Missteps, Confusion and ‘Viral Waste’: The 14 Days That Doomed U.S.A.I.D.
2 12 26 CONFIRM CLAREMONSTER DEPT OF STATE? ~ CHRIS MURPHY
YT DOGE BOOK MALARIA AIDS ... KIDS DEATH; MUSK INCOME 1 DAY PAY FOR KID FOOD PGM?
---
AN 2 26
Donald Trump's aggressive "America First" agenda has caused a "profound shift" around the world, with a new analysis reported on by The Guardian showing the extent to which more countries are siding with China as strong U.S. alliances have "crashed."
On Friday, The Guardian published a report sharing the findings of a survey by the firm, FocalData. Using the results of United Nations votes over the first year of Trump's second term as a measure of how much the nations of the world are siding with either the interests of the U.S. or China. The results, as depicted in a chart showing a map of the world, are significant, with many more countries, including once-key allies, shifting towards China, as Trump's machinations have "started to redraw the geopolitical map in favour of China."
Based on the map created with FocalData's findings, every UN country in Europe has shifted more towards China in the last year, as have the likes of Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Most of South and Central America has made the same shift, except for Peru. Africa and Asia are closer to an even split, but countries that shifted towards China are still in the majority, including major players like Japan, South Korea, India and even Russia.
Among the countries that have shifted more towards the U.S. are North Korea, South Africa, Madagascar, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, and Nigeria.
Though the shifts show some notable trends, many countries have not yet changed their overall voting allegiance. Most of Europe, for example, remains largely aligned with the U.S. despite the shift towards China. Still, the trends show a world power balance in the midst of a historic shift.
"In 2026, the world is now diplomatically closer to Beijing than it has been in recent memory," The Guardian explained. "With significant shifts in alignments taking place during the start of Trump’s second presidential term."
The report further detailed: "The total number of countries strongly aligned with the US has crashed under Trump, in contrast to China, which has maintained its allies. When comparing all of Trump’s years in the White House, including his first term, with those of his immediate predecessors – Barack Obama and Joe Biden – the number of countries strongly aligned with the US has collapsed, from 46 to just seven. The number of countries closely in China’s orbit has remained broadly constant."
---
---
toi
according to Mike Benz, a former State Department official an ..
Read more at:
Read more at:
---
[### THE USAID BETRAYAL
Congress.gov
https://www.congress.gov › event › house-event › text](https://www.congress.gov/event/119th-congress/house-event/LC74289/text)
The purpose of today's hearing is to discuss the misuse of public trust through USAID's woke programming and explore ideas for reorganization.Read more
...
The chair now recognizes Representative Luna.
Mrs. Luna. Chairman, for the record, I would like to submit
this letter saying that PEPFAR funding was actually resumed. I
know there has been a lot of push saying that the Trump admin
had actually cut it, but----
Chairman Mast. So ordered.
Mrs. Luna. Thank you.
You know, I want to start off by saying initially I think
the idea behind USAID was done with a good intention. However,
we have come to find out that the Agency has indeed, to a
certain extent, operated in a rogue capacity. And USAID has
absolutely broken the trust with the American people and not
been transparent about where our taxpayer dollars are going.
There is an individual by the name of Mike Benz. He
actually served over at the State Department for a while, and
he has been going on to expose a lot of what USAID has been
doing, which being a member of Oversight and being on this
committee I wanted to verify and see if he was telling the
truth, which much to my disappointment he was.
And I say that because I am disappointed that our taxpayer
dollars are funding some of these items. I mean, to just put
this in perspective, in 2021, the Special Operations Command
under Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs put out an
instruction manual, ``A Vision for 2021 and Beyond,'' that
contained instructions and examples on how the military could
work with the State Department, intel services, and USAID using
race riots--here are examples of some of the instruction
manuals here, one and two--in order to destabilize nations.
In addition to that, they advocated for setting up job
fairs near some of these riots so that disaffected workers
could gain employment.
Now, as a Member of Congress, I ask myself, did anyone in
USAID get elected? To Congress? How about to a Presidency? When
you are acting in the shadows and you are destabilizing nations
using race wars to do it and then advocating that the military
does it, in my opinion, not only do you put the future
generations that would have to fight in those wars in jeopardy,
but at the end of the day, you are operating without any
oversight.
So I guess the question for you guys is, Mr. Natsios, is
that something that you were aware of? Are you aware that that
instruction manual is being promoted not just with the military
under Milley but that USAID may be operating in this capacity?
Because, in my opinion--and I am sure I speak on behalf of many
of my constituents--I don't think that is where our taxpayer
dollars need to be going.
Mr. Natsios. Well, I completely agree with you. Personally,
I doubt very much that what you have been told is accurate, but
let me just say----
Mrs. Luna. Well, look, I am telling you right now I brought
the receipts. Okay. And the reason--I am not trying to argue
with you, but I find this disturbing----
Mr. Natsios. Very disturbing.
Mrs. Luna [continuing]. On so many capacities. And I would
like to also just, if I can, sir, Mike Benz, what he is
exposing and bringing receipts, I have confirmed it, thank you
for doing that on behalf of the American people because I
understand that when you take on the intelligence agencies, we
are also now finding that apparently in this manual that they
are also advocating for social media campaigns illuminating
controversy to a global audience. I mean, using disinformation
campaigns. Is this happening here in our own country? Where is
the oversight?
Mr. Natsios. Just to ask you, who in the Agency, what
bureau----
Mrs. Luna. I just sent you--you can actually find that
instruction in this manual that Milley approved.
Mr. Natsios. Military manual, is it?
Mrs. Luna. Yes, but Milley approved it. You have it right
here. USAID working with government agencies. I mean, this is
not----
Mr. Natsios. Wait a second. Did AID say that or did the
military say AID should----
Mrs. Luna. Well, that would be the question for you, sir.
Mr. Natsios. Well, I don't think AID wrote that.
Mrs. Luna. I mean, these operations--sorry to interrupt
you. These operations that are taking place without government
oversight, without the authority of the President, without the
authority of Congress, real men and women serve and they die
because of stuff like this. When you destabilize nations
without any oversight, we have to fight those wars. You have
our chairman right here that literally risked his life----
Mr. Natsios. I----
Mrs. Luna. No. I am sorry to interrupt you. I am
frustrated. I know it is not necessarily your fault.
Mr. Natsios. But I am telling you it is nonsense.
Mrs. Luna. But as the head of the Agency----
Mr. Natsios. I am telling you what Benz told you is
nonsense.
Mrs. Luna. That is not nonsense. These are the information
and forms----
Mr. Natsios. AID didn't write that.
Mrs. Luna [continuing]. And Benz put this out to the
American people.
Mr. Natsios. AID did not write that.
Mrs. Luna. Sir, I disagree with you on so many levels, and
I appreciate you being----
Mr. Natsios. How do you know they wrote it?
Mrs. Luna. How do I know what?
Mr. Natsios. Any person can write AID's name into a manual.
It goes on all the time.
Mrs. Luna. Sir, they are advocating that the U.S. military
work with taxpayer-funded State Department USAID funds to
destabilize nations. That is unacceptable. I don't care who
wrote it. USAID needs to come down and condemn it. They need to
provide oversight to Congress on exactly where our tax dollars
are going.
And I know I might be at 17 seconds with our time, but,
sir, I hope that you agree--yes or no. Do you agree that this
is wrong, period? Should this be happening?
Mr. Natsios. I think the military should be held
accountable. I think it is nonsense that----
Mrs. Luna. And should USAID condemn it?
Mr. Natsios. It is nonsense to suggest that AID wrote that.
Mrs. Luna. Should USAID condemn it? Should they condemn it?
Mr. Natsios. The military should.
Mrs. Luna. Should USAID also condemn this?
Mr. Natsios. Of course. We don't comment----
Mrs. Luna. Thank you.
Mr. Natsios. AID does not comment on military manuals.
Mrs. Luna. Chairman, I yield my time back.
Thank you.
Chairman Mast. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
Mr. Natsios. It is none of our business
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an 12 25
Ross Vought is often credited as the architect of Project 2025, and as Donald Trump's director for the Office of Management and Budget, he has helped oversee historically destructive government cuts throughout 2025. In addition to his standing as an "amoral political actor," per a new analysis from The New Republic, what sets him apart from the worst of the White House "hatchet men" is his claim to carry out his actions in the name of his "devout" Christianity.
Writing an extensive breakdown of Vought's tenure as OMB director on Monday, journalist Timothy Noah observed that "conservatives used to think you could be a political hatchet artist or you could serve the Lord." Now, he argued, "they say: Why choose?" This idea is typified by Vought, who has stressed his devout adherence to Christianity throughout his time in politics, suggested that the US is an exclusively Christian nation and written in defense of "Christian nationalism."
"Vought wishes trauma on civil servants and has inflicted same; boasts about turning his think tank into a 'Death Star'; panders to the right’s paranoid streak by claiming Marxists rule America; helps Trump withhold aid to Ukraine illegally after its leader declines to investigate the son of Trump’s 2020 opponent; and impounds congressional appropriations in gleeful defiance of court precedent," Noah wrote. "Pretty sinful, no? Not to Vought. While doing all this Vought proudly declares his deep devotion to the Christian faith."
Vought, he continued, does not practice any form of Christianity devoted to helping the poor or downtrodden, or any sort of "sentimental nonsense about the least among us." Noah highlighted a part of Project 2025 in which Vought decried the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as “a permanent and immiserating feature of the global landscape.”
"That’s a novel way to describe a program to alleviate global poverty," Noah wrote.
According to an October profile of Vought from ProPublica, when it was suggested that the agency's budget be cut in half, he countered that it should be brought as close to zero as possible. An estimate from Boston University estimated that these cuts have been responsible for "640,000 people, 430,000 of them children," with the total deaths estimated later being increased by 38,000.
"... How on earth does the prevailing Christian ethos in Donald Trump’s Washington, as practiced by Russell Vought, align with the Christianity that the goyim have been telling me about my whole life?" Noah wrote in conclusion, suggesting that "Vought would run over his own grandmother to serve his president," and "also do it to please his Creator."
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RWW
12/15/2025
by
- Colby Hall @ Mediaite: Trump Blames Tragic Death of Rob Reiner and Wife on ‘TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME’
President Donald Trump seized on a shocking and still-developing report about the deaths of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Reiner, using the moment to settle political scores rather than acknowledge the gravity of the allegations.
- Liz Lykins @ The Roys Report: Pastors accuse Greg Locke of spiritual abuse, financial mismanagement
Two married pastors at Greg Locke’s central Tennessee church have resigned, claiming the founding pastor created a spiritually abusive and manipulative culture.
- Josh Kovensky @ Talking Points Memo: New York’s Young Republicans Beg for More, But Fret About a ‘MAGA Civil War’
One year in, and the club of young Republicans that touts itself as the most MAGA of them all isn’t happy. They’ve gotten what they’ve wanted, and it still isn’t enough. If last year’s iteration of their annual gala was a preview for what life under a second Trump administration would be — ubiquitous authoritarian gestures, Christian nationalism ascendant, and a growing global far-right front with Washington at the center — then this year’s event showed how even some of the president’s most die-hard supporters are pushing for even more.
- Sophia Cai @ Politico: The lawyer behind Vought’s bureaucracy crackdown
The Trump administration’s boldest moves against the bureaucracy share a common thread: Mark Paoletta’s signature.
- Warren Throckmorton @ Baptist Press: Is it time to retire the term ‘Christian nationalism’?
As if exasperated by a quarrel during Thanksgiving dinner, columnist Michael Sean Winters pleads with whoever will listen: “Can everyone please stop talking about ‘Christian nationalism?’”
- Anna Merlan @ Mother Jones: In Her New Media Ascent, Erika Kirk Whitewashes Her Husband’s Legacy
In recent appearances, Charlie Kirk’s widow has hardly been asked about Turning Point USA’s right-wing mission.
- Ali Breland @ The Atlantic: I Watched 12 Hours of Nick Fuentes
The white-supremacist influencer is laying the groundwork to go even bigger.
- Greg Sargent @ The New Republic: Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State
He is descended from Russian Jews—you know, the kind of people who were once denounced as alien and unassimilable. Today, his project is to unleash government persecution of those he deems alien and unassimilable. How far will Miller’s sadistic designs go?
- Jason Wilson @ The Guardian: ‘Just disgraceful’: outcry as Heritage thinktank appoints far-right figure to key post
Scott Yenor, who has offered views on women, marriage and LGBTQ rights, helped to found secretive fraternal order.
- Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy @ ProPublica: Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera
Trump officials were told that cutting aid to South Sudan would exacerbate a deadly cholera epidemic. They did so anyway.
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omfg
“They Were Hiding THIS!” Michael Shellenberger UNCOVERS Dark Secret About USAID and The Deep State
163K views
8 months ago
Winston Marshall
Michael Shellenberger, journalist, author and founder of PUBLIC discusses his investigative reports on the USAID's role in ...
4K
9 chapters
USAID and the Censorship Industrial Complex | USAID's Role in Counter-Populism and Regime Change | USAID and the Impeachment of Trump | OCCRP and USAID's Funding of Fake Journalism | USAID's Involvement in Russiagate | USAID's Broader Influence and Criticisms | The Role of Free Speech in Civilization | The Evolution of Mark Zuckerberg's Stance on Free Speech | The Future of Free Speech and Civilization
===
REF
Inside the Hidden Conservative Network Bankrolling an “Ecosystem” of Right-Wing News – Mother Jones
GFX
“Now more than ever, the world needs an honest newsroom.” With these words, the little-known Informing America Foundation was awarded the $250,000 Gregor G. Peterson Prize in “venture philanthropy” last December for its “high-quality journalism.”
If few had heard of IAF, hinted the nonprofit’s CEO, Debbie Myers, it was by design. “We stay very much under the radar,” she said, accepting the prize at the 2024 annual summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate-funded group that works to advance conservative policies at the state level. IAF’s goal, Myers explained, was to create an “ecosystem” of news. The group boasts of funding a network of thousands of platforms that have quietly shaped public opinion by stoking an array of right-wing conspiracy theories, from the alleged corruption of Joe Biden to the supposedly nefarious mission of the US Agency for International Development, along with more recent attacks on critics of President Donald Trump.
Myers, who once led Gingrich 360, Newt Gingrich’s multimedia production firm, is a longtime TV executive who helped produce shows such as Little People, Big World; Talk Soup; and Punkin Chunkin. Her “partner in crime” in launching IAF in 2021, as she described him as he joined her onstage, is John Solomon, a former investigative reporter for the Associated Press and Washington Post and a DC fixture who has drawn criticism for pushing right-wing stories and smearing Democrats with the kind of allegations that a Post ombudsman once described as “‘gotcha’ without a gotcha.”
In 2019, Solomon was at the forefront of efforts to tie Biden to shady dealings in Ukraine on his son Hunter’s behalf, penning a series of columns for The Hill that reported dubious information from Ukrainian prosecutors with an axe to grind. A 2020 review of his work by the paper called its reliability into question, concluding Solomon had “failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation.”
In the wake of the controversy, he set up the independent outlet Just the News and launched a podcast, John Solomon Reports. In an email, Solomon defended his Hill reporting’s accuracy and claimed he has no formal role at IAF, while confirming he provides it an office at the same K Street address as Just the News and another Solomon enterprise, Bentley Media Group. In 2021, Myers and Solomon also formed the Affinity Media Exchange, an advertising business that soon inked a deal with Trump’s Truth Social to be one of the platform’s ad representatives.
IAF’s tax filings, which say its mission is funding “investigative, explanatory, data-driven and multimedia journalism,” show it brought in close to $8 million in contributions during its first year, with the largest nonprofit donation coming from the family foundation of Diana Davis Spencer, whose late father, an investment banker, once chaired the Heritage Foundation. In subsequent years, millions have flowed to IAF through donor-advised charities that do not disclose the source of their initial contributions.
IAF, in turn, has doled out funds to an array of right-leaning outlets, including Just the News and Off the Press, run by Joseph Curl, a veteran of Drudge Report and the Washington Times. ADN América, aimed at Spanish speakers, received more than $1 million from IAF in the site’s first three years of operation. The foundation sent another million-plus to Performance One Media, which owns Real America’s Voice, the right-wing network best known for carrying Steve Bannon’s War Room. Real America’s Voice gave Solomon his own nightly show in 2022, which he has used to promote IAF allies.
IAF has also directed more than $1.7 million to Star News Digital Media, a conglomerate of 12 mostly battleground state sites whose names suggest a local focus but that actually push pro-GOP partisan news. Star News’ Tennessee Star, for instance, featured a section called “KamaLawfare” prior to the 2024 presidential election that highlighted incidents from Kamala Harris’ prosecutorial tenure in California, but seemed to ignore top news events in the state. One day this past June, the homepages of Star News outlets in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Virginia looked almost identical, all covering transgender youth health care in California, New York City’s mayoral race, and a Florida sheriff’s threats against anti-Trump protesters.
Media observers have dubbed such agenda-driven news sites “pink slime”—so named for by-products added as filler to ground beef. Pink slime news is a growing phenomenon, according to University of Cincinnati journalism professor Jeffrey Blevins, rising as partisan interests take advantage of the devastated newspaper market. “We saw these news deserts popping up,” he says. “It was very cheap to put in a website and say, ‘Okay, we’re doing local news.’ Local news is always seen as being more credible.” Sites like the Tennessee Star, he explains, use that perception to push “poor-quality” coverage “funded by some outside political interest.”
