‘ACCOUNTABILITY RESTORED’: Trump Admin Celebrates Ending Grants That Funded Far-Left NGOs

The Trump White House and the State Department celebrated Tuesday the end of government grants that directed tax dollars to the Left’s dark money network.

“President [Donald] Trump has done more than anyone to root out waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government, and has exposed billions of dollars doled out by unelected bureaucrats that is out-of-step with what the American people voted for,” the White House told The Daily Signal.

“Thanks to this president, Americans finally have transparency over what their tax dollars are funding, and accountability has been restored to stop the blank checks to fringe-left priorities,” the White House added.

The White House was responding to research on tax dollars funding leftist groups presented at the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight Tuesday. The Capital Research Center’s Scott Walter, The Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, and I testified before the committee.

I testified about the U.S. Agency for International Development awarding more than $800,000 to New Venture Fund, a dark money pass-through nonprofit that cloaks which donors give to which projects, and $27 million to the Tides Center, another dark money nonprofit that supports anti-Israel rioters, among other causes. (New Venture Fund noted that it “has not received taxpayer grant dollars in many years.”)

I also mentioned the long history of the Alliance for Open Society International—an arm of Hungarian American billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations—receiving millions from USAID and even suing USAID twice regarding that funding, in legal battles that reached the Supreme Court. (The Open Society Foundations, which has not directly received USAID funding in many years, distanced itself from USAID funding in a February statement.)

I also mentioned the Justice Department’s previous funding for the Vera Institute of Justice, which claims the American criminal justice system is “rooted in a history of white supremacy” and aims to “establish a right to representation for all immigrants facing deportation.” DOJ awarded Vera at least $73.6 million in contracts, mostly for providing legal services for immigrant children. Vera also received more than $11 million from the Foundation to Promote Open Society since 2016.

Vera told The Daily Signal it ceased to be a federal contractor in 2023 and that its federal agreements dated from the George W. Bush administration. Vera defended its current cooperative agreements with the Justice Department as “supporting police and law enforcement to better serve deaf survivors of domestic violence,” among other things, and faulted the Trump administration for having “summarily terminated” the agreements—a move Vera is challenging in court.

The Justice Department terminated five grants to Vera, totaling more than $7 million, a spokeswoman confirmed to The Daily Signal. A judge granted the DOJ’s motion to dismiss Vera’s lawsuit, but the nonprofit is appealing the decision.

These and other examples show how taxpayer funds have bankrolled and supplemented the Left’s dark money network of foundations that props up the activist groups urging the government to take controversial stances on issues like transgender activism, racial preferences, and climate alarmism.

The State Department confirmed that USAID grants to New Venture Fund and the Tides Foundation had been terminated.

“We can confirm that both grants were cancelled,” a senior State Department official told The Daily Signal Tuesday. “This is further proof that America’s foreign aid industrial complex was in desperate need of an overhaul.”

“Instead of advancing our national interests and helping our own citizens, USAID was hijacked by radicals who squandered money and resources on progressive pet projects,” the State official added. “Under the leadership of this president, backed by the mandate from the American people, Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio took historic steps to get rid of this corrosive and wasteful culture.”

Organizations like Vera have sued the Trump administration in order to preserve their grants and contracts. While some judges have ordered the administration to keep sending these groups taxpayer funds during the course of litigation, the Supreme Court ruled in April that the administration could stop paying certain grants while that case proceeds.

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