Trump’s Freeze of USAID Is a Blow to Global Leftist Empire

The Trump administration is putting a stick of dynamite under the Deep State, and Democrats are apoplectic.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump put nearly all District of Columbia-based employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development—or USAID—on leave. According to Politico, this amounts to about 1,400 people in addition to 600 employees who were put on leave starting Sunday.

This comes after the Trump administration put a 90-day freeze on all foreign assistance.

Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and entrepreneur Elon Musk—who runs the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—have spent the last few days excoriating USAID for wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on useless or downright pernicious projects around the globe.

Rubio explained what the problem with USAID is in an interview with Fox News on Monday.

“They have evolved into an agency that they believes that they’re not even a U.S. government agency, that they are … a global charity, that they take the taxpayer money and they spend it as a global charity, irrespective of whether it is in the national interest or not,” Rubio said.

He noted that embassies around the world complain that USAID is not only uncooperative but that it undermines the governments the U.S. wants to work with. Rubio said that the agency operates as if its master is the “globe” and not the U.S., which is a departure from the intent of the original statute that created it.

Rubio, who is putting the operation of USAID under his authority, said that the goal has been to reform the agency, but right now, there is “rank insubordination.” The attitude of the employees, Rubio said, is that they work for themselves, not the American people or their elected officials.

This is why the administration had to take dramatic steps to temporarily freeze the agency, Rubio explained. It’s a significant blow that’s stunned Democrats who aren’t used to Republicans challenging the Left’s unaccountable administrative machine so directly.

The Left is banking heavily that it can make the USAID freeze an issue to turn the American people against the Trump administration.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. warned that DOGE and the Trump administration may not stop at USAID but might investigate …. the IRS.

Oh no, not the IRS!

I have my doubts that the Left’s strategy on this will work. The move mostly effects a narrow band of federal workers who hardly reflect the larger American public. The Deep State #Resistance hasn’t been nearly so robust or effective as it was in 2017. Even more importantly, when Americans generally learn what USAID actually does, they aren’t likely to be upset that Trump will reboot it.

USAID is a product of the Cold War in which the U.S. was engaged in a global battle against the forces of international Marxism. It was created through a 1961 executive order by President John F. Kennedy as tool of the federal government to aid to American soft power by influencing other nations with financial and other assistance.

But what was the purpose of the agency once the Cold War and the Soviet threat came to an end? It’s during this post-Cold War era that U.S. foreign policy changed, and the goals often became nebulous humanitarian “democracy” promotion. Its politics veered far to the left despite operating under the guise of nonpartisanship.

Organizations like USAID became enlisted in what can be described as no less than the creation of a global leftist empire. No longer would it be tailored toward narrow American interests or containing the global communist threat. Instead, it would be a conduit to siphon U.S. taxpayer dollars to various leftist projects, many of which are deeply resented by other nations.

It became, at minimum, a jobs program for hordes of American left-wing activists.

In just the last few days, there has been increasing scrutiny into what USAID has been funding. Proponents of the agency often tout that it delivers life-saving drugs to developing countries, but that is the front for all the other explicitly ideological projects it is engaged in.

For instance, the Washington Free Beacon reported that in 2023 under President Joe Biden, USAID spent $1 million “on a project to help disabled people in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan become ‘climate leaders.’”

The Biden administration supercharged the efforts of USAID and the State Department to promote far-left social goals. For instance, according to The Wall Street Journal, the State Department was funding “culture grants” to promote drag queen performances in Ecuador. Meanwhile, China was investing heavily in the country’s copper mining production.

The Free Beacon also reported that USAID spent millions of dollars on various diversity, equity, and inclusion projects, including a program created to “engage with indigenous-led institutions to implement an indigenous language technology program” in Guatemala where over 95% of people speak Spanish.

It also spent money on groups that praised terrorists.

“In November 2022, USAID sent $78,000 to the Community Development and Continuing Education Institute (CDCEI), a Palestinian activist group based in the West Bank. Its leaders praised a terrorist who murdered a U.S. military attaché as a ‘hero fighter,’” the Free Beacon reported.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., sent a letter to USAID in October 2024 saying that some of the more than a billion dollars being used for humanitarian relief in Gaza was likely being funneled to terrorists.

“As I predicted would happen from the outset, credible reporting indicates that Hamas terrorists have diverted this aid; indisputable evidence demonstrates that the aid was always at high risk of diversion,” Cotton wrote, according to Fox News Digital.

Under Biden, USAID even spent money funding abortions in Africa through programs billed as AIDS relief, Fox News reported.

Proponents of USAID often say that the agency is necessary to counter the influence of China, but how are we doing ourselves any favors when China is spending money on economic and resources development and we are spending money and delivering lectures about transgenderism?

Perhaps most damning of all, USAID has funneled money to Chinese organizations working on coronavirus research, including the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology.

And to top it all off, as my colleague Tyler O’Neil reported, USAID has worked closely with George Soros’ Open Society Institute over the years.

That the United States has an agency like USAID isn’t inherently bad. There are benefits to being able to deliver aid to potential international partners and to promote American values abroad.

But the current iteration of USAID isn’t really doing that. Instead, it’s operating like a rogue agency, furthering a left-wing ideological project that’s unpopular at home and abroad.

Striking a blow to USAID—and at the very least, forcing it to focus on its original core mission—will be a major boon to the U.S. and a blow to the Left. It’s a win-win situation and indicative of Trump’s seriousness in going after the Deep State in his second White House go-around.

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