In 2023, the most recent year tax records are available, filings show IAF’s largest contribution—more than $1 million—went to the Institute for Citizen Focused Service, a secretive nonprofit set up by Interior Department officials from Trump’s first term. In turn, ICFS has funneled money to Pipeline Advisors, which holds a portfolio of local outlets—including the Midland Times, Austin Journal, Federal Newswire, and others—that have also been described as pink slime. All told, IAF says its news “ecosystem” includes “more than 2,000 hyperlocal platforms and 10 national platforms” reaching an audience of more than 50 million people.
One hallmark of IAF-connected organizations is that they often promote the same allegations and storylines. This is no accident: At the award ceremony last December, Myers provided a glimpse into how IAF works, explaining that each morning, the team gathers on a call to choose the stories they believe the mainstream media is ignoring. After hanging up, “we amplify each other,” she said, “and get it to the hands of the American people.”
Star News outlets regularly repackage Just theNews articles. Just the News writes stories based on Off the Press coverage and vice versa. They do not disclose their financial links. For example, Just the News covered the 2021 launch of Off the Press without noting that either organization was funded by IAF.
The network’s thousands of platforms have quietly shaped public opinion by stoking an array of right-wing conspiracy theories.
Solomon’s podcast often features guests from the broader IAF universe, including Mike Benz, a right-wing influencer and former Trump State Department official whose attacks targeting USAID as a “censorship octopus” helped fuel Elon Musk’s crusade to feed the agency to the “wood chipper.” Benz, a onetime alt-right Twitter troll, has appeared on Solomon’s show to rail against social media censorship and US foreign aid. In such appearances, he’s been identified as the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online—which is not a foundation, but which launched as a project of an organization called Empower Oversight that has also been heavily funded by IAF. An Empower Oversight spokesperson said the group served as FFO’s fiscal sponsor through February 2023. That year, Benz was paid $253,889 by ICFS.
In 2022, Benz began issuing reports from his one-man think tank positing a conspiracy to silence conservatives online. IAF-funded outlets have presented a drumbeat of interviews with him, in which he argued that outfits battling online disinformation—from media watchdogs like NewsGuard to the US military and Big Tech—were actually undertaking a project to suppress conservative voices. The interviews presented Benz as an independent expert—“Mike Benz exposes State Department’s use of USAID as an ‘intelligence cloak,’” said one Just the News headline—without revealing that his think tank was little more than a website whose existence seems to have been made possible by IAF. The interviews got repackaged as news by other outlets in the IAF stable, expanding their reach.
Empower Oversight, the organization that originally backed Benz, was formed in Virginia in 2021, just one day before IAF was registered in Washington, DC. IAF supplied Empower Oversight with the sole grant it received that year, a $400,000 allocation whose purpose, according to tax filings, was to “develop an infrastructure to cultivate, protect and work with whistleblowers.” Since its founding, Empower Oversight has focused heavily on typical MAGA obsessions, including the Russian collusion probe, purported FBI involvement in January 6, and Hunter Biden.
Empower Oversight is headed by Jason Foster—a longtime aide to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley—whom ProPublica exposed in 2018 as an inflammatory blogger who wrote under the handle “Extremist.” According to ProPublica, Foster, a “partisan combatant” known for his “conspiratorial thinking,” was the main force behind the Senate Judiciary Committee’s scrutiny of research firm Fusion GPS and ex–British spy Christopher Steele, author of the 2016 memos alleging collusion between Trump and Russia.
Empower Oversight, which continues to receive most of its funding from IAF, represented Gary Shapley, an IRS criminal investigator who alleged that the Biden administration sandbagged a tax fraud investigation into Hunter Biden. (Earlier this year, Shapley briefly served as Trump’s IRS director.) Shapley’s allegations were heavily promoted by members of the IAF network, including Just the News, the Tennessee Star, and other Star News outlets such as the Pennsylvania Daily Star and the Arizona Sun Times.
During the Biden years, Empower Oversight’s work followed a familiar formula: First, it would file a battery of Freedom of Information Act requests to a federal agency, usually related to some right-wing intrigue or a query Grassley’s Senate office had submitted to that department. Empower Oversight then would frequently follow up with a lawsuit alleging deficiencies in the agency’s response. With the help of Solomon’s Just the News, it turned routine records requests and civil complaints into a PR bonanza, while fueling a narrative that the Biden administration and its supposed deep state allies were suppressing information.
While Benz did not respond to our requests for comment—and hung up when we called—he’s arguably delivered the most impact for IAF’s supporters. In April, the State Department shuttered its Global Engagement Center, which focused on combating foreign disinformation but which Benz had alleged was a government tool of anti-conservative censorship.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio rewarded Benz with an exclusive interview announcing the move. The next day, Just the News announced that the “censorship nerve center” had been shut down, and multiple Star News platforms dutifully signal-boosted the news. All cited Benz as merely a “former State official.”
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7 25 US AID BODY CT WILL BE 14 MILLION BY 2023?
AI GGL 7 25
Based on a study published in the medical journal The Lancet in July 2025, cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was eliminated in early 2025, could lead to over 14 million additional deaths by 2030. This includes an estimated 4.5 million deaths among children younger than five.
The study, conducted by an international research team, estimated that USAID funding had prevented 91.8 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021. The researchers attributed these averted deaths to USAID-supported programs in various sectors, including healthcare, nutrition, education, water, sanitation, and humanitarian relief.
The elimination of USAID was initiated under the Trump administration with the support of Elon Musk, who served as a close advisor. Musk had previously stated his intention to drastically reduce government spending and headcount, targeting USAID as one of the first departments to be dismantled. This action has been criticized by medical experts and lawmakers who argue that it will have devastating consequences for global health.
MSNBC
Medical experts and lawmakers are denouncing Elon Musk as cruel after a new study predicted that the billionaire’s efforts to help the Trump administration dismantle theU.S. Agency for International Developmentcould lead to more than 14 million deaths over the next five years.
According to the analysis, published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet, programs funded by USAID prevented nearly 92 million deaths worldwide from 2001 through 2021. Researchers found that across 133 countries, the agency helped stop more than 25 million deaths from HIV/AIDS, about 11 million from diarrheal diseases, 8 million from malaria and nearly 5 million from tuberculosis.
Using that data, experts calculated that 14 million people around the globe could die over the next five years because of the USAID cuts, including about 4.5 million children younger than 5.
USAID became an agency of particular interest to Musk, as his so-called Department of Government Efficiency carried out President Donald Trump’s mission to slash the federal budget. In February, Musk bragged on Xthat he “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
A month later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the cancellationof 83% of USAID’s programs, saying they did not serve “the core national interests of the United States.” Rubio’s move had an immediate effect, as NBC News reported:
The action brought many overseas humanitarian efforts to a grinding halt, leading to the closings of food kitchens and health clinics in underserved countries and in some cases delaying or stopping the distribution of lifesaving medications, bed nets to ward off malaria, nutritional packets for starving children and chlorine tablets to disinfect dirty water.
Samantha Power, who led USAID during the Biden administration, told CNN that the effects that Musk’s cuts will have on global health are “not something that any American should tolerate.”
“Efficiency, we’re all for efficiency, but actually taking away programming that is saving lives … that’s just devastating,” Power said.
Timothy Caulfield, a professor of health law and science policy at the University of Alberta in Canada, called the prediction “Sickening. Heartbreaking. Evil.” Rachel Clarke, an English physician specializing in severe illness, seemingly singled out Musk, attributing the estimated death toll to “one man’s cruelty & venality.”
Congressional Democrats also shared their reactions to the study.
“Donald Trump’s legacy: As many as 14 MILLION more deaths over the next five years thanks to USAID cuts made by him, Elon Musk, and his DOGE bros,” Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote on X.“Absolutely shameful.”
“This administration’s cruelty knows no bounds,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington wrote in her own post.
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On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed legislation that, if signed into law, would strip federal funding from NPR and PBS. One of the four Republicans who voted against it is now speaking out.
Most of the $9.4 billion rescissions package (legislation in which Congress claws back money that was previously appropriated) is targeting foreign aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the African Development Foundation, with approximately $8 billion being cut from those agencies. However, the remainder of the money was allocated toward the two public broadcasting agencies that are partially funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
In a post to his website, Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) slammed the cuts to NPR and PBS, saying that his constituents depended on their local public broadcasting affiliates to get basic information. And he called on his colleagues to not rush to strip funding from the CPB before having a larger conversation about what the impact of those cuts would be.
READ MORE:'Monarchy': Federal judge compares Trump to 'King George'
"If we do not have time to think about it, we sure as hell have time to talk about it before October 1st when the impacts of these rescinded funds would start to be felt,” Amodei said, referring to the start of Fiscal Year 2026. "This is forward funding. So, before we trigger major consequences for our local public broadcasting stations throughout the West and other rural areas, we need more discussion—rather than railroading folks over the East Coast’s editorials and indiscretions."
"I agree we must make meaningful cuts to shrink our federal deficit; however, I would be doing a disservice to the thousands of rural constituents in my district if I did not fight to keep their access to the rest of the world and news on the air," he continued.
"Having the ability to discuss real impacts, beyond just the global perspective, is a healthy and necessary step," he added. "I’m sure we will be voting on this again before the cake is fully baked, so I look forward to working with my colleagues to improve and protect this infrastructure our rural communities rely on."
The rescissions package is Congress' first attempt to codify some of the cuts made by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this year. In addition to Rep. Amodei, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) and Michael Turner (R-Ohio) also voted no.
READ MORE:'Hushed the entire chamber': Democrat confronts GOP rep on House floor in 'shouting fight'
Click here to read Amodei's full statement.
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comm dr an 5 25
More than a million people in some of the world's most impoverished countries could be fed for three months and hundreds of thousands of children's lives could be saved if $98 million in ready-made meals and other rations were able to leave four warehouses run by the U.S. foreign aid agency dismantled by the Trump administration.
But instead, there is no end in sight to the food languishing in the facilities—or to the starvation of millions of people in Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, and other parts of the Global South facing high levels of hunger and malnutrition.
Some of the 66,000 tonnes of food, including grains, high-energy biscuits, and vegetable oil, are slated to expire as soon as July, when they will likely be turned into animal feed, incinerated, or otherwise destroyed, Reuters reported Thursday.
The warehouses are located in Houston, South Africa, Djibouti, and Dubai, and are run by the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. Many of the staff who help run the warehouses are scheduled to be fired on July 1 in the first of two rounds of cuts that will effect nearly all of USAID.
Contracts with suppliers, shipping companies, and contractors have been canceled since USAID was taken over by the Trump administration's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, with the White House saying the agency—with a relatively small budget of just $40 billion—was responsible for "significant waste."
Since DOGE, run by tech billionaire Elon Musk, targeted USAID in one of its first full-scale attacks on a federal entity, the agency is being run by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The State Department's Office of Foreign Assistance has not yet approved a proposal to give the stranded food stocks to aid organizations for distribution, two former USAID staffers told Reuters.
That office is being led by Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old former DOGE employee who is overseeing the complete decommissioning of USAID, which has provided humanitarian assistance in conflict zones and the Global South for more than six decades.
Max Hoffman, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said the massive waste of life-saving food rations was the result of President Donald Trump and Musk deploying "some idiot 20 year old staggering around USAID turning things off without the faintest idea of the consequences."
Some of the rations were intended for Gaza, where half a million Palestinians are currently facing starvation and the rest of the population of 2.3 million people are suffering from acute levels of food insecurity due to Israel's total blockade on humanitarian aid which was reimposed in March after a brief cease-fire. Thousands of children have been hospitalized with acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year, but Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza has left health providers with extremely limited means to treat them.
The entire population of Gaza could be fed for a month and a half with the food rations that are on the verge of rotting in the four warehouses, Reuters reported.
Nearly 500 tonnes of high-energy biscuits in Dubai are among the stocks that will expire in July, a former USAID official told the outlet. They could feed at least 27,000 acutely malnourished children for a month.
The food aid was also scheduled to go to Sudan, where famine has been confirmed in at least 10 areas as the country faces the third year of a civil war.
Action Against Hunger is one of many aid groups that have had to scale back operations after losing significant funding due to U.S. cuts; the group said last month that its suspension of work in the Democratic Republic of Congo had already directly led to the deaths of at least six children.
In addition to USAID's warehouses full of soon-to-be-expired food, the U.S.-based company Edesia, which makes the peanut-based Plumpy'Nut, told Reuters that USAID's cuts to transportation contracts had forced the company to open an additional warehouse. A $13 million stockpile of 5,000 tonnes of Plumpy'Nut, which is used to prevent severe malnutrition in children, is in the warehouse now—but could be used to feed more than 484,000 children.
"The dismantling of USAID and cuts to humanitarian aid has been devastating and unacceptable," said Oxfam America.
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4 25 MSNBC EX HEAD SAYS 3.3M KIA AIDS MALARIA
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came back with armed men, no ID?trms
an 3 25
Centibillionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been largely effective so far in its goal of quickly laying off workers and slashing budgets. But Musk's employees are having a little more difficulty with a small agency that's putting up a big fight.
The Daily Beast reported that on Thursday, two "very young men" wearing backpacks apparently working for DOGE were stonewalled by staff at the African Development Foundation (USADF), which has a skeleton crew staff of roughly 30 people and a budget of just $40 million. The two men — who matched the description of DOGE employees who previously introduced themselves to agency employees — said they were ADF employees who didn't have keycards. They were also joined by State Department official Pete Marocco, who President Donald Trump appointed as the new chair of the USADF after firing its previous board members.
According to the Washington Post, the workers inside were aware that DOGE intended to shut down their agency. They reportedly agreed that locking the doors and refusing to let them in was "their last chance to stop DOGE from gaining access to the system." One of the Post's sources confirmed that the DOGE workers had come to the USADF office to fire staff.
READ MORE:'Dead on arrival': GOP lawmakers blast Trump's call for CHIPS Act repeal
Ward Brehm, who is president and CEO of the USADF, has sued the Trump administration, Marocco and DOGE officials, alleging that the effort to dismantle his agency was illegal. He argued that the agency's budget had already been appropriated by Congress and that the Trump administration was unlawfully attempting to shut it down.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly stated that USADF had already had its budget "reduced to its statutory minimum" in line with Trump's executive order to shrink the federal workforce. She added that the USADF's prior board had already been "lawfully removed."
"Entitled bureaucrats like [Brehm] are only demonstrating why independent agencies must be held accountable to officials elected by the American people," Kelly said.
After a roughly hour-long standoff, the DOGE employees left and promised to bring back U.S. Marshals to gain entry.
READ MORE:Announced layoffs have 'jumped to levels not seen since the last two recessions': report
Watch a video of the confrontation below, or byclicking this link.
---
---
AN 3 25
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered at least a temporary blow to President Donald Trump on Wednesday by refusing to overrule a lower court order that said approximately $2 billion in U.S. foreign aid funding ordered frozen by the administration should be resumed.
The 5-4 ruling, issued by Chief Justice John Roberts, paves the way for organizations and programs worldwide working in conjunction or with grants from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to receive those funds already appropriated by Congress.
The legal team challenging the administration's move to block the funding celebrated the ruling.
“Today's ruling by the Supreme Court confirms that the administration cannot ignore the law," said Lauren Bateman, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel in this case, said in response to the decision. "To stop needless suffering and death, the government must now comply with the order issued three weeks ago to lift its unlawful termination of federal assistance."
The center of the case that was before the high court stems from a lawsuit brought by nonprofit groups and NGOs impacted by the funding freeze, who argued that results were "devastating" for programing that "improves—and, in many cases, literally saves—the lives of millions of people across the globe."
In the suit, as CNNreports, the groups argued the administration's freezing of funds "usurped the power of Congress to control government spending and violated a federal law that dictates how agencies make decisions."
On February 13, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, in a temporary restraining order, said the State Department and USAID must resume most of the funding while the case was under review, but the plaintiffs argued in a filing last week that little, if anything, had been done to comply with that order.
"The district court gave the government every opportunity to demonstrate what steps it was taking to release foreign-assistance funding, as the TRO required, and to explain any practical impediments it faced in pursuing compliance," the groups wrote in their filing."But even by the time of the district court's February 25 hearing—nearly two weeks after the TRO had issued—government counsel could not identify a single action the government had taken in the twelve days since the TRO to release frozen funds."
Wednesday's ruling by the Supreme Court did not make any judgment on the overall merits of the case that remains under review by the lower District Court.
===
NO LNX RAW
The new guy in charge of USAID doesn't believe in foreign aid
Jordan Green, Investigative Reporter
The new deputy director of foreign aid at the U.S. State Department who is effectively overseeing what’s left of the USAID is a staunch supporter of restrictionist immigration policy who also takes a dim view of foreign aid.
The appointment of John A. Zadrozny to lead the State Department office responsible for supervising and setting the strategic direction of foreign assistance program has attracted little notice, with no formal announcement or White House press release heralding his arrival.
The new role was revealed in an FAQ document approved by Pete Marocco, the deputy director of USAID stating that effective Monday, Zadrozny was on the job. The FAQ stated that all requests for exceptions to the pause in foreign aid spending should be addressed to Zadrozny. The document was filed in federal court by the government on Wednesday in response to a request for a temporary restraining order filed by humanitarian groups that had relied on funds from USAID to carry out their missions.
Zadrozny is a longtime ally of Stephen Miller, who was the architect of President Trump’s hardline immigration policies in his first term and now serves as White House deputy chief of staff. Zadrozny previously served on the White House Domestic Policy Council, where he reported to Miller.
