Madsplaining: DOGE vs USAID
Update: I completely neglected to include the post from , about USAID and the Lutheran church. I’ve added it towards the end!
The chaotic whirlwind of Trump 2.0 continues. Last week, President Trump carried on his flurry of executive orders with accompanying media madness and almost as many lawsuits as orders. But the subject on everyone’s pages last week was the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) findings at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
DOGE is the time-limited organization set up to scrutinize government spending, a re-badged United States Digital Service (USDS). There was outrage because it is lead by the left’s favorite whipping boy, Elon Musk and because the team is apparently a bunch of young men (one of them did decipher a burnt scroll from Vesuvius, but no mind). There was much discussion about whether such unelected persons should be allowed to rummage through sensitive information. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the team is not able to change anything on government computers and even Snopes could not verify that DOGE accessed any private data. The Internet offered a thoughtful shrug: the world put a lot of stock in the word of 13 year-old Greta Thunberg at one time and also, unelected bureaucrats are handling sensitive data all the time. Progressives are melting down but Senator John Kennedy said what a lot of Americans seem to be thinking – Musk and his team should get a medal.
As Americans are coming to speak of government money as their own once again, the spotlight fell on DOGE’s first target, the USAID. USAID was set up by the executive order of President Kennedy to bolster American interests abroad and specifically to counter Soviet influence at the height of the Cold War. Although never made official by an act of Congress, its existence was acknowledged within a congressional act and its funding has been on autopilot since it began. In 2005, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) discovered USAID money was being used to fund child prostitution abroad and he was responsible for making it easier for the public to find information about USAID projects.
Twenty years later, we are finding out that lack of scrutiny and a big bucket of money often leads to mischief. Transgender operas in South America? DEI workplaces in Serbia? Electric vehicles in Vietnam? $20 million to create an Iraqi version of Sesame Street? Propping up the BBC? It is hard to track USAID grants once the money is in the hands of not-for profit charities, but sleuths did cross-reference grants with publicly available information and found out some of the crazy ways “Americans’ interests” are being advanced:
Money for news watchdogs which discouraged conservative voices.
Money for states which sponsor terrorism - Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen and others, with no oversight or accountability and for terrorists too.
Funds for the research that lead to the creation of covid-19.
Funds were even linked to the so-called Russia collusion scandal which lead to the impeachment of a president.
The more that comes to light, it would seem that USAID is mostly advancing leftist interests abroad, a kind of empire building or colonization (if you will) in the name of America, but not by the consent of Americans.
[There is a lot of good being done by USAID, for sure. Reports that the Trump administration’s unceremonious shuttering of programs around the world is killing people and leaving vulnerable populations in danger are proliferating. We know it is very Trumpian not to sweat the details when it comes to lofty ideas, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the most vital programs will be exempt.]
Yet, as Mike Solana from Pirate Wires noted, all the efforts to shrink the government have progressives worried. Democrat lawmakers tried to barge into the Department of Education, which is said to be DOGE’s next stop. A Democrat-appointed Federal Election Commissioner refused to step down after she was fired by the Trump administration. In blocking the DOGE team from accessing computers at the Treasury, an order from a zealous judge actually locked the elected Head of that department out too. It is safe to say, as Solana does, the hysteria over the thinning of the bureaucracy means that DOGE is likely over the target. While we expected riots and protests when President Trump declared that the government would recognize only two genders or when his enforcers closed the border, the outrage over DOGE suggests maybe illegal immigrants or trans kids or Gaza are not as important to leftists as deep state control.
Perhaps where this hits closer to home for us is the way the church has become tangled up in this mess. Grifting off taxpayer money may explain how mainline churches keep their beautiful buildings open, despite their numbers dwindling as they rush to embrace anti-natalist, pro-sexual revolution doctrines of demons. The pastrix who chastised President Trump for his border policies and clarity on the sexes has secured millions from USAID to run immigration programs to help those the Biden administration allowed into the country to settle in. There was also lots of funding for sketchy progressive evangelical organizations too, responsible for importing all sorts of liberal theology into the church, as journalist Megan Basham has documented well.
Even the Lutheran church is implicated. Rev Fisk collected a few posts documenting church organisations being granted scads of cash:
President Matt Harrison of the LCMS responded in a letter to reports that some Lutheran organizations are currently being audited. Some deservedly so. It is easy to convince yourself that everything you’re doing is valuable and justified when you are spending other people’s money.
Jesus keep us honest and make us good stewards of all that you have given!