Trump, Musk are right to terminate woke USAID

4 hrs ago

Ben Weingarten Federalist Senior Contributor; Claremont Institute Fellow

By Straight Arrow News

Elon Musk came under heavy public criticism after he abruptly and unexpectedly terminated USAID, the United States Agency for International Development. Experts said that the swift termination puts millions of lives in immediate danger around the world, jeopardizes American national security interests at home and abroad and also threatens the integrity of the U.S. domestic agriculture industry, where surplus American food produce is often sold to USAID for global distribution.

Judges, analysts and officials have also widely protested that USAID can only be legally abolished through an act of Congress, not by unilateral executive action, and litigation is now ongoing to resolve those arguments in court.

President Donald Trump and Musk, meanwhile, zeroed in on their desire to dramatically reduce federal budget spending, and have made USAID one of several primary targets for that effort. International aid comprises between 0.4% to 1.4% of the annual U.S. federal budget, down from a high of nearly 5% during the Cold War era. Some of Trump’s allies have also pointed to a handful of DEI-themed initiatives to explain why USAID should be targeted.

Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten argues that abolishing USAID is the right thing to do and says that USAID is “woke.”

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The following is an excerpt from the above video:

More broadly, the Trump administration, in rescinding policies and aggressively issuing new directives, freezing and reviewing funding foreign and domestic, including all funding to NGOs, freezing regulations and freezing and shrinking the federal workforce, is operating like any new executive team would do in taking control of a bloated and failing company. It’s exactly what was promised the American people. In so doing, it is reasserting Americans’ control over a leviathan bureaucracy, that rubber stamp by Congress has put its interests first. It’s exposing for the American people the genuinely detrimental things that a ruling class has been up to on our dime and to its own benefit. What the administration is doing is the least we should ask of our government. That it’s revolutionary speaks volumes about where we’ve been. Nevertheless, the revolution has the potential to radically alter the course of American history by realigning the government with the people, our values and interests, focusing on effectiveness and efficiency, not wokeism and more sinister efforts.

$47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia. One and a half million dollars to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities. $20 million to create an Iraqi Sesame Street. These are just some of the insane boondoggles we’ve been funding by way of USAID, as the White House put it, for decades, the United States Agency for International Development has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous and in many cases malicious pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats with next to no oversight. The boondoggles, in some ways, served to mask the more sinister problems among them are that literally hundreds of millions of dollars in aid have ended up benefiting jihadist groups including Hamas and the Taliban This is to say nothing of the funding to the Eco Health Alliance that ultimately ended up underwriting the efforts at the Wuhan lab that likely led to the leak of the COVID, 19 virus at incalculable cost in blood, treasure and liberty to America and the world. And yet, still, even these outrages divert our gaze from the further corrupt or nefarious efforts that USAID has fueled. For starters, the agency has doled out billions of dollars to contractors, many by the way, located in District, for some of us, a ideas, biggest congressional champions, and NGOs arguably serving as a slush fund for them, two USA ideas allegedly been used to run regime change operations, including perhaps even here at home and other intelligence missions under its diplomatic Cover, on what authority and to what ends we don’t fully know. We may never fully know. All of this begs additional questions that the Trump administration clearly has having chosen to free his foreign assistance, review it to ensure it aligns with the national interest and restructure the quote, unquote independent agency. Just how much waste, fraud and abuse exists in USAID programs. Who is benefiting? Is this an effective tool of soft power? Are the programs genuinely aimed at benefiting the lives of others around the world being administered efficiently, more broadly, the Trump administration in rescinding policies and aggressively issuing new directives, freezing and reviewing funding, foreign and domestic, including all funding to NGOs, freezing regulations and freezing and shrinking the federal workforce is operating like any new executive team would do in taking control of a bloated and failing company. It’s exactly what was promised the American people. In so doing, it is reasserting Americans control over a leviathan bureaucracy that rubber stamp by Congress has put its interests first. It’s exposing for the American people the genuinely detrimental things that a ruling class has been up to on our dime and to its own benefit. What the administration is doing is the least we should ask of our government, that its revolutionary speaks volumes about where we’ve been, nevertheless, the revolution has the potential to radically alter the course of American history by realigning the government with the people our values and interests focusing on effectiveness and efficiency, not wokeism and more sinister efforts. And what a boon that would be for peace and prosperity.