Zadrozny declined a request for an interview for this story through a State Department spokesperson.
Following his stint at the Domestic Policy Council in 2017, Zadrozny moved on to the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, where he worked closely with Miller to implement Trump’s restrictionist immigration policy. During the first Trump administration, Zadrozny pushed for policy changes to severely curtail the number of refugees accepted by the United States at the State Department and later U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Following Trump’s electoral loss to Joe Biden in 2020, Zadrozny served as director of the Center for Homeland Security and Immigration at the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit founded by Miller. Zadrozny was a contributor to the State Department chapter of Project 2025, and served on the Department of Homeland Security landing team for Trump’s second term.
During his time at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the first Trump administration, Zadrozny’s argued for keeping the number of refugees low because of security concerns, according to a 2019 report by Politico. The push by Zadrozny and others in the Miller camp ran into resistance from others in the administration such as former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who argued in a memo to Trump that “a failure to honor our commitments to those who have supported the U.S. in combat would undermine our diplomatic and military efforts to protect the Homeland and support key aspects of the president’s national security strategy by making it more difficult to sustain the support of partners elsewhere.”
Mattis also argued that “the U.S. military also reaps a higher enlistment level from immigrant families than native-born,” adding that “there is also a positive second-order effect” of allowing up to 45,000 refugees per year to settle in the United States.
Zadrozny expressed opposition to the Biden administration’s resettlement of Afghan refugees following the U.S. military withdrawal from the country in September 2021.
“The reality is a lot of dangerous people are fleeing the Taliban,” he told the far-right news network Newsmax at the time. “And this administration is putting them all on planes and sending them to a community near you.”
At the same time that he favored a restrictionist immigration policy, Zadrozny’s public comments in 2021 suggested he was also not a fan of foreign assistance, which has been traditionally seen as a force for stabilization that helps reduce migration pressures.
In June 2021, as migration from the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador was surging, Zadrozny told another far-right network, One American News: “There’s probably a way to help them that doesn’t involve slathering foreign aid on them.”
Without providing specifics, Zadrozny said he would recommend helping the countries “develop 21st century economies on their own.” But the Biden administration, he charged, just wanted to “drop millions and millions of Americans’ hard-earned dollars on these three countries, and it won’t have any result.”
Even as the FAQ directed USAID and State Department employees to address requests for exceptions to Zadrozny, Marocco said in a declaration filed in court on Wednesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already completed a review of USAID financial awards and had determined which to terminate and which to retain. Marocco said termination letters would be processed in the next 24 to 48 hours, with final notifications sent out by the end of the week. The administration wound up terminating almost 5,800 awards, Marocco said, keeping only about 500.
“In ordinary time, the government recognizes the importance of foreign-assistance funding to our national interests,” the humanitarian groups wrote in a filing in federal court on Thursday. “In ordinary times, the government would not gleefully try to dismantle a government agency overnight, fire American workers without cause or notice, or jeopardize the very existence of businesses and nonprofits that have for decades provided programming aimed at preventing starvation, disease and death, and employ thousands of Americans.”
Early on Thursday morning, according to the filing, the skeleton staff that remained at USAID received an email from the acting senior procurement executive.
“As you are aware, today USAID issued termination notices for a large number of awards,” the email read. “These awards were identified by the Front Office after a full review of USAID obligations and programs that were personally reviewed and approved for termination by Secretary Rubio and PTDO Deputy Administrator Marocco. We will be sharing a full list of awards terminated with additional details soon.
“We understand that some of these awards may have been for essential services, which the Front Office would like to turn back on,” the email continued. “We need your immediate input on any awards that may have been terminated that contain essential services related to the safety, security and operations of USAID staff.”
NOW READ: 'I want more': Republicans push for bigger IRS cuts amid fears of tax season chaos
Jordan Green is a North Carolina-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, covering domestic extremism, efforts to undermine U.S. elections and democracy, hate crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the staff of Raw Story in March 2021, Green spent 16 years covering housing, policing, nonprofits and music as a reporter and editor at Triad City Beat in North Carolina and Yes Weekly. He can be reached at jordan@rawstory.com. More about Jordan Green.
For customer support contact support@rawstory.com. Report typos and corrections to corrections@rawstory.com.
an 3 25
An executive at USAID, the foreign aid agency in the process of being dismantled, was placed on administrative leave after sending memos criticizing the Trump administration’s cuts, Sam Stein writes Monday at the Bulwark. Nicholas Enrich, the acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, was showing the consequences of the Trump administration was not honoring its promise to exclude life saving foreign aid.
“Enrich had authored two memos, both dated February 28, 2025,” Stein writes. “One noted the dramatic staff reductions that had taken place at the Bureau for Global Health, whose workforce had gone from 783 ‘encumbered’ positions to 69 personnel ‘that received Essential Personnel Designations, of which 15 received RIF letters.’ In the other, Enrich identified ‘72 activities across 31 awards’ that had been approved for waivers by Secretary of State Marco Rubio but for which no payments had been released. He said the death toll from this was ‘not known.’”
In a third unfinished memo, which Stein called, "more alarming than the other two," Enrich outlined consequences of a stop to $7.7 billion in global health aid. This could lead to “12.5–17.9 million cases of malaria with an additional 71,000–166,000 deaths annually, a 28 to 32 percent increase in tuberculosis globally, an additional 200,000 paralytic polio cases a year, and potentially more than 28,000 cases of Ebola, Marburg, or related diseases.” In addition, nearly 17 million pregnant women would lose out on lifesaving programs.
READ MORE: 'Strong eugenic connotation': Here’s the hateful slur the alt-right is bringing back
He noted that these cuts could affect global trade. They could also cause job losses for American farmers providing food to send overseas. Finally, he pointed out that risk of preventable diseases would reach the U.S.
Ending these programs, he said, could pose risks for national security. “Weakened disease surveillance doesn’t only jeopardize natural outbreak detection — it also creates openings for malicious actors,” Enrich wrote. “Global health monitoring systems serve as the ‘smoke alarm’ for unusual disease patterns that could signal a bioterrorism event. If those alarms are switched off or muted due to lack of funding, a deliberate release of a pathogen could spread for weeks under the guise of a normal outbreak.”
Enrich was aware that the memos would have repercussions for his own career. “He knew sending those would result in discipline and the end of his career (at USAID), but also sending those ‘for the record’ ensured that the world had a light on what was really going on,” a source told the Bulwark.
“How much good will come of this is the larger question,” Stein writes. “It’s fair to be skeptical. That said, there is some precedent for people using public pressure to compel DOGE and Trump to reverse their decisions to shutter critical programs. Over the weekend, Elon Musk took to Twitter to try and shame folks for insisting that 400,000 boxes of USAID-branded nutrient-rich, peanut-based paste were languishing in a warehouse because of the aid pause. But he also pledged to look into it. And then he reported back that the payments for those shipments had been restored — which, by late Sunday night,they had been.”
READ MORE: Alarm sounded as Trump’s recent moves threaten to upend the Constitution
scotus stay order to release $
an 2 25
During his years in the U.S. Senate, now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio was a strong supporter of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — which he viewed as a valuable asset from a foreign policy standpoint. Rubio and Senate Democrats had plenty of disagreements, but they agreed that foreign aid via USAID did a lot to advance the United States' interests abroad.
But now, USAID is a major target of the Trump Administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Experiencing mass layoffs, USAID is being gutted by MAGA Republicans. Axios reported that 92 percent of foreign assistance grants were being "axed."
According to NOTUS reporter Haley Byrd Wilt, spending Rubio approved as secretary of state was blocked by DOGE staffers. And some GOP lawmakers are crying foul.
READ MORE:**'Putting on a blindfold and smashing everything': New Trump order draws fire from critics**
Wilt, in an article published on February 27, reports, "Republicans love Elon Musk's plans to slash government spending, but they're not quite as thrilled at how a set of unelected bureaucrats is carrying it out — or how those new staffers are defying Senate-confirmed Cabinet secretaries in the process.
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved foreign aid programs he deemed critical to American interests, two Department of Government Efficiency employees canceled the spending instead. The Washington Post reported that those DOGE employees have access to the payment system and manually blocked the funding, including money for Ukraine and HIV treatment programs — prompting pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill."
One of the GOP lawmakers who is speaking out is Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee).
Burchett told NOTUS, "I have problems with that. I have problems that they have access to that. If it was a mistake, I get it. But if it wasn't, they need to be fired."
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) isn't happy either.
READ MORE:**DOGE gains access to confidential medical details — even domestic violence**
The conservative senator told NOTUS that when it comes to the U.S. State Department, "I consider Marco Rubio to be the head chef." And Tillis described the DOGE block on funding Rubio approved as "a natural consequence of a lot of cooks in the kitchen."
Tillis argued, "Now that Marco is confirmed and in place, there should be nobody in the (Trump) Administration — outside of the president of the United States or at the direction of the president — that should pause, delay or cancel anything Marco thinks is in our best national interest."
Played for suckers: Kansas farmer blasts Trump voters in scathing editorial
an 2 25
'I feel so stupid': These 'horrified' Trump voters are having serious buyer’s remorse
'Act of God': Trump-supporting farmers reel from funding cuts
an 2 25
READ MORE: ‘Sociopathic’: USAID Worker Sues Alleging State Dept. Medevac Refusal for Pregnant Wife
---
NOTE STRAIGHT NEWS SLING BS
MMA
Right-wing media want you to think stopping infectious diseases and feeding the poor is woke
Written by Gideon Taaffe
Research contributions from Jack Wheatley
Published 02/11/25 MMA
Right-wing media are focused on culture war battles as the Trump administration suspends lifesaving work from the U.S. Agency for International Development, cherry-picking USAID programs to dismiss the agency as “woke,” “radical,” and “overwhelmingly hard left.” In reality, USAID is responsible for providing health care and nutritional aid to thousands of the world’s vulnerable people, many living in war-torn regions.
The Trump administration has sought to put a halt to USAID’s operations
- On February 4, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that USAID was now under the direct authority of the State Department, and the administration froze U.S. foreign aid.Rubio placed Pete Marocco in charge of USAID; he served in the agency during Trump’s first term and has been accused of attempting to dismantle it during his tenure. CNN, [2/3/25]
- Following Rubio’s takeover, 10,000 USAID employees were placed on administrative leave, and a couple days later the Trump administration announced plans to leave fewer than 300 workers in place to carry out the organization’s work. A judge put a temporary pause on some of the Trump administration’s job cutting, resulting in 2,200 employees being reinstated but with uncertain futures at the agency. USA Today,[2/4/25; The Associated Press, 2/6/25; NBC News, 2/7/25]
- USAID workers in high-risk locations have reported being cut off from communication and were left unsure of how to access evacuation protocols. Employees of USAID are also facing interruptions to medical care and housing insecurity. Bluesky, [2/7/25]
- Rubio claimed he had issued a blanket waiver for lifesaving programs, but workers on the ground have said that operations have come to a halt. While some programs have been granted a waiver to continue under Rubio, many have lost access to supplies, and payments to contractors that are covered by the waiver have not come through. That has affected emergency food aid in Ethiopia, a refugee camp in Syria, a resettlement program for victims of the Islamic State group, and more. One USAID worker told CNN, “That work is grounded to a halt because there’s no staff to manage it, and there’s no staff in DC to answer questions from partners.” The Washington Post, [2/10/25; CNN, 2/8/25]
- ## The Trump administration’s antics have prevented USAID from providing critical aid to some of the world’s most vulnerable people
- The freeze impacted the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has been credited with saving more than 25 million lives and reducing AIDS-related deaths by 68% since 2004.Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, told The Associated Press that even short interruptions in care could have negative outcomes, as “HIV viral loads rebound in about three weeks if you go off antiretrovirals.” The initial freeze to USAID has already sparked confusion among PEPFAR workers and local partners as appointments are canceled. The Associated Press, [2/3/25; AVAC, 2/8/23; The New York Times, 1/27/25]
- As a result of the USAID freeze, thousands of people in medical trials for dealing with HIV and other illnesses have been left adrift, with their treatments suddenly stopped or with medical equipment in their bodies. The New York Times, [2/6/25]
- The freeze will also impact millions of dollars in aid that is being used to help those in war zones dealing with infectious diseases.The Associated Press reported that 1.2 million people in Congo could lose lifesaving support and 600,000 people in Sudan will be at risk of catching and spreading cholera, malaria, and measles. The Associated Press, [2/3/25]
- Defunding USAID also hurts American farms that sell products to the organization for disbursement via its nutrition programs.According to The Washington Post, “Purchases and shipments of U.S. food aid worth over $340 million — including rice, wheat and soybeans — have been paused during Trump’s foreign-aid freeze.” The Post also reports that the aid freeze “disrupted more than 507,000 metric tons of American food aid.” The Washington Post, [2/6/25]
- The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a USAID program that helps aid programs determine where to send resources, has also been shut down. An analyst specializing in food insecurity told Reuters, “Famine was disappearing from the world in the 2000s, and now its return will likely accelerate as we become increasingly blind to it, even as it becomes a more common tool of politics and war.” Reuters, [2/6/25]
- ## Right-wing media have dismissed USAID as a “woke” left-wing “slush fund”
- Fox & Friends Weekendco-host Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed USAID is “not aid like you would imagine,” like “setting up soup kitchens in Africa.”She claimed it’s a “slush fund for Democrat donors, the Clinton Foundation, George Soros, all of the NGOs who have been doing stuff that American people never voted for them to do.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends’ Weekend*, [2/9/25]
- Fox News contributor Ben Domenech claimed USAID has “not been acting in the interests of the American people or the United States for a very long time” and is instead enacting a “woke agenda.” Fox News, *Sunday Night in America*, [2/9/25]
- Podcast host Megyn Kelly dismissed USAID as an organization that seems to give money to “woke” projects like “LGBTQ and that kind of promotional stuff.” Kelly also said it “appears” that USAID employees are “overwhelmingly hard left.” iHeartRadio, *The Megyn Kelly Show*, [2/5/25]
- On Fox, former podcast host Vivek Ramaswamy claimed USAID funds are “not even going to help starving children in Africa,” adding that it was a “smokescreen.” He claimed that instead foreign aid is being used to push “progressive ideas, LGBTQ+ agendas, woke and DEI agendas, onto foreign countries.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [2/5/25]
- Newsmax’sFinnertyran a chyron reading “USAID funded some ridiculous causes.”Guest and former Trump deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley criticized USAID’s operations, calling them “crazy, ridiculous programs.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [2/5/25]
- Fox’s Sean Hannity said everything USAID does is “radical DEI, woke, transgender, you know, leftist, Green New Deal madness.”Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/4/25]
- On Fox News’The Five, Jesse Watters claimed USAID is a “slush fund for social justice warriors and permanent Washington to bribe people, staff people at NGOs, and just create hell.”Fox News, *The Five*, [2/4/25]
- ## Others in right-wing media have bizarrely claimed USAID’s critical work will continue despite the Trump administration’s efforts to gut the agency
- Jesse Watters claimed saving babies from getting AIDS in Africa is “still going to happen once they look at everything and get this thing streamlined.”Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [2/7/25]
- Fox News anchor Bret Baier claimed that Marco Rubio is not against critical foreign aid, but he is going to “scrub what is real and what is not.”His guest, Republican strategist Matt Whitlock, agreed and said that “so much of what we have seen” is “exporting a social agenda.” Fox News, *Special Report with Bret Baier*, [2/7/25]
- Fox News anchor John Roberts claimed that Marco Rubio will “continue with the good that USAID does.” Roberts: “The Democrats are literally losing their minds over all of this, saying that Elon Musk is gutting U.S. foreign policy. But Rubio is saying, ‘No no, we’re going to continue with the good stuff that USAID does. We’re just going to get rid of what we think is the wasteful spending that has been engaged in and the insubordination of the entire agency.’” Fox News, *America Reports*, [2/7/25]
- Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner falsely claimed, “No one is talking about taking the food and taking the things for people who actually need those things away.”She added, “Who doesn't audit? It’s been years. We need to know where that money is going. And some of it is going to terrorist organizations.” Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [2/6/25]
- OutKick columnist Mary Katherine Ham claimed the frozen funds were just getting “audited.” Ham: “We're told that waste, fraud, and abuse is such a small percentage of the federal government's budget, and should be easy to deal with, given that. And yet we're also told that that small slice of the federal government is the end of democracy if you start auditing it.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [2/5/25]
//
02/06/25 2:29 PM EST
02/07/25 4:38 PM EST
02/06/2
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an 2 25
Trump’s USAID cuts threaten women’s program he created and daughter Ivanka 'really cared' about
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an 2 25
In an October 16, 2023 column for the New York Times, liberal economist Paul Krugman lamented the decline the "Pax Americana" and argued that MAGA Republicans were to blame. The term "Pax Americana" refers to a period of relative stability in the West following World War 2, and that stability, according to the concept, was encouraged by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
A lot has happened politically since Krugman wrote that column. Donald Trump won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign following a widely criticized debate with Trump, Republicans flipped the U.S. Senate, and Trump narrowly defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the general election before returning to White House on January 20, 2025.
Krugman revisits the "Pax Americana" subject in an article posted on his Substack page on February 10, warning the stability of the West is in serious danger during Trump's second presidency. And Krugman is highly critical of the "destruction of" the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which, he says, Trump ally Elon Musk encouraged.
