Gloede: What programs were really helped by USAID?

We are seeing politicians shouting in anger to the TV cameras and protesters who have been told by the mainstream media that Donald Trump is stopping foreign aid and causing a constitutional crisis, with possible death to the recipients.

The U.S. Agency for International Development was set up in 1961 to provide American money for overseas aid; it is a stand-alone agency with no oversight. Just after taking office, Donald Trump and secretary of state Marco Rubio implemented a 90-day freeze on most foreign aid to give the new administration time to review what USAID’s $30 billion budget for 2025 is being used for. They found that the assistance being doled out is not accomplishing USAID’s mission, like expanding education and improving infrastructure. Here are some examples of how our tax dollars were used by the Biden administration:

• $50 million for condoms in Gaza
• $15 million to buy contraceptives for the Taliban
• $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia “to raise awareness of and to increase transgender representation through the opera”
• $32,000 for a Peruvian trans comic book program
• $25 million to promote the green agenda in the country of Georgia
• $8 million for Sri Lankan pronoun lessons
• $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala
• $8 million for Politico subscriptions

President Trump has closed the agency and rolled it over into the State Department. Marco Rubio, the new secretary of state, is now the acting director of USAID, despite a federal judge on Feb. 7 ordering a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staffers off the job.

How is this a constitutional crisis that will result in death? The money intentionally undermines the cultures of these countries and is our tax money being used without our consent.

Lorrie Gloede

Dover

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