READ MORE:'Mark my words': George Conway predicts alarming showdown
"USAID is just the most extreme example of how the Musk/Trump Administration is sabotaging the American empire," Krugman laments. "For years, America is or was an imperial power, although in a different way from most past empires — less reliant on force, more reliant on good will and trust. What Musk and Trump have done is to destroy much of the basis for U.S. influence, leaving America far weaker than it was just a few weeks ago."
The economist continues, "America's imperial era — the Pax Americana — began after World War II. With Europe and Japan in ruins and Britain exhausted, the U.S. had no military or economic peers outside the Soviet Bloc. "
Krugman stresses that "humanitarian aid," USAID's mission, plays "an important role in supporting America's moral authority."
"Were we always the good guys? Of course not," Krugman writes. "America engineered the overthrow of democratically elected leaders it didn't like, from Iran's Mohammed Mosaddegh to Chile's Salvador Allende. We supported tinpot dictators where that served U.S. interests, or in some cases, corporate interests. We killed huge numbers of civilians in Korea, and then again in Vietnam."
READ MORE:Trump is already out gaming America's last line of defense
Krugman adds, "But compare the Pax Americana with any previous hegemony, and we look like a beacon of enlightenment. And our relative decency was rewarded."
Krugman warns that between threatening allies like Canada and Mexico with high tariffs "on spurious grounds," Trump's "threat to seize Greenland," and "the abrupt demolition of USAID," Trump and their allies "have taken a wrecking ball to the foundations of the Pax Americana."
"So now we're a nation that doesn’t keep its word, that can't be trusted to honor its agreements…. All of this makes us distrusted and friendless," Krugman warns. "It also makes us weak, because America needs allies even more now than it did during the Cold War."
READ MORE:'Stomach turning': Trump defends his J6 pardons as 'great for humanity'
*Paul Krugman's full SubStack column is available at this link.
---
===
rww
02/07/2025
by
- Tim Dickinson @ Rolling Stone: J.D. Vance and Musk Tag Team to Restore Racist DOGE Bro to Government
Marko Elez resigned this week after a newspaper reported on social media posts decrying interracial marriage and promoting “Indian hate.”
- The Throckmorton Initiative: Did Thomas Jefferson Attend Church at the Capitol?
Was Trump right? Do we need to bring religion back much stronger? Which religion?
- Isabela Dias @ Mother Jones: A Project 2025 Mastermind Now Holds the Reins of the Federal Bureaucracy
On Thursday evening, the US Senate voted to confirm Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a key arm of the executive branch in charge of the federal budget and agency regulations.
- John Fea @ Current: Trump evangelicals are going after Christian institutions that take federal funds.
Thousands and thousands of Christian organizations, including Trump acolyte Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse, have taken federal money to help advance their missions. Christian charities have lost funds as a result of Trump’s cuts to US AID. They include World Vision, World Relief, International Justice Mission, Samaritan’s Purse, and Catholic Relief Services.
- Gabe Whisnant and Sonam Sheth @ Newsweek: Trump US Attorney Conducting 'Inquiry' Into People Referred By Elon Musk
The acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. sent a letter Friday saying his office is conducting an "inquiry" into people who were referred to him by Elon Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency.
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Trump's task force to "eradicate anti-Christian bias" is a complete waste of time
His executive order didn't cite a single credible example of anti-Christian bias.
==
MMA
As USAID is dismantled, right-wing media rejoice and spread baseless conspiracy theories about the agency’s work
Written by Jack Wheatley
Published 02/07/25
As the Trump administration seeks to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development, right-wing media figures and online influencers have repeated unsubstantiated claims about widespread fraud and criminality within the agency.
Proponents of eliminating USAID have also criticized the agency’s projects as “woke” or as supporting left-wing political causes and spread other conspiracy theories about its operations.
One prominent conspiracy theory is the claim that the U.S. government, including USAID, was laundering money to the news organization Politico for favorable coverage during the Biden administration. What started as a simple payroll error by the outlet quickly spiraled into false claims that Politico “was being massively funded by USAID.” In reality, conservative influencers had stumbled upon public data outlining the federal government’s payments for Politico Pro, a subscription service which tracks legislation and policy within the U.S. government.
USAID is the latest government agency in the crosshairs of Trump’s effort to gut the federal government
- Established in 1961, USAID is an independent agency which “delivers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid overseas” and “addresses a wide range of needs, from women’s health to clean water,” as reported by NBC News. NBC News, [2/3/25]
- On February 2, President Donald Trump told reporters, without evidence, that USAID has “been run by a bunch of radical lunatics” and that “we’re getting them out.” The next day, he repeated this statement and claimed that the agency had committed “tremendous fraud.” Days later, Trump pushed the misleading claims about Politico on Truth Social, posting that the news organization was paid off “FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS” and saying that it “COULD BE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL, PERHAPS THE BIGGEST IN HISTORY!” NBC News, [2/2/25; BBC, 2/4/25; Truth Social, 2/6/25]
- On February 4, CNN reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced “that he is acting administrator of the US Agency for International Development, confirming the de-facto takeover of the humanitarian agency by the State Department.”The network reported: “The news came hours after Elon Musk, the world’s richest man charged with overhauling the federal government, said President Donald Trump had signed off on shutting the agency down.” CNN, [2/4/25]
- On February 4, roughly 10,000 employees of the aid agency were notified that “they will be placed on administrative leave at the end of Friday,” per reporting by USA Today. The State Department “is working on a plan to arrange and pay for the return of USAID employees living overseas to the United States within 30 days and to terminate contracts not found to be essential, the notice reads.” Ahead of the administrative leave, two labor groups representing USAID employees filed a lawsuit reportedly “asking the court to block efforts to shut down USAID operations and put staff on leave.” USA Today, [2/4/25; NPR, 2/6/25]
- Following news of the agency’s gutting, the Center for American Progress noted that “Trump’s foreign aid freeze puts Americans and vulnerable populations in danger of disease, conflict and transnational crime while ceding overseas influence to China and Russia.” The center warned that “Trump has paused programs that strengthen the capabilities of partner nations, deter adversaries, and reduce the need for direct military intervention.” Center for American Progress, [2/5/25]
- ## Right-wing media and online figures have described USAID as a “slush fund” or “money laundering” scheme for the “deep state”
- Conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk posted on X: “Secretary of State Marco Rubio just absolutely RIPPED the deep state slush fund known as USAID.” Twitter/X, [2/3/25]
- Right-wing host Dan Bongino said USAID is “about deep state pockets of money used to infiltrate governments, NGOs, and other places for an anti-American censorship agenda” and called it “probably the single greatest slush fund for the deep state you've ever seen.” Rumble, *The Dan Bongino Show*, [2/4/25]
- On his show, Fox’s Jesse Watters called USAID “one of the country's biggest soft power slush funds” and added, “Wait until you hear about all this crazy pet project stuff they have. Ready? $2.5 million to promote DEI in Serbia, a transgender opera in Colombia, a DEI musical in Ireland, and a trans comic book in Peru. Oh, and $40 million to fund gain of function in Wuhan.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [2/3/25]
- Online influencer Jacob Creech, known online as Clandestine, wrote, “The USAID is how Deep State NGOs launder our money under the guise of foreign aid.” He added, “The rats are starting to realize they are being hunted.” Twitter/X, [1/31/25; Anti-Defamation League, 4/5/22]
- Conservative influencer Robby Starbuck wrote on X of USAID: “Democrats used it as their piggybank to enrich rabid activists who paid themselves enormous sums. Then they donated to Democrats. They also used it to fund fake news too.” Twitter/X, [2/3/25]
- On X, Rogan O’Handley, known online as DC Draino, wrote, “And now you know why Dems are freaking out that USAID is getting shut down,” claiming, “It was their little political piggy bank.” Twitter/X, [2/4/25; Daily Dot, 4/27/23]
- Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich called USAID a “money laundering scheme of taxpayer money.” She said Democrats are pushing back because the left is “losing their grip on their power.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [2/4/25]
- ## Right-wing media and influencers have alleged that USAID is a “criminal organization” and is corrupt
- Mike Cernovich, who has pushed far-right conspiracy theories, posted on X that “USAID was the Skelton key to unlocking all of the corruption. I’ve never seen Democrats so outraged about anything.” Twitter/X, [2/3/25; Media Matters, 8/21/18]
- On X, MAGA influencer Catturd wrote that “all corruption leads to USAID.” Twitter/X, [2/3/25]
- On X, right-wing content creator Benny Johnson wrote: “USAID EXPOSED: The Single Largest Criminal Fraud Operation in Human History.” He claimed, “USAID has been fully exposed as a left-wing money laundering criminal organization,” and listed a number of expenditures, some of which he said were for “DEI” and others he said “vanished without oversight” or were “lost.” He concluded, “The majority of this money never went to the ‘projects’ they claim to be promoting. It’s just pure money laundering from your tax dollars into deep state left wing activists. USAID is likely the largest fraud operation in human history.” Twitter/X, [2/4/25]
- Clandestine also posted: “Trump is digging in the exact area the Deep State do not want him to dig. The USAID holds the paper trail that proves their criminality!” Twitter/X, [2/2/25]
- On Fox News’The Five, co-host Jeanine Pirro called USAID “a criminal organization” and claimed the agency’s funding is sent to “drag shows in Ecuador, atheism in Nepal, trans comic books in Peru.” Fox News, *The Five*, [2/3/25]
- ## Right-wing media attacked USAID for supporting “woke” causes like DEI programs, LGBTQ rights, and climate initiatives
- Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum stated that “we see these agencies get designated and given money for what’s a good intention initially and then they just get bloated and bloated and bloated and next thing you know they’re giving things for gender climate issues in Tanzania.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [2/3/25]
- On her show, Megyn Kelly said USAID has “become a left-wing organization that just funds its favorite causes." She added: “At a minimum, it deserves to be, to get a hard second look and to stop the funding until we can figure out, as President Trump infamously once said, what the hell is going on?” SiriusXM, *The Megyn Kelly Show*, [2/3/25]
- On Fox News, host Laura Ingraham celebrated the dismantling of the agency and claimed that “in 2023, USAID sponsored scores of DEI events here and abroad.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [2/3/25]
- Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro claimed that USAID “has been transformed into trans pride flags in Africa.” He continued, “USAID has been turned into boondoggle projects that are designed to pay millions or billions of dollars to left-wing NGOs, both in the United States and outside the United States, and keep up an entire employment line for people who are out of power. So when Republicans are in power, USAID is still paying a bunch of blue organizations to keep the trains running on time and to make sure the money continues to flow to various organizations abroad that are willing to spread social leftism.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [2/4/25]
- Fox News contributor Rebecca Heinrichs claimed that USAID is “pushing things like abortion on conservative countries, or the LGBTQ issue, or climate ideology, and it aggravates our partners and allies.” She said that “sometimes it violates the consciences of our Americans who don’t even want our taxpayer dollars to go to these things.” Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [2/4/25]
- On his radio show, Fox host Sean Hannity said everything USAID does is “radical DEI, woke, transgender, you know, leftist, Green New Deal madness.” Premiere Radio Network, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [2/4/25]
- ## Right-wing media and MAGA influencers latched onto misleading ties between USAID and Politico
- On X, former Fox producer Kyle Becker wrote: “Fun Fact: @Politico received USAID funds. Everything makes sense now.” Becker attached screenshots of publicly available data regarding the federal government’s media subscriptions. Twitter/X, [2/5/25]
- Benny Johnson jumped on the claim, calling it “the biggest scandal in news media history,” and falsely claimed that a payroll error at the news organization proved it was “being massively funded by USAID.” He added, “The corruption is endless.” Twitter/X, [2/5/25]
- On Fox News, host Jesse Watters proclaimed onThe Five, “The money for Politico is a huge scandal,” and falsely claimed that the subscription service “only started getting paid for by the Biden administration.” He continued attacking Politico on his nightly program, Jesse Watters Primetime, saying: “The Biden administration was paying the press,” and claiming that the Biden White House was “funneling … taxpayer money over there in exchange for good coverage.” As Media Matters reported, “In reality, the federal government paid Politico at least $1 million in each year of Trump’s presidency, increasing to $2.6 million in fiscal year 2020.” Fox News, *The Five*, [2/5/25; Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 2/5/25; Media Matters, 2/6/25]
- Fox host Will Cain also ran with the theory on Fox News, describing it as “grotesque” and claiming, “It's at a minimum subsidizing a political operation under the guise of a media. It's perhaps money laundering to ideological compatriots.” Fox News, *The Will Cain Show*, [2/5/25]
//
Sean Hannity says everything USAID does is “radical DEI, woke, transgender, you know, leftist, Green New Deal madness”
02/04/25
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Here are 3 common myths many Americans believe about US foreign aid
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Some evangelicals on Sunday slammed President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with one leader calling the move “damaging and wasteful.”
As Business Insider reports, “at a press panel following” the National Prayer Breakfast on Friday — during which Trump spoke about “bringing God back into our lives” — “a group of faith leaders, including members of the evangelical community that has long been a base of support for Trump, said they were concerned about the president's recent moves”
Vice President of government relations at the National Association of Evangelicals, Galen Carey, warned the president’s “indiscriminate stop-work orders issued with little or no advanced notice have created chaos and confusion on the ground.”
READ MORE: A surprise to most': Nobel Prize-winning economist warns US of 'unexpected decline' under Trump
“This is damaging and wasteful," Carey said. "Some of our members and partners are experiencing crippling cashflow crises, necessitating mass layoffs and abrupt termination of services with no time for responsible transitions."
The faith leader noted while “there are aspects of our foreign aid programs that should be ended and others that could be reformed for greater effectiveness ... this review and reform can be achieved without the wholesale disruption of the many programs that are working well and saving lives."
"We affirm the goal of eliminating wasteful spending throughout government but caution against hastily pursued measures that will prove costly,” Carey said, as Business Insider reports. “The abrupt closure of many effective aid programs will mean that some of the money already spent will have been wasted. Commodities will be lost and food will rot, medicines expire. Other supplies may be stolen or misappropriated because the staff and the partners are not allowed to receive them.”
Carey, urged Trump “to rethink the assumption that effective international assistance does not benefit our national security, peace and prosperity.”
READ MORE: 'I don’t know what to tell you, boo': Michael Steele ridicules suckered MAGA fans
National Latino Evangelical Coalition President Gabriel Salguero likewise described foreign aid and the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as "two key instruments" that can help Trump achieve his goal of being "known as a peacemaker and as a person who builds bridges."
Read the full report at Business Insider.
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TARGET 3 TO 600 PPL, UNDER STATE ALLOWS THEM TO SAY NOT SCRAPPED?
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For Christians here and across the world, the ongoing confrontation over the fate of USAID dramatically illustrates the moral degeneration of the politicians who most fervently profess their piety. While Donald Trump wraps himself in the mantle of the Almighty, his assault on the world’s largest relief agency is a modern passion play, with scheming malefactors of great wealth sadistically persecuting sincere people of faith who seek to serve the poor.
Not everyone who works for USAID, a government agency that employs hundreds of private contractors, is motivated by charity or religious conviction. While many are nonprofits, others are profitable companies. But the agency’s single largest contractor is Catholic Relief Services, which has provided billions of dollars in assistance to impoverished communities on every continent.
Nearly every denomination is represented among the recipients of USAID funding, including major evangelical and conservative organizations such asSamaritan’s Purse, the global charity operated by Franklin Graham** -- who happens to be among Donald Trump’s most sycophantic admirers. Graham's reputation as a "humanitarian" has surely benefited from his organization's association with US relief efforts, not to mention $90 million in taxpayer support. And he knows that Musk and Trump are lying about USAID.As *Christianity Today*reported on February 4:
Most of USAID’s budget goes to grants for specific development projects, including at Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, World Relief, Catholic Relief Services, and many other faith-based groups. It supports local Christian health clinics in Malawi and groups providing orphan care.*
In Kenya, PCEA Chogoria Hospital, a historic mission hospital now run by Kenyan churches, provides comprehensive health care to HIV patients through support from USAID. On January 24 the hospital received a stop-work order for that care and has had no indication of a return of funding despite [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio’s promises that life-saving HIV care could continue. The hospital has 3,162 HIV patients in that USAID-funded program, and 42 staff members caring for those patients…“It is exceptionally painful to watch all this,” said Kent Hill, a former top official at USAID who also worked at World Vision and in Christian higher education as the president of Eastern Nazarene College. If USAID has specific problems, shutting the whole agency down instead of addressing the problems is a “tremendous overreaction” and “inhumane,” he said.*
“Few American investments, if any, bring such a remarkable return,” Hill said. “To talk about shutting USAID down is callous and represents a tremendous a lapse in judgment which ought to call forth bipartisan condemnation.”*
What do Rev. Graham and other evangelical leaders on the right think when they hear Elon Musk accuse USAID of corruption, with zero evidence, and denounce it as a “criminal” organization that must “die"?” The foreign-born billionaire boasted about putting the agency “in the wood chipper,” as if the deprivation and suffering that would ensue among the ill and hungry is a funny fratboy joke.
What seems truly amusing, by contrast, is the notion of Donald Trump as a follower of Christ, specially anointed by the Lord. From the beginning of his political career, the former casino owner has cultivated the tawdriest characters in Christianity, from the pants-dropping Jerry Falwell Jr. to TV evangelists Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, and other exponents the “prosperity gospel.” Like Trump, these are individuals whose unbridled avarice leaves little space for good works of any kind. It isn't hard to imagine them mocking the actual Christians who minister to the poor instead of swindling them.
Perhaps to promote sales of Trump-branded Bibles, he played the devout Christian at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 6. “Well, we wanna bring religion back stronger, bigger, better than ever before. It’s very important,” the president declared. “We have to have religion and it suffered greatly over the last few years, but it’s coming back.”
As for Musk, oncelionized by libertarians for his atheism, the world’s richest man has taken to proclaiming his belief in “the teachings of Jesus Christ,” notably to “love thy neighbor.” In alate 2022 tweet, he wrote: "Jesus taught love, kindness and forgiveness. I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak and foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom." This alleged attraction to Christian principles accompanied Musk’s turn toward the far right, with its hostility toward racial minorities, immigrants, and all of the destitute and oppressed.
In short, Musk now qualifies as that most MAGA brand of Christian -- a hypocrite who exploits religion to amplify his own power and wealth, with a heavenly license to bully the weak. Somehow ruining the lives of people who depend on USAID for their very sustenance seems much more like the devil’s work.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund.His latest book isThe Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.
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rww
02/06/2025
by
- Elijah Schaffer doesn't want the Holocaust taught in American schools: "No more catering to subversive minorities."
- MAGA pastor Mark Burns was "honored to host my friend NYC Mayor Eric Adams" at the National Prayer Breakfast.
- Andrew Isker says that Rep. Ilhan Omar "should not even be here much less wielding political power over us": "She has to go back."
- Eric Metaxas claims that USAID is "a satanic attempt to destroy the United States of America": "Every patriot should do all he can to war against it."
- Finally, Joel Webbon declares that "the left has to be absolutely overwhelmed, they have to be crushed ... to the point where they are overcome with despair, they have zero hope and they just lose the will to even try."
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USAID, the nation’s primary distributor of foreign aid, remains in DOGE purgatory. Elon Musk says President Donald Trump has agreed to shut it down, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the agency will be absorbed by the State Department.
Rubio on Monday tapped State Department Director of Foreign Assistance Pete Marocco to take over USAID. Marocco, a former Trump appointee and longtime critic of USAID, was pushed out of the agency during Trump’s first term. He also was allegedly photographed storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
According to NBC News, in 2023 “online sleuths who aided the FBI in cases against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters identified Marocco and his now-wife as being among the rioters who stormed the Capitol in 2021.” The online group Sedition Hunters — which worked to identify participants in the Capitol riot using open source research and facial recognition technology — alleged in November that Marocco and his wife, Merritt Corrigan, entered the Capitol during the riot through a broken window. The pair were allegedly identified using their clothing, jewelry, and the facial recognition software PimEyes. In a November statement to *D Magazine*, Marocco did not address questions about his alleged participation in the attempted insurrection, but claimed that he was being subjected to “petty smear tactics and desperate personal attacks by politicians with no solutions.”
Marocco was never charged with offenses related to the assault on the Capitol.
The Trump loyalist had a tumultuous career in various foreign policy jobs during the president’s first administration. Marocco was reportedly ousted from jobs at the Department of Defense, State Department, and Department of Commerce after clashing with coworkers and officials.
In 2020, high-level USAID officials wrote a 13-page memo scorching Marocco — then an assistant to the administrator at the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives — accusing him of leveraging his position to benefit his personal political goals over the agency’s mandate. Marocco would frequently “re-litigate decisions or commitments, revoke long-delegated authorities in favor of his personal control, or both,” the memo read, adding that he “has leveraged once-routine administrative processes to reopen previously-approved plans, interrogate and redirect country programs, halt movement on programs, procurements, and people, and inject uncertainty into daily operations and office planning.”
“There has been and continues to be significant waste of USG resources because of [Marroco’s] directives and decisions. Taxpayer dollars are being wasted through hundreds of USG staff hours squandered on unproductive or duplicative tasks, midstream activity cancellations, ill-advised program pivots, interventions in the PSC contracting process, and in the potential legal liabilities created by [Marroco’s] actions,” officials added. Marocco left the agency shortly after, and his return is doing little to temper the frustration of agency staff.
“What he’s doing now is frighteningly similar to everything he was trying to do at USAID before, but this time he’s destroying it,” one USAID official told NBC News on Tuesday.
“He hasn’t been responsible for building anything ever. He’s very good at turning things off and questioning things and making people feel uncomfortable. He’s taken apart a lot of things,” said another staffer.
Marocco isn’t the only questionable Trump loyalist Rubio has brought into the State Department in the past few days. Earlier this week, Semafor reported that disgraced former White House speechwriter Darren Beattie would be tapped to serve as acting under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs.
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is facing backlash after criticizing charity workers and nonprofit organizations striving to deliver essential, lifesaving supplies—humanitarian aid such as food and medicine—to those in desperate need. According to The Washington Post, Secretary Rubio went so far as to suggest that these organizations are intentionally obstructing their own efforts to score a “political point.”
“Secretary Rubio blamed aid groups for failing to navigate Trump’s freeze on foreign aid, saying they are either too incompetent to apply for exemptions or deliberately sabotaging their work to make a ‘political point,'” Washington Post diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson wrote.
“I issued a blanket waiver that said, if this is life saving programs … if it’s providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives … you’re not included in the freeze,” Rubio told reporters (video below), according to Hudson. “I don’t know how much more clear we can be than that.”
The U.S. Secretary of State “added that if an aid group [is] receiving funds from the United States and “does not know how to apply a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization -or I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point.”
READ MORE: ‘You Will Have Blood on Your Hands’: GOP Senator, a Physician, Condemned for RFK Jr. Vote
Experts sharply criticized Secretary Rubio, suggesting he failed to grasp that while aid groups can apply for waivers, those applications cannot be reviewed or approved if no one is working at USAID.
Rubio was made acting head of USAID by President Donald Trump. USAID is expected to be folded into the U.S. State Department, although experts question the legality of such a move.
Derek Martin is the founder of Pathfinder Research. He previously conducted “supply chain counterintelligence at the National Security Agency (NSA), where he further developed his investigative skills and protected critical government IT infrastructure from foreign threats.”
Pointing to a Politico article that reports the Trump administration is putting “thousands” of USAID employees on “forced leave,” Martin responded to Rubio’s remarks by saying: “Might be hard to apply for waivers with all agency staff on forced leave.”
Politico also cited a senior USAID official who “said the agency’s human resources department said in a meeting Tuesday morning that it had already revoked system access for more than 1,400 staffers — an indication that many more are being put on leave than those previously announced.”
“That’s in addition to hundreds of USAID contractors who have been laid off or furloughed in recent weeks. The contractors lost their jobs in part due to an ongoing freeze on foreign aid imposed by President Donald Trump and his aides, who are making moves to fold USAID into the State Department.”
READ MORE: ‘Why on Earth Should We Believe That?’: Top Dem Doubts Claim Musk Has Only Limited Access
Dylan Williams, Vice President for Government Affairs at the Center for International Policy, noted that “Trump put out overbroad orders that Rubio failed to coherently operationalize, resulting in mass confusion at nearly every point in the aid supply chain — and now Rubio is calling those trying to make sense of it incompetent or malicious.”
Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk served in both the Obama and Biden administrations in senior USAID positions, including “as USAID’s lead official for COVID-19,” according to his bio:
“He oversaw USAID’s multi-billion-dollar COVID-19 assistance portfolio, led the design and implementation of the administration’s Global VAX initiative, and coordinated the U.S. government’s global donations of hundreds of millions of vaccine doses. He later served as the administration’s lead official for the global MPox response. He also served on the Biden-Harris transition teams for the Departments of State and Health and Human Services.”
“A very cheap shot by Rubio to accuse the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] of politicizing this, when the breakdowns are in fact coming from the (willful?) dysfunction within the administration,” Konyndyk charged.
He also called Rubio’s remarks a “very damning admission,” and said it “makes clear he’s blind to what’s happening on his watch.”
“Why aren’t waivers going through? Because @USAID staff (not by the NGOs) have to request them case-by-case from State, and DOGE has now purged all those personnel.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
READ MORE: Dems Blocked From Entering USAID Offices: ‘Illegal and Corrupt’*
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MSN?
NO LNX/ PIX?
What is USAID and why is Elon Musk trying to kill it?
During the early morning of Monday, Feb. 3, protesters flooded the Washington, D.C. street that marks the entrance to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The group wasn't trying to enter the federal premises in a violent takeover, but rather act as a wall of defense between the government agency and a directive to cease the organization's work as a matter of fiduciary foresight. Later that afternoon, the USAID office shut down. The official USAID website is no longer available.
The decisions came after Elon Musk — newly-appointed leader of DOGE, a non-government agency with no official government powers or legal precedent for intervening in federal spending — declared he would be cutting off USAID, halting tens of billion in foreign aid spending. Musk, incentivized by President Trump's commitment to "cut federal spending" set his sights on what he called an "evil" "criminal organization," and a "viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America."
Federal employees were then barred from entering the D.C. premises, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared he would step in as de-facto USAID administrator, calling the humanitarian organization "a completely unresponsive agency" that needed to be "aligned" with U.S. foreign policy.
What is USAID?
The U.S. Agency for International Development operates the federal government's global aid budget and associated programs, serving as "the principal U.S. agency to extend assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms," according to the agency's archived website (accessible on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine).
Related video: What is USAID. and why do Trump and Elon want to shut it down (WTKR Norfolk, VA)
USAID was established in the 1960s under an executive order by President John F. Kennedy, a result of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act intended to streamline foreign aid and efficiently administer humanitarian aid on behalf of the U.S. government. USAID is overseen by the president, secretary of state, and the National Security Council, and seeks to invest in longterm economic assistance abroad as part of the country's larger foreign policy.
USAID operates through dozens of international field missions in more than 60 countries, each with a different focus area, including disaster and poverty relief, socio-economic development, and assistance with global issues — USAID frequently administers programs globally through collaborations with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Why did Elon Musk target USAID?
To put it simply, the agency oversees a lot of crucial spending. As of 2023, USAID was allocated around half of the U.S. government's total budget for international aid, a sum of about $68 billion. less than 1 percent?
Following Trump's order, and then reversal, of a government-wide federal spending freeze, Musk took aim at USAID as part of his mandate to rid the U.S. government of so-called corruption and superfluous spending. And while both Trump and Rubio had declared humanitarian aid would be waived under the auditing process spearheaded by DOGE, Musk moved forward with an attempt to eliminate USAID as a singular entity. Trump had recently made references to removing and replacing the "radical lunatics" overseeing USAID, as well. On Feb. 3, USAID Director for Security John Vorhees and Deputy Director for Security Brian McGill were fired.
Simultaneously, Musk has been pushing for greater access and control over federal systems and their offices. After requesting and being denied access to internal systems through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Feb. 2, Musk reportedly pushed to oust administrators who had refused his requests, with two anonymous OPM officials losing access to the system shortly after. Musk and his allies later gained control of internal U.S. Treasury databases.
According to the BBC, USAID's activities will be rolled into the workings of the State Department with a significant reduction in funding and workforce. It's unclear how this will effect ongoing programs, including charity contributions, abroad.
What can DOGE actually do?
DOGE, otherwise known as the Department of Government Efficiency, was announced by Trump in November, shortly after he won the 2024 presidential election. The department's mandate, at the time, was described as modernizing federal systems and slashing inefficiency — Trump called it a new "Manhattan Project" set to overhaul the government's IT systems.
But DOGE is not a government agency with the same powers as the offices it's trying to eliminate. Instead, DOGE was established as an advising body under the United States Digital Service (now the U.S. DOGE SERVICE) and the Office for Personnel Management. Under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, it should only be able to exercise advisory powers to federal spending, while Congress retains oversight and decision-making for large budgetary actions, despite the promises of Trump and Musk.
In practice, however, DOGE and its leader are exercising power they may not legally have a right to, and operating on a path that some refer to as a forcible takeover of government.
If you enjoyed this story, be sure to follow Mashable on Microsoft Start.
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Tech billionaire, Elon Musk, who leads President Donald Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, has moved to seize control of the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID.
Musk took a dig at USAID on his social media platform X, writing, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”
He also wrote several other posts about the agency, saying things like, “USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” and “USAID is evil.”
Fox News reports that more than 50 senior USAID staff members were placed on administrative leave and subjected to a gag order.
The gag order implies that they were not allowed to communicate with anyone outside the agency without approval.
According to the report, citing congressional sources, signs were also removed from USAID’s headquarters in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., and the DOGE team took over the computer systems.
USAID, an independent agency, is responsible for distributing civilian foreign aid and development assistance to countries around the globe.
The agency was said to have managed approximately $40 billion in appropriations in 2024.
Trump administration had on Sunday placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after refusing to turn over classified material in restricted areas to DOGE.
The development came after initially being refused access to USAID’s classified information.
However, DOGE eventually gained that access on Saturday, allowing them to see things like intelligence reports.
USAID is evil, criminal organization – Elon Musk
Related video: Joe: When you gut USAID, the big winners are those that wish the U.S. harm (MSNBC):
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Late Friday, newly sworn-in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave access to the agency’s payments system to representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, created by President Donald Trump and headed by Elon Musk. A strike force of Musk lackeys appears to be pursuing a takeover of key background systems of the US government—from human resources to physical buildings to software systems to, now, what is essentially the country’s central bank account. At this point, Musk’s people reportedly cannot control payments, only view them, but how long that arrangement will last is unclear.
Treasury’s payment system processes more than $5 trillion annually, paying the country’s bills. This includes Social Security checks and tax refunds, which means the system includes sensitive personal information on tens of millions of Americans. A Sunday headline from New York Magazine, “Elon Musk May Have Your Social Security Number,” is not an exaggeration.
When Musk, the world’s richest man, took over Twitter, he cut costs by simply refusing to make payments. From rent for the company’s headquarter offices in San Francisco to janitorial services, Musk’s approach was to simply stop paying the bills and see what happens. (Employees were forced to use bathrooms in other buildings.)
A similar approach to the United States government, however, promises to be catastrophic. One scenario is that shutting off payments to federal grantees and nonprofits could cause rapid harm. And this could come at the whims of extremist ideological allies of Trump. For example, his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a Christian nationalist and purveyor of misinformation (who lied to the FBI and was later pardoned by Trump), posted on X information about federal payments to Lutheran Family Services, which along with its affiliates provides a wide range of services, including counseling. Musk retweeted Flynn’s post promising “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.” The illegal actions would in fact appear to be Musk’s own—Congress appropriates federal funds, but Musk is acting as if the law will never catch up to him.
Disgraced General Michael Flynn Has Made a New Movie—About Himself – Mother Jones
Musk’s tweet may be getting ahead of the reality of what he and his team are doing at the moment. But imagine if the US government were to stop paying bills because a billionaire saw a social media post from a conspiracy theorist urging him to do so.
“Fitch and everyone else should downgrade US credit,” Dean Baker, and economist at the progressive Center for Economy and Policy Research, posted on Bluesky. “If a bill gets paid only if Elon Musk or Donald Trump feels like it, then the US is not very creditworthy.”
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, issued a similar warning. “To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” he said in a statement late Friday. “The federal government is in a financially precarious position, currently utilizing accounting maneuvers to continue paying its bills since it reached the debt limit at the beginning of the year. I am concerned that mismanagement of these payment systems could threaten the full faith and credit of the United States.”
Economists have long warned that should the United States miss a debt payment, it would send shockwaves through the world economy. On the domestic front, the Trump administration this past week attempted to withhold billions in federal aid through an Office of Management and Budget memo instructing agencies to temporarily halt payments. The attempt was “wildly illegal,” according to experts, and two federal judges have halted much of that effort. Now, it may be possible for Musk and his underlings themselves to simply withhold payments they disagree with. Theoretically, rather than asking agencies to cut spending, Musk could move to cut off the funds from Treasury.
“I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs,” Wyden said in statement.
According to reporting in Politico, the Doge team doesn’t have the capability to withhold or change payments—at least not yet. Instead, access by Doge’s Treasury representative, software executive Tom Krause, is “read-only.” But warning signs of a hostile takeover have been flashing. For example, Musk’s team literally took over Office of Personnel Management computer systems this past week, locking OPM officials out of them. They have been taking down entire government websites and datasets, causing public-facing information and research to disappear before Americans’ eyes in Orwellian fashion. And over the weekend, Doge representatives demanded classified information from USAID that they lacked clearances for, according to CNN, despite that the executive order creating Doge explicitly exempts classified information from its efforts. When USAID security officials refused to comply, they were put on leave.
US Government Websites Are Disappearing in Real Time | WIRED
The power that comes with controlling US government payments is vast. How Musk and Trump might try to leverage that against political or legal opponents—say, against states that file lawsuits they don’t like—is sobering to consider. So far, the GOP-controlled Congress seems willing to let them do whatever they want.
US Government Websites Are Disappearing in Real Time | WIRED
Several government websites have been taken down, including the USAID.gov, ForeignAssistance.gov, NeglectedDiseases.gov, and ChildrenInAdversity.gov. A WIRED analysis of more than 1,000 federal .gov websites found that at least seven sites linked to a USAID server went offline in a two-hour span on Saturday afternoon.
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AN 1 25
The Trump administration cruelly and abruptly stopped the distribution of live-saving antiretroviral drugs to almost 26 million people worldwide. The program, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief—PEPFAR—is the global health program started by Republican president George W. Bush in 2003. He celebrated the 20 year anniversary in 2023 at his presidential library.
While White House has called this a “pause,” The New York Times described it in more dire terms:
On Monday afternoon, officials worldwide were alerted that PEPFAR’s data systems would shut down at 6 p.m. Eastern — roughly three hours after the email was received — immediately closing off access to all data sets, reports and analytical tools.
“Users should prioritize copying key documents and data,” said the email viewed by The Times.*
*The message prompted speculation that the program would not resume, as its future was already in question.
The Times noted, in what seems like pure evil, that the administration, “has instructed organizations in other countries to stop disbursing H.I.V. medications purchased with U.S. aid, even if the drugs have already been obtained and are sitting in local clinics.”
*The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!
Without the drugs for any length of time, HIV will replicate inside the bodies of these HIV-infected people in poor countries across Africa, Asia and elsewhere, who have been living and thriving, as HIV has thankfully become a manageable illness because of the drugs. HIV will be able to transmit from them to others—transmission is suppressed while taking the drugs—and more powerful strains could emerge.
And they will develop full-blown AIDS, suffer immensely, and die.
It’s as simple as that.
Let’s be clear, for Trump this is eugenics, killing off the non-white people in the “shithole” countries who he surely believes we shouldn’t be spending money on.
Trump has promoted eugenics—spouting off about “good genes” and “bad genes” in talking about immigrants he wants to deport who he says are “poisoning the blood” of Americans—and, according to his own nephew, said disabled people should “just die” in the context of his nephew’s own son.
So none of this is speculation. Trump is a racist and believes people with debilitating illnesses should “just die.” PEPFAR survived Trump’s first term, even though he did move to harm it. PEPFAR must be continually renewed by Congress in bills the president in office has always signed.
Trump’s proposed budget in 2017would have severely harmed the program, though not destroy it entirely. In the end, Trump extended funding with no major cuts, signing the PEPFAR Extension Act of 2018, andthe administration even touted it on the State Department’s website, in a post that is still there:
*This marks another significant moment in the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s (PEPFAR) history of lifesaving work. In the past 15 years, PEPFAR has enjoyed tremendous bipartisan support from eight U.S. congresses and has been supported by three consecutive U.S. presidents. Since its inception, PEPFAR has saved over 17 million lives, prevented millions of HIV infections, and transformed the global AIDS response from death and despair to life and hope.
But, as we’ve seen, Trump in 2025 is far different. It’s not just that there aren’t people around him who can reign him in; t*here are people around him encouraging these actions.
Add to Trump’s racism and obsession with eugenics the fact that the people in place in his administration from Project 2025 just want to cut all foreign funding of any kind in their dangerous America First zeal, and want to slash funding to Americans’ social safety net as well. His nominee for Office of Management and Budget director, Russell Vought, a major contributor to Project 2025, is making that clear, seeking to target Medicare and Medicaid and other programs, even admitting it during his Senate confirmation hearing.
Then there’s the power of the Christian right—and Vought is also a devout evangelical Christian nationalist—which sees HIV as a sexually transmitted disease that could be “controlled” via behavior. But more so, abortion is at play here—or at least is something they’re blowing up to add into the mix.
Republicans last year accused PEPFAR of funding abortion. The evidence: Four nurses who distribute the drugs to people with HIV in Mozambique, where abortion is legal, also separately performed 21 abortions. Nothing linked the PEPFAR money to the abortions, but providers of the drugs are barred under the law from also performing abortions, period.
Whatever the case, this was an isolated incident in the context of 26 million people receiving the drugs worldwide. Nonetheless, Senate Republicans would only sign on to a one-year extension in 2024, with the Christian nationalist base pressuring them.
Then you have to add to all of this the fact that Trump is intent on making RFK Jr. his Health and Human Services Secretary. RFK is a crackpot and AIDS denialist who believes HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, a public health conspiracy theory that goes back to the 1980s and has no basis in scientific fact:
Despite firm scientific evidence that H.I.V. infections cause AIDS — some of which was recognized with the Nobel Prize in 2008 — Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly questioned the link.
“There are much better candidates than H.I.V. for what causes AIDS,” he told a New York Magazine reporter in June 2023.
*He has suggested that possible causes of AIDS include environmental toxins and “poppers,” an inhaled drug and immunosuppressant popularized by gay men during the 1970s.
*But studies have looked at whether factors like drug use, sexual behavior and bacterial infections were associated with AIDS. They have all come to the clear conclusion that “the only common denominator” was H.I.V., according to the National Institutes of Health.
This is just homophobic blather dressed up as something else. RFK may as well be a Christian nationalist himself.
The bottom line is that Trump has these people in his ear, coming from various perspectives—from the costs that are incurred to conspiracy theories about science—and they’re all feeding his racist impulses.
The humanitarian crisis will be a calamity. But HIV, for a variety of reasons, has also been deemed a national security crisis, and that’s why a Republican president—George W. Bush—whose own father bowed to Christian conservatives regarding AIDS when he was president, realized the U.S. needed to be instrumental in stopping the transmission of HIV globally. In April of of 2000, the U.S. government under Bill Clinton declared AIDS a national security threat, entrusting it to the work of the National Security Council, something every president since—and most lawmakers—have understood. From the Journal of American Medical Association:
Security has been broadly defined as both the freedom from fear and the freedom from need.4(https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1845122#ref-jms1002-3-1-4) Under this definition, HIV/AIDS threatens the security of governments and economies around the world because of its ability to simultaneously endanger political stability and depress current levels of prosperity. According to one study, a significant decrease in life expectancy is the strongest risk factor for ethnic conflict, genocide, failure of fledgling democracies, and revolutionary wars.5(https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1845122#ref-jms1002-3-1-5)
In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, average life expectancy rates will drop 25% in the next few decades from 59 years to less than 45 years, solely due to HIV/AIDS.6(https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1845122#ref-jms1002-3-1-6) Stable leadership may collapse if death rates continue to rise among public and private elites, including the police force and the military, where HIV prevalence rates have reached 60% in countries such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.7(https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1845122#ref-jms1002-3-1-7)
Beyond that, Bush and many Republicans understood, along with Democrats, that if the U.S. doesn’t fill the vacuum on desperately needed aid, countries will seek help from our adversaries, most notably China. Already, in the crisis over deportations, some countries have noted it:
After Mr. Trump signed executive orders this week aimed at sealing the U.S. southern border, expelling migrants and slashing foreign aid, Honduran officials said such measures could push their country closer to China, even as Mr. Trump has criticized China’s advances in Latin America.*
*Enrique Reina, the Honduran foreign minister, said in a television interview this week that while the United States provides his country with important help, Honduras had increasingly been approaching other countries, including China.
While Colombia has been a staunch ally of the U.S. and has criticized China, its second largest trading partner is China, after the U.S. After Trump’s ramping up a trade war with Colombia you could envision the country shifting more toward China, at least economically, so as not to be impacted by Trump’s blackmailing threats.
So, many countries in need— such as those battling the scourge of HIV—might be forced to turn to help from China, which of course will have strings attached. MAGA just doesn’t understand that the U.S. supports other countries because of its own self-interests, to stabilize governments and economies—which actually prevents migration—and to keep people from turning to our adversaries.
And Trump himself is too blinded by his racist rage, and his cruel desire to let people “just die,” to see any of that.
Is USAID the New CIA ? Agency Secretly Built Cuban Twitter Program to Fuel Anti-Castro Protests
Apr 04, 2014
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Right-wing media resume misleading attacks on hurricane recovery efforts after Biden announces humanitarian assistance for Africa
Special ProgramsClimate & Energy
Written by Ilana Berger
Published 12/13/24 9
Right-wing media ramped up attacks on the Biden administration’s hurricane recovery efforts in southern Appalachia after President Joe Biden announced $1 billion in humanitarian aid for Africa.
On December 3, Biden became the first president to visit the African country of Angola, where he announced new aid “to address food insecurity and other urgent needs of refugees, internally displaced persons, and affected communities in 31 African countries,” according to the United States Agency of International Development.
According to Oxfam, a federation of international nongovernmental organizations addressing global poverty, “more than 24 million people in southern Africa face hunger, malnutrition and water scarcity due to drought and floods.” Oxfam also described southern Africa as a “climate disaster hotspot.”
Earlier this year, FEMA was the subject of right-wing attacks falsely accusing the agency of squandering disaster relief money on immigrants, preventingvictims of Hurricane Helene from accessing aid, and even seizing the land of people whose homes had been destroyed. Conspiracy theories about government weather manipulation also circulated online.
Right-wing media falsely accused the Biden administration of favoring Africa over hurricane-stricken communities in the U.S., reviving harmful FEMA misinformation
- Hurricane relief funding requires congressional approval and is separate from foreign aid and immigration spending, but Fox News has continually suggested otherwise.Top-rated hosts like Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity led the charge in repeating false claims that money allocated for disaster relief went to helping immigrants, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency maintains separate funds for those two purposes. In October, senior congressional correspondent Chad Pergram posted on X (formerly Twitter) that Fox News had obtained a GOP memo saying there is “no funding connection between” the migrant shelter program and the Disaster Relief Fund. Similarly, none of the humanitarian aid for Africa is coming from FEMA. Foreign disaster aid — like that being directed to Africa — typically comes from USAID and the State Department. Media Matters, [10/11/24, 10/10/24, 10/9/24, 10/9/24; Council on Foreign Relations, 10/23/24; usaid.gov, 12/3/24]
- Right-wing media misinformation about FEMA’s actions in southern Appalachia was followed by violent threats against FEMA personnel on the ground.Misinformation about the responses to hurricanes Helene and Milton — ranging from accusations that FEMA is actively keeping aid and donations from hurricane victims to conspiracy theories that the government used weather manipulation to target certain populations — surged across social media platforms in the weeks after the hurricanes. In October, FEMA workers in both Rutherford County, North Carolina, and Carter County, Tennessee, faced threats of violence from armed civilians. Media Matters, [10/18/24, 10/9/24, 10/10/24]
- While there is still work to be done helping victims in southern Appalachia, the federal response has been more robust than right-wing media claim. According to NC.gov, “over $244 million in FEMA Individual Assistance funds have been paid so far” in western North Carolina. According to FEMA, “The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), administered by FEMA, has paid policyholders over $1.4 billion for flood losses stemming from Hurricane Helene recovery” across affected states. NC.gov, [11/20/24, fema.gov, 11/27/24]
- In reporting on Biden's trip to Africa, right-wing media ignored Biden’s recent request from Congress for billions more in recovery funding for impacted states. In November, Biden asked Congress for roughly $100 billion in emergency disaster aid to help North Carolina and other impacted states, including $40 billion for FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund. CNN, [11/18/24]
- One America News Network host Dan Ball called the assistance “wasteful” and “frivolous,” saying, “There are Americans still right now, as I sit here, who are in need. And it's our money. It's their money. They'd like some more to rebuild from flooding. Like the residents of North Carolina who are still dealing with the devastating aftermath of hurricane Helene.” He later added: “FEMA is nowhere to be found. It’s like they don’t even want the people to rebuild.” OANN, *Real America with Dan Ball*, [12/6/24]
- On Infowars, host Harrison Smith ranted that the government should have built four high tech “schools per state” with the $1 billion aid pledged to Africa or “rebuilt hurricane-ravaged Appalachia,” but instead “people pay taxes to their government and the government just skedaddles with it to some third world nation and hands it over to a dictator.” He later added: “I wonder where all that money went because it certainly didn't go into fixing the infrastructure in the places that were damaged,” referring to FEMA aid that has already been allocated to impacted states. Infowars, *The American Journal*, [12/4/24]
- On Fox Business, host Elizabeth MacDonald and right-wing radio host Jason Rantz attacked FEMA and the Biden administration, saying that aid for Africa is “the ultimate slap in the face” for Americans recovering from Hurricane Helene.MacDonald said that Biden “wants to spend more than 1 billion bucks of your money in Africa and on Ukraine but not on the victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. They are literally freezing to death living in tents and RVs, no heat, no electricity, little food.” MacDonald also misleadingly said that the government “burned through a billion bucks in FEMA money on illegal aliens.” Fox Business, *The Evening Edit*, [12/4/24; Media Matters, 10/11/24]
- On Fox Business, host Maria Bartiromo complained that Biden is “shelling out” money in Africa and called it “incredible” that he is “giving all that money to Ukraine, another billion to Africa. Meanwhile, what about these people that are still trying to recover from these hurricanes?” Guest and former Bloomberg host Adam Johnson added, “FEMA got criticized during the campaign, as you recall, from the politicization of some of the surveys that they were doing, but also saying, how much money are we spending on the migrant crisis but we’re not spending in terms of FEMA response? And then he goes to Africa and gives this money away. What is the strategy as he exits the door here?” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [12/4/24]
- OnFox & Friends First, co-host Todd Piro called the aid “a double-edged sword” because “we want to be in Africa to counteract China” but “there are people in North Carolina that just got destroyed by a hurricane and they’re getting measly $750 checks.”
Fox News, *Fox & Friends First*, [12/4/24]
- On Newsmax,Wake Up Americaco-host Alex Kraemer called the aid and humanitarian assistance part of Biden's “Americans last policy” while co-host Sharla McBride attacked FEMA. Kraemer called it “mean” for Biden to give a “blank check to other countries” and said he has a “sitting back, let them eat cake” attitude toward North Carolina. McBride said: “Still people are out of their homes. A lot of people dealing with the effects of the flooding they went through, and many of them still struggling to get money from FEMA, from the money they deserve as being an American citizen.” Newsmax, *Wake Up America*, [12/4/24]
- Fox News headline: “Biden pledges $1B in aid to Africa as North Carolina residents continue to struggle after Helene.” The article’s subheadline read: “Social media users fumed over Biden's decision to help foreign countries before his own.”Fox News, [12/3/24]
- On Infowars’War Room, host Owen Shoyer said that “Joe Biden just gave you another middle finger,” calling the aid “obviously absurd” because “Americans can't even get assistance with FEMA or other emergencies.” He continued: “We're paying for refugees if they come here. We're paying for refugees if they stay there.” He also said that people in North Carolina are “basically living in huts” because “they won’t sell their land. They won’t give up everything to the government in this land grab.” Infowars, *War Room*, [12/3/24]
- Daily Wire reporter Ryan Saavedra: “Biden announces $1 billion in disaster relief for Africa while there are people still living in tents in North Carolina after their homes were destroyed by Hurricane Helene.”He added: “It's now winter in North Carolina and people there are facing freezing temperatures.” Twitter/X, [12/3/24]
- Fox News host Laura Ingraham said that Biden’s Tuesday speech announcing aid for Angola “sounded more like ‘Angola First.’ Countries with their hands out love having a weak American president like Biden in office.”Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [12/3/24]
- Fox host Sean Hannity said, “That billion dollars in federal aid? No, that’s not going to rebuild homes in North Carolina. Instead, Joe is sending your hard-earned tax dollars to Africa.” He also called the move “a fitting end to a historically bad presidency marked by weakness, incompetence, utter dishonesty, corruption, and putting the interests of foreign nationals well before the needs of his fellow Americans.” Fox News,*Hannity*, [12/3/24]
- Shroyer: “Biden just announced $1 Billion for Africa. People in North Carolina are still homeless after Hurricane Helene as winter hits and Christmas is approaching. We were told there's no money for Hurricane victims, yet another country gets billions from Biden on his way out.”Twitter/X, [12/3/24]
- Conspiracy theorist Lara Logan linked to an article about the aid Biden pledged to Africa, writing, “Is anyone else still in shock & disbelief over the treatment of people in North Carolina?" She continued: “How is this happening? They’ve been abandoned & where is most of the media?”Twitter/X, [12/4/24]
- Right-wing influencer Gunther Eagleman: “Joe Biden just announced a $1B aid package for AFRICAN nations that are rebuilding from natural disasters. What about North Carolina? This is DISGUSTING.”[Twitter/X, 12/3/24]
- Former Fox host and current Newsmax host Todd Starnes claimed Biden “abandoned” people in Western North Carolina because it’s “Trump Country” and is instead sending disaster relief to Africa.“It is snowing in the Western North Carolina mountains,” he said. “Many people are living in tents. Others have no home. FEMA has abandoned the people there. So has Biden. Instead, the president is sending $1 billion in disaster relief aid to Africa. That's because Western North Carolina is Trump Country. And the Marxists within the administration want the citizens there to suffer. It's really that simple and it's really that appalling.” Twitter/X, [12/3/24]
related
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10/18/24
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/new-trump-appointee-to-foreign-aid-agency-has-denounced-liberal-democracy-and-our-homo-empire/
new Trump appointee to the United States’ foreign aid agency has a history of online posts denouncing liberal democracy and has said that the country is in the clutches of a “homo-empire” that pushes a “tyrannical LGBT agenda.”
In one post, Merritt Corrigan, who recently took up a position as deputy White House liaison at the U.S. Agency for International Development, wrote: “Liberal democracy is little more than a front for the war being waged against us by those who fundamentally despise not only our way of life, but life itself.”
Corrigan’s new position in the Trump administration, confirmed by two officials, has not been previously reported.
corrigan previously worked for the Hungarian Embassy in the United States and tweeted that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is “the shining champion of Western civilization,” Politico reported last year. An embassy spokesman, Béla Gedeon, said Corrigan left her position there in mid-April.
Orban, a far-right politician, has cracked down on civil society, academic freedom and other liberties. USAID has recently partnered with Hungary to help Christians in Iraq, a pairing that some career USAID officials said they found unsettling.
Asked about Corrigan’s writing, acting USAID spokesperson Pooja Jhunjhunwala said the agency has a “zero-tolerance policy of any form of discrimination or harassment based on gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or any other possible distinguishing characteristic that can define any of us.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/red-flags-raised-after-trump-officials-gutted-the-staff-overseeing-1-billion-in-foreign-aid/
...U.S. Agency for International Development has been forced to cut nearly 80% of its non-Iraqi staff in Iraq in the last year, even as the agency funds large, ambitious and complex aid projects there. A critical government watchdog report released this week said USAID officials reported the cuts “have had significant adverse effects” on the oversight and management of grants.
As ProPublica detailed this month, Pence’s office has pressured USAID to support local groups representing Iraqi minorities, particularly Christians. The watchdog report released this week said, in the context of the staff reductions and uncertainty, overseeing local groups “is particularly challenging given that awards to local organizations require increased involvement. One small charity that recently received a USAID grant and primarily serves Christian Iraqis has no full-time paid staff and no experience with government grants.
...
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/how-mike-pence-meddled-in-foreign-aid-to-reroute-money-to-favored-christian-groups/
Last November, a top Trump appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a candid email to colleagues about pressure from the White House to reroute Middle East aid to religious minorities, particularly Christian groups “Sometimes this decision will be made for us by the White House (see… Iraq! And, increasingly, Syria),” said Hallam Ferguson, a senior official in USAID’s Middle East bureau, in an email seen by ProPublica. “We need to stay ahead of this curve everywhere lest our interventions be dictated to us.”< >The email underscored what had become a stark reality under the Trump White House. Decisions about U.S. aid are often no longer being governed by career professionals applying a rigorous review of applicants and their capabilities. Over the last two years, political pressure, particularly from the office of Vice President Mike Pence, had seeped into aid deliberations and convinced key decision-makers that unless they fell in line, their jobs could be at stake.
Five months before Ferguson sent the email, his former boss had been ousted following a mandate from Pence’s chief of staff. Pence had grown displeased with USAID’s work in Iraq after Christian groups were turned down for aid.
ProPublica viewed internal emails and conducted interviews with nearly 40 current and former U.S. officials and aid professionals that shed new light on the success of Pence and his allies in influencing the government’s long-standing process for awarding foreign aid. Most people spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Trump administration’s efforts to influence USAID funding sparked concern from career officials, who worried the agency risked violating constitutional prohibitions on favoring one religion over another. They also were concerned that being perceived as favoring Christians could worsen Iraq’s sectarian divides.
“There are very deliberate procurement guidelines that have developed over a number of years to guard precisely against this kind of behavior,” said Steven Feldstein, a former State Department and USAID official during the Obama administration. When politics intrude on the grant-making process, “you’re diluting the very nature of what development programs ought to accomplish.”
USAID regulations state that awards “must be free from political interference or even the appearance of such interference and must be made on the basis of merit, not on the basis of the religious affiliation of a recipient organization, or lack thereof.”
Last month, USAID announced two grants to Iraqi organizations that career officials had previously rejected. Political appointees significantly impacted the latest awards, according to interviews with officials and other people aware of the process. Typically, such appointees have little to no involvement in USAID grants, to avoid perceptions of undue political influence on procurement.
One of the groups selected for the newest awards has no full-time paid staff, no experience with government grants and a financial tie that would typically raise questions in an intense competition for limited funds. The second organization received its first USAID direct grant after extensive public comments by its leader and allies highlighting what they described as a lack of U.S. assistance to Christians. The two groups — a charity that primarily serves Christian Iraqis and a Catholic university — were not originally listed as front-runners, according to a document seen by ProPublica.
The Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed have previously reported Pence’s interest in increasing foreign aid to Christians and his displeasure with USAID’s activities in Iraq.
Pence’s spokeswoman, Katie Waldman, did not respond to questions. A USAID spokeswoman did not respond to specific questions, including about Ferguson’s email, but said the latest grants were appropriate.
“The Trump Administration has made responding to the genocide committed by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) against religious and ethnic minorities a top priority,” said the spokeswoman, Pooja Jhunjhunwala. “Assistance to religious and ethnic communities targeted by ISIS is not a departure from the norm, but rather a continuation of USAID’s rich history of promoting inclusive development and defending human dignity and religious freedom in our partner countries.”
Approximately 97% of Iraq’s population is Muslim, according to the most recent U.S. figures available. Religious minorities — including Christians, Yazidis and others — make up around 2% to 3% of Iraq’s total population.
The Trump administration’s efforts to steer funding to these minorities in Iraq stand in stark contrast to its overall approach to foreign aid. It has repeatedly proposed cutting U.S. diplomatic and foreign assistance budgets by billions of dollars. In August, as the White House was considering cuts to an array of foreign aid programs, it shielded funding for religious minorities abroad, according to newsaccounts.
As Trump mounts a 2020 reelection effort, he is taking steps to solidify his conservative Christian base, including his decision last week to install his spiritual adviser, Florida televangelist Paula White, in a White House position. Increasing aid to Christians abroad is a core value for his supporters.
In a speech last month at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, a major gathering of the religious right, Trump touted his administration’s work on behalf of religious minorities in Iraq and Syria....
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Robert B. Horsch is one of the pioneers of genetic engineering, along with Robert T. Fraley and Stephen G. Rogers. He is a senior program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a position he took in 2006. There, he works to apply genetic engineering "toward improving crop yields in regions including sub-Saharan Africa, where the foundation recently launched a major drive with the Rockefeller Foundation."[1]Prior to that he was the Vice President of Product and Technology Cooperation at Monsanto "with responsibility for public-private partnerships to help smallholder farmers in developing countries gain access to better agricultural products and technologies."[2]
Contents
Promoting GMOs in Africa
Work With Monsanto
According to a 2005 report by GRAIN:[3]
"In 1990, two Monsanto executives [Horsch and his colleague Earnest Jaworski] got in touch with Joel Cohen, the Senior Biotechnology Specialist for USAID (the US Agency for International Development). Monsanto wanted USAID to help develop a GM crop for Africa that would give GMOs a good name. Cohen, who had come to the agency from the US seed industry, turned to USAID’s most trusted research institute in Africa-- the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI). The three men set up a meeting with KARI and began to put their plan into action."They decided to work on sweet potato, a crop neglected by seed companies and scientists but for which there were some promising GM applications being developed in the US. KARI had the perfect person for Monsanto to collaborate with - Florence Wambugu, a KARI scientist who had just completed a PhD programme on sweet potatoes. Monsanto immediately hired Wambugu to work in the United States on a GM sweet potato resistant to the sweet potato feathery mottle virus. Fourteen years later, it is pretty clear that Wambugu’s sweet potatoes are far from ready for the fields of Kenya’s farmers; in recent field studies the GM crop failed to resist the virus and underperformed compared to non- GM local varieties."But getting the GM sweet potato out to farmers was not the real intention anyway. The overriding goal was to open doors to GM, and in this it was a great success... Most importantly, the project served as a vehicle for driving forward a regulatory framework conducive to GM crops. And this is where USAID is making it’s mark - getting Southern countries to set up the regulatory frameworks and the technical capacity that US corporations require to build-up global markets for their GM crops."
Education and Experience
Horsch earned his PhD in Genetics at the University of California, Riverside, in 1979. Following that, he did his postdoctoral work in plant physiology at the University of Saskatchewan. He was hired by Monsanto in 1981, where he "led the company's plant tissue culture and transformation efforts until 1995. In 1996 he became Vice President and General Manager of the Agracetus Campus of Monsanto Company's Agricultural Sector in Middleton, Wisconsin, serving in that capacity until the end of 1999. Dr. Horsch has served on the editorial boards of several leading journals in the plant sciences and also as an advisor to the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. He has published more than 50 articles on plant biology and plant biotechnology and is a frequent speaker on these subjects, including Congresssional testimony. In 1999 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Clinton for contributions to the development of agricultural biotechnology. He is currently a member of the CGIAR Private Sector Committee and the United Nations Millennium Goal Task Force on Hunger."[2][4] By 2001, Horsch had already "led several outreach programs to transfer and apply [genetic engineering] to developing countries, serving as principal investigator or principal advisor for grants from Monsanto, USAID, the Rockefeller Foundation and other sources."[5]
Awards
- 1986: Thomas & Hochwalt Award, Monsanto Company.[5]
- 1998: The National Medal of Technology and Innovation[6]
- 2001: Distinguished Alumnus Award, University of California-Riverside.[5]
Articles and Resources
Related SourceWatch Articles
- Monsanto
- Monsanto's Use of Humanitarian Projects to Open Global Markets to GMOs
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- June 12, 2003 House Hearing on Plant Biotechnology Research in Africa
- Joel I. Cohen
- Program for Biosafety Systems (PBS)
- USAID
- USAID Promotion of Agricultural Biotechnology
References
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Kristi Helm, "Want to work for the Gates Foundation?," Seattle Times, October 17, 2006, Accessed October 14, 2011.
- ↑ ^Jump ^up ^to:2.0^ ^2.1 Horsch, The Critical Role of International Agricultural Development in the Fight Against Undernutrition and HIV/AIDS, Capitol Hill Forum 2004, January 27, 2004, Accessed October 14, 2011.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ USAID: Making the world hungry for GM crops, GRAIN, April 25, 2005, Accessed October 14, 2011.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ Robert B. Horsch, UN Millennium Project, Accessed October 14, 2011.
- ↑ ^Jump ^up ^to:5.0^ ^5.1^ ^5.2 Robert B. Horsch, Distinguished Alumnus Award, Accessed October 14, 2011.
- :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ The National Medal of Technology and Innovation Recipients, Accessed October 14, 2011.
External Resources
- Robert Horsch, "What is agrobacterium?, Robert Horsch," DNA Learning Center.
- Robert Horsch, "Using argobacterium to genetically engineer plants, Robert Horsch," DNA Learning Center.
- Robert Horsch, "Plant transformation using the gene gun, Robert Horsch," DNA Learning Center.
- Robert Horsch, "Genetically engineering plants using agrobacterium, Robert Horsch," DNA Learning Center.
- Robert Horsch, "Different methods of genetically engineering plants - Robert Horsch," DNA Learning Center.
External Articles
- Raj Patel and Robert Horsch, "Food fight! The polarized GM food debate," Food First, March 9, 2004.
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USAID, SYNGENTA COLLABORATE TO IMPROVE GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY
New commitment to enabling access to technology and capacity building will help smallholder farmers in developing countries
For Immediate Release
Thursday, May 9, 2013
USAID Press Office
202-712-4320
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA—The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Syngenta International AG to support agriculture and food security activities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Under this MOU, USAID and Syngenta will further collaborate in research and development and smallholder capacity building, working with key agriculture and food security partners including scientists, entrepreneurs, policy makers and other donors. Syngenta and USAID already work together in many countries and will broaden their relationship through this MOU.
This commitment advances agricultural development and food security goals set by developing country governments and supported by USAID through the U.S. Government’s global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future, which is part of the U.S. contribution to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition.
As announced in May 2012, Syngenta has committed to invest over $500 million over 10 years in Africa. Under the MOU, Syngenta and USAID together will build the capacity of smallholder farmers to adopt and safely use technologies that increase their yields through training, demonstrations and other approaches. With USAID, Syngenta will work in specific New Alliance countries and explore ways to increase growers’ use of technologies in crops such as potatoes and will expand smallholder access to tools such as crop insurance and seed treatment
https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/usaid-syngenta-collaborate-improve-global-food-security
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https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuela-coup-leader/254387/
Project — Before the fateful day of January 22, fewer than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. Even in his own party, Guaidó had been a mid-level figure in the opposition-dominated National Assembly, which is now held under contempt according to Venezuela’s constitution.
But after a single phone call from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaidó proclaimed himself as president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world’s largest oil reserves.
Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board hailedGuaidó as a “credible rival” to Maduro with a “refreshing style and vision of taking the country forward.” The Bloomberg News editorial board applauded him for seeking “restoration of democracy” and the Wall Street Journal declared him “a new democratic leader.” Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European nations, Israel, and the bloc of right-wing Latin American governments known as the Lima Group recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.
While Guaidó seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, he was, in fact, the product of more than a decade of assiduous grooming by the US government’s elite regime change factories.Alongside a cadre of right-wing student activists, Guaidó was cultivated to undermine Venezuela’s socialist-oriented government, destabilize the country, and one day seize power. Though he has been a minor figure in Venezuelan politics, he had spent years quietly demonstrated his worthiness in Washington’s halls of power.
“Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance,”Marco Teruggi, an Argentinian sociologist and leading chronicler of Venezuelan politics, told the Grayzone. “It’s the logic of a laboratory – Guaidó is like a mixture of several elements that create a character who, in all honesty, oscillates between laughable and worrying.”
Diego Sequera, a Venezuelan journalist and writer for the investigative outlet, Mision Verdad, agreed: “Guaidó is more popular outside Venezuela than inside, especially in the elite Ivy League and Washington circles,” Sequera remarked to the Grayzone, “He’s a known character there, is predictably right-wing, and is considered loyal to the program.”
While Guaidó is today sold as the face of democratic restoration, he spent his career in the most violent faction of Venezuela’s most radical opposition party, positioning himself at the forefront of one destabilization campaign after another. His party has been widely discredited inside Venezuela, and is held partly responsible for fragmenting a badly weakened opposition.
“‘These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,” wrote Luis Vicente León, Venezuela’s leading pollster. According to Leon, Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population “does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.’”
But this is precisely why he Guaidó was selected by Washington: he is not expected to lead Venezuela towards to democracy, but to collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two-decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.
Targeting the “troika of tyranny”
Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, the United States has fought to restore control over Venezuela and is vast oil reserves. Chavez’s socialist programs may have redistributed the country’s wealth and helped lift millions out of poverty, but they also earned him a target on his back. In 2002, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition briefly ousted him with US support and recognition before the military restored his presidency following a mass popular mobilization. Throughout the administrations of US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Chavez survived numerous assassination plots before succumbing to cancer in 2013. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, has survived three attempts on his life.
The Trump administration immediately elevated Venezuela to the top of Washington’s regime change target list, branding it the leader of a “troika of tyranny.”Last year, Trump’s national security team attempted to recruit members of the military brass to mount a military junta, but that effort failed. According to the Venezuelan government, the US was also involved in a plot codenamed Operation Constitution to capture Maduro at the Miraflores presidential palace, and another called Operation Armageddon:{ to assassinate him at a military parade in July 2017. Just over a year later, exiled opposition leaders }
:{ with drone bombs during a military parade in Caracas.}:
More than a decade before these intrigues, a group of right-wing opposition students were hand selected and groomed by an elite, US-funded regime change training academy to topple Venezuela’s government and restore the neoliberal order.
Training from the “‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions”
On October 5, 2005, with Chavez’s popularity at its peak and his government planning sweeping socialist programs, five Venezuelan “student leaders” arrived in Belgrade, Serbia to begin training for an insurrection.
The students had arrived from Venezuela courtesy of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS. This group is funded largely through the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government’s main arm of promoting regime change; and offshoots like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. According to leaked internal emails fromStratfor, an intelligence firm known as the “shadow CIA,”“[CANVAS] may have also received CIA funding and training during the 1999/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle.”
CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by Srdja Popovic in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means “resistance” in Serbian, was the student group that gained international fame – and Hollywood-level promotion – by mobilizing the protests that eventually toppled Slobodan Milosevic. This small cell of regime change specialists was operating according to the theories of the late Gene Sharp, the so-called “Clausewitz of non-violent struggle.” Sharp had worked with a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Col. Robert Helvey, to conceive a strategic blueprint that weaponized protest as a form of hybrid warfare, aiming it at states that resisted Washington’s unipolar domination.
A fence covered with posters of Slobodan Milosevic behind bars, titled “When?” and “People’s Movement Otpor” in Belgrade, Serbia, March 30, 2001. Darko Vojinovic | AP]
Otpor was supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID and Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institute. Sinisa Sikman, one of Otpor’s main trainers, once said the group even received direct CIA funding. According to a leaked email from aStratfor staffer, after running Milosevic out of power, “the kids who ran OTPOR grew up, got suits and designed CANVAS… or in other words a ;export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions. They are still hooked into U.S. funding and basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like ;).”
Stratfor revealed that CANVAS “turned its attention to Venezuela” in 2005 after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO regime change operations across Eastern Europe.
While monitoring the CANVAS training program, Stratfor outlined its insurrectionist agenda in strikingly blunt language: “Success is by no means guaranteed, and student movements are only at the beginning of what could be a years-long effort to trigger a revolution in Venezuela, but the trainers themselves are the people who cut their teeth on the ‘Butcher of the Balkans.’ They’ve got mad skills. When you see students at five Venezuelan universities hold simultaneous demonstrations, you will know that the training is over and the real work has begun.”
Birthing the “Generation 2007” regime change cadre
The “real work” began two years later, in 2007, when Guaidó graduated from Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas. He moved to Washington DC to enroll in the Governance and Political Management Program at George Washington University under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund who spent more than a decade working in Venezuelan energy sector under the oligarchic old regime that was ousted by Chavez.
That year, Guaidó helped lead anti-government rallies after the Venezuelan government declined to to renew the license of Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). This privately-owned station played a leading role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez. RCTV helped mobilize anti-government demonstrators, falsified information blaming government supporters for acts of violence carried out by opposition members, and banned pro-government reporting amid the coup. The role of RCTV and other oligarch-owned stations in driving the failed coup attempt was chronicled in the acclaimed documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
That same year, the students claimed credit for stymying Chavez’s constitutional referendum for a “21st century socialism” that promised “to set the legal framework for the political and social reorganization of the country, giving direct power to organized communities as a prerequisite for the development of a new economic system.”
From the protests around RCTV and the referendum, a specialized cadre of US-backed class of regime change activists was born. They called themselves “Generation 2007.”
The Stratfor and CANVAS trainers of this cell identified Guaidó’s ally – a street organizer named Yon Goicoechea – as a “key factor” in defeating the constitutional referendum.The following year, Goicochea was rewarded for his efforts with the Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, along with a $500,000 prize, which he promptly invested into building his own Liberty First (Primero Justicia) political network.
[milton prize px]
no lnx pix
Goicoechea receives the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, May 15, 2008. Seth Wenig | AP
Friedman, of course, was the godfather of the notorious neoliberal Chicago Boys who were imported into Chile by dictatorial junta leader Augusto Pinochet to implement policies of radical “shock doctrine”-style fiscal austerity. And theCato Institute is the libertarian Washington DC-based think tank founded by the Koch Brothers, two top Republican Party donors who have become aggressive supporters of the right-wing across Latin America.
Wikileaks published a 2007 email fromAmerican ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield sent to the State Department, National Security Council and Department of Defense Southern Command praising “Generation of ’07” for having “forced the Venezuelan president, accustomed to setting the political agenda, to (over)react.” Among the “emerging leaders” Brownfield identified were Freddy Guevara and Yon Goicoechea. He applauded the latter figure as “one of the students’ most articulate defenders of civil liberties.”
Flush with cash from libertarian oligarchs and US government soft power outfits, the radical Venezuelan cadre took their Otpor tactics to the streets, along with a version of the group’s logo, as seen below:
Otpor | Venezuela px]
“Galvanizing public unrest…to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez”
In 2009, the Generation 2007 youth activists staged their most provocative demonstration yet, dropping their pants on public roads and aping the outrageous guerrilla theater tactics outlined by Gene Sharp in his regime change manuals. The protesters had mobilized against the arrest of an ally from another newfangled youth group called JAVU. This far-right group “gathered funds from a variety of US government sources, which allowed it to gain notoriety quickly as the hardline wing of opposition street movements,” according to academic George Ciccariello-Maher’s book, “Building the Commune.”
While video of the protest is not available, many Venezuelans have identified Guaidó as one of its key participants. While the allegation is unconfirmed, it is certainly plausible; the bare-buttocks protesters were members of the Generation 2007 inner core that Guaidó belonged to, and were clad in their trademark Resistencia! Venezuela t-shirts, as seen below:
Juan Guaido | Protest
Is this the ass that Trump wants to install in Venezuela’s seat of power?
That year, Guaidó exposed himself to the public in another way, founding a political party to capture the anti-Chavez energy his Generation 2007 had cultivated. Called Popular Will, it was led byLeopoldo López, a Princeton-educated right-wing firebrand heavily involved in National Endowment for Democracyprograms and elected as the mayor of a district in Caracas that was one of the wealthiest in the country. Lopez was a portrait of Venezuelan aristocracy, directly descended from his country’s first president. He was also thefirst cousin of Thor Halvorssen, founder of the US-based Human Rights Foundation that functions as a de facto publicity shop for US-backed anti-government activists in countries targeted by Washington for regime change.
Though Lopez’s interests aligned neatly with Washington’s, US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks highlighted the fanatical tendencies that would ultimately lead to Popular Will’s marginalization. One cable identified Lopez as “a divisive figure within the opposition… often described as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry.” Others highlighted his obsession with street confrontations and his “uncompromising approach” as a source of tension with other opposition leaders who prioritized unity and participation in the country’s democratic institutions.
Leopoldo Lopez | Wealth
Popular Will founder Leopoldo Lopez cruising with his wife, Lilian Tintori.]
By 2010, Popular Will and its foreign backers moved to exploit the worst drought to hit Venezuela in decades. Massive electricity shortages had struck the country due the dearth of water, which was needed to power hydroelectric plants. A global economic recession and declining oil prices compounded the crisis, driving public discontentment.
Stratfor and CANVAS – key advisors of Guaidó and his anti-government cadre – devised a shockingly cynical plan to drive a dagger through the heart of the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme hinged on a 70% collapse of the country’s electrical system by as early as April 2010.
“This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system,” the Stratfor internal memo declared. “This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs.”
By this point, the Venezuelan opposition was receiving a staggering $40-50 million a year from US government organizations like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, according to a report by the Spanish think tank, the FRIDE Institute. It also had massive wealth to draw on from its own accounts, which were mostly outside the country.
While the scenario envisioned by Statfor did not come to fruition, the Popular Will party activists and their allies cast aside any pretense of non-violence and joined a radical plan to destabilize the country.
Towards violent destabilization
In November, 2010, according to emails obtained by Venezuelan security services and presented by former Justice Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, Guaidó, Goicoechea, and several other student activists attended a secret five-day training at the Fiesta Mexicana hotel in Mexico City. The sessions were run by Otpor, the Belgrade-based regime change trainers backed by the US government. The meeting had reportedly received the blessing ofOtto Reich, a fanatically anti-Castro Cuban exile working in George W. Bush’s Department of State, and theright-wing former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
At the Fiesta Mexicana hotel, the emails stated, Guaidó and his fellow activists hatched a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chavez by generating chaos through protracted spasms of street violence.
Three petroleum industry figureheads – Gustavo Torrar, Eligio Cedeño and Pedro Burelli – allegedly covered the $52,000 tab to hold the meeting.Torrar is a self-described “human rights activist” and “intellectual” whose younger brother Reynaldo Tovar Arroyo is the representative in Venezuela of the private Mexican oil and gas company Petroquimica del Golfo, which holds a contract with the Venezuelan state.
Cedeño, for his part, is a fugitive Venezuelan businessman who claimed asylum in the United States, and Pedro Burelli a former JP Morgan executive and the former director of Venezuela’s national oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA). He left PDVSA in 1998 as Hugo Chavez took power and is on the advisory committee of Georgetown University’s Latin America Leadership Program.
Burelli insisted that the emails detailing his participation had been fabricated and even hired a private investigator to prove it. The investigator declared that Google’s records showed the emails alleged to be his were never transmitted.
Yet today Burelli makes no secret of his desire to see Venezuela’s current president, Nicolás Maduro, deposed – and even dragged through the streets and sodomized with a bayonet, as Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was by NATO-backed militiamen.
View image on TwitterView image on Twitter
Pedro Mario Burelli
@pburelli
.@NicolasMaduro, jamas me has hecho caso. Me has fustigado/perseguido como @chavezcandanga jamás osó. Óyeme, tienes sólo dos opciones en las próximas 24 horas:
- Como Noriega:pagar pena por narcotráfico y luego a @IntlCrimCourt La Haya por DDHH.
- O a la Gaddafi.
Escoge ya!
1,051
10:09 PM - Jan 16, 2019
1,252 people are talking about this
The alleged Fiesta Mexicana plot flowed into another destabilization plan revealed in a series of documents produced by the Venezuelan government. In May 2014, Caracas released documents detailing an assassination plot against President Nicolás Maduro. The leaks identified the Miami-based Maria Corina Machado as a leader of the scheme. A hardliner with a penchant for extreme rhetoric, Machado has functioned as an international liaison for the opposition, visiting President George W. Bush in 2005.
maria corina machado | george bush
Machado and George W. Bush, 2005.]
“I think it is time to gather efforts; make the necessary calls, and obtain financing to annihilate Maduro and the rest will fall apart,” Machado wrote in an email to former Venezuelan diplomat Diego Arria in 2014.
In another email, Machado claimed that the violent plot had the blessing of US Ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker. “I have already made up my mind and this fight will continue until this regime is overthrown and we deliver to our friends in the world. If I went to San Cristobal and exposed myself before the OAS, I fear nothing. Kevin Whitaker has already reconfirmed his support and he pointed out the new steps. We have a checkbook stronger than the regime’s to break the international security ring.”
Guaidó heads to the barricades
That February, student demonstrators acting as shock troops for the exiled oligarchy erected violent barricades across the country, turning opposition-controlled quarters into violent fortresses known as guarimbas. While international media portrayed the upheaval as a spontaneous protest against Maduro’s iron-fisted rule, there was ample evidence that Popular Will was orchestrating the show.
“None of the protesters at the universities wore their university t-shirts, they all wore Popular Will or Justice First t-shirts,” a guarimba participant said at the time. “They might have been student groups, but the student councils are affiliated to the political opposition parties and they are accountable to them.”
Asked who the ringleaders were, the guarimba participant said, “Well if I am totally honest, those guys are legislators now.”
Around 43 were killed during the 2014 guarimbas. Three years later, they erupted again, causing mass destruction of public infrastructure, the murder of government supporters, and the deaths of 126 people, many of whom were Chavistas. In several cases, supporters of the government were burned alive by armed gangs.
Guaidó was directly involved in the 2014 guarimbas. In fact, he tweeted video showing himself clad in a helmet and gas mask, surrounded by masked and armed elements that had shut down a highway that were engaging in a violent clash with the police. Alluding to his participation in Generation 2007, he proclaimed, “I remember in 2007, we proclaimed, ‘Students!’ Now, we shout, ‘Resistance! Resistance!’”
Guaidó has deleted the tweet, demonstrating apparent concern for his image as a champion of democracy.
On February 12, 2014, during the height of that year’s guarimbas, Guaidó joined Lopez on stage at a rally of Popular Will and Justice First. During a lengthy diatribe against the government, Lopez urged the crowd to march to the office of Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz. Soon after, Diaz’s office came under attack by armed gangs who attempted to burn it to the ground. She denounced what she called “planned and premeditated violence.”
Leopoldo Lopez | Juan Guaido
Guaido alongside Lopez at the fateful February 12, 2014 rally. Photo | PanAm Post]
In a televised appearance in 2016, Guaidó dismissed deaths resulting from guayas – a guarimba tactic involving stretching steel wire across a roadway in order to injure or kill motorcyclists – as a “myth.” His comments whitewashed a deadly tactic that had killed unarmed civilians like Santiago Pedroza and decapitated a man named Elvis Durán, among many others.
This callous disregard for human life would define his Popular Will party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents of Maduro.
Cracking down on Popular Will
As violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the government began to act against the Popular Will leaders who helped stoke it.
Freddy Guevara, the National Assembly Vice-President and second in command of Popular Will, was a principal leader in the 2017 street riots. Facing a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara took shelter in the Chilean embassy, where he remains.
Lester Toledo, a Popular Will legislator from the state of Zulia, was wanted by Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges of financing terrorism and plotting assassinations. The plans were said to be made with former Colombian President Álavaro Uribe. Toledo escaped Venezuela and went on several speaking tours withHuman Rights Watch, the US government-backed Freedom House,the Spanish Congress and European Parliament.
Carlos Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led Popular Will, was arrested in July 2017. According to police, he was in possession of a bag filled with nails, C4 explosives and a detonator. He was released on December 27, 2017.
Leopoldo Lopez, the longtime Popular Will leader, is today under house arrest, accused of a key role in deaths of 13 people during the guarimbas in 2014. Amnesty International lauded Lopez as a “prisoner of conscience” and slammed his transfer from prison to house as “not good enough.” Meanwhile, family members of guarimba victims introduced a petition for more charges against Lopez.
Yon Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy and US-backed founder of Justice First, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who claimed they found a kilo of explosives in his vehicle. In a New York Times op-ed, Goicoechea protested the charges as “trumped-up” and claimed he had been imprisoned simply for his “dream of a democratic society, free of Communism.” He was freed in November 2017.
View image on Twitter
@YonGoicoechea
Hoy, en Caricuao. Llevo 15 años trabajando con @jguaido. Confío en él. Conozco la constancia y la inteligencia con la que se ha construido a sí mismo. Está haciendo las cosas con bondad, pero sin ingenuidad. Hay una posibilidad abierta hacia la libertad
5:10 PM - Jan 19, 2019
136 people are talking about this
David Smolansky, also a member of the original Otpor-trained Generation 2007, became Venezuela’s youngest-ever mayor when he was elected in 2013 in the affluent suburb of El Hatillo. But he was stripped of his position and sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Supreme Court after it found him culpable of stirring the violent guarimbas.
Facing arrest, Smolansky shaved his beard, donned sunglasses and slipped into Brazil disguised as a priest with a bible in hand and rosary around his neck. He now lives in Washington, DC, where he was handpicked bySecretary of the Organization of American States Luis Almagro to lead the working group on the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis.
This July 26, Smolansky held what he called a “cordial reunion” with Elliot Abrams,the convicted Iran-Contra felon installed by Trump as special US envoy to Venezuela. Abrams is notorious for overseeing the US covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during the 1980’s in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. His lead role in the Venezuelan coup has stoked fears that another blood-drenched proxy war might be on the way.
David Smolansky
@dsmolansky
Cordial reunión en la ONU con Elliott Abrams, enviado especial del gobierno de EEUU para Venezuela. Reiteramos que la prioridad para el gobierno interino que preside @jguaido es la asistencia humanitaria para millones de venezolanos que sufren de la falta de comida y medicinas.
10:46 AM - Jan 26, 2019
2,619 people are talking about this
Four days earlier, Machado rumbled another violent threat against Maduro, declaring that if he “wants to save his life, he should understand that his time is up.”
A pawn in their game
The collapse of Popular Will under the weight of the violent campaign of destabilization it ran alienated large sectors of the public and wound much of its leadership up in exile or in custody. Guaidó had remained a relatively minor figure, having spent most of his nine-year career in the National Assembly as an alternate deputy. Hailing from one of Venezuela’s least populous states, Guaidó came in second place during the 2015 parliamentary elections,winning just 26% of votes cast in order to secure his place in the National Assembly. Indeed, his bottom may have been better known than his face.
Guaidó is known as the president of the opposition-dominated National Assembly, but he was never elected to the position. The four opposition parties that comprised the Assembly’s Democratic Unity Table had decided to establish a rotating presidency. Popular Will’s turn was on the way, but its founder, Lopez, was under house arrest. Meanwhile, his second-in-charge, Guevara, had taken refuge in the Chilean embassy. A figure named Juan Andrés Mejía would have been next in line but reasons that are only now clear, Juan Guaido was selected.
“There is a class reasoning that explains Guaidó’s rise,” Sequera, the Venezuelan analyst, observed. “Mejía is high class, studied at one of the most expensive private universities in Venezuela, and could not be easily marketed to the public the way Guaidó could. For one, Guaidó has common mestizo features like most Venezuelans do, and seems like more like a man of the people. Also, he had not been overexposed in the media, so he could be built up into pretty much anything.”
In December 2018, Guaidó sneaked across the border and junketed to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to coordinate the plan to hold mass demonstrations during the inauguration of President Maduro. The night before Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony, both Vice President Mike Pence and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called Guaidó to affirm their support.
A week later, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart – all lawmakers from the Florida base of the right-wing Cuban exile lobby – joined President Trump and Vice President Pence at the White House. At their request, Trump agreed that if Guaidó declared himself president, he would back him.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met personally with Guaidó on January 10, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, Pompeo could not pronounce Guaidó’s name when he mentioned him in a press briefing on January 25, referring to him as “Juan Guido.”
Embedded video
Dan Cohen
@dancohen3000
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just called the figure Washington is attempting to install as Venezuelan President "Juan *Guido*" - as in the racist term for Italians. America's top diplomat didn't even bother to learn how to pronounce his puppet's name.
1:58 PM - Jan 25, 2019
By January 11, Guaidó’s Wikipedia page had been edited 37 times, highlighting the struggle to shape the image of a previously anonymous figurewho was now a tableau for Washington’s regime change ambitions. In the end, editorial oversight of his page was handed over to Wikipedia’s elite council of “librarians,” who pronounced him the “contested” president of Venezuela.
Guaidó might have been an obscure figure, but his combination of radicalism and opportunism satisfied Washington’s needs. “That internal piece was missing,” a Trump administration said of Guaidó. “He was the piece we needed for our strategy to be coherent and complete.”
“For the first time,” Brownfield, the former American ambassador to Venezuela, gushed to the New York Times, “you have an opposition leader who is clearly signaling to the armed forces and to law enforcement that he wants to keep them on the side of the angels and with the good guys.”
But Guaidó’s Popular Will party formed the shock troops of the guarimbas that caused the deaths of police officers and common citizens alike. He had even boasted of his own participation in street riots. And now, to win the hearts and minds of the military and police, Guaido had to erase this blood-soaked history.
On January 21, a day before the coup began in earnest, Guaidó’s wife delivered a video address calling on the military to rise up against Maduro. Her performance was wooden and uninspiring, underscoring the her husband’s limited political prospects.
At a press conference before supporters four days later, Guaidó announced his solution to the crisis: “Authorize a humanitarian intervention!”
While he waits on direct assistance, Guaidó remains what he has always been – a pet project of cynical outside forces. “It doesn’t matter if he crashes and burns after all these misadventures,” Sequera said of the coup figurehead. “To the Americans, he is expendable.”
Top Photo | Venezuela’s self-declared interim leader Juan Guaido, center, greets supporters after a rally at a public plaza in Las Mercedes neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 26, 2019. Fernando Llano | AP]
Dan Cohen is a journalist and filmmaker. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. Dan is a correspondent at RT America and tweets at @DanCohen3000.
Max Blumenthal is the founder and editor of GrayzoneProject.com, the co-host of the podcast Moderate Rebels, the author of several books and producer of full-length documentaries including the recently released Killing Gaza. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.
Source | GrayZone Project
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