It’s been less than a month since President Trump reentered the Oval Office and he is already moving on his campaign promise to slash wasteful and reckless foreign spending; one of his largest targets: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Hundreds of protestors are rallying in Washington D.C. to protest Trump’s efforts to dismantle the federal agency where billions of taxpayer dollars are siphoned off to foreign countries every single year under the guise of “saving lives” and “peace and justice.”
In an effort to stay relevant, Democrat lawmakers are marching against what they see as a dictatorship of billionaires stripping Americans of their rights…by shutting down a government agency that does anything but help American citizens in their times of need.
“We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk,” declared Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) while protesting outside of the USAID Headquarters.
Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) fed into the Left’s status quo fear mongering: “What’s happening to USAID is against the law. It’s flatly illegal, and it is dangerous to Americans at home and abroad.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) also took part in some saber-rattling: “In the building behind me, Elon Musk is seizing power from the American people! We are here to fight back!”
Money For All, Except You
If it is against the wishes of the Democrat party, it must be a “threat to democracy.” Let’s take a glimpse into what sorts of discrete projects our unelected bureaucrats have been committing our taxpayer dollars to throughout the world:
- $1.5 million to promote DEI in Serbia,
- $70,000 to put on a single DEI musical in Ireland,
- $32,000 through the State Department for a LGBT-themed comic book in Peru,
- $51.3 million to encourage tolerance and “community resilience” in Pakistan,
- $73 million for children’s reading programs in Senegal,
- $7.8 million to study flavored cigarette use in LGBT and minority smokers,
- $118.6 million to buy billions of male condoms for 60 foreign countries, and
- $44.8 million for undisclosed purposes overseas.
While this is only a sample of what USAID and the federal government as a whole have committed to funding in recent years, it is barely the tip of the iceberg. With additional millions of dollars going to nonprofits linked to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the federal government’s ceaseless spending shows just how much politicians prioritize the interests of foreign nations—and even those who hate us—over the needs of American citizens.
This internal audit reveals another uncomfortable reality; something that the legacy media would rather stay hidden: the federal government has been awarding millions of taxpayer dollars to American news companies. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; the Biden administration often colluded with media companies during the Pandemic to stifle free speech. It appears the government has continued to exercise soft influence over our news sources years after, that is, until Trump put a stop to it.
So much for a free and fair press.
The Free Press Is In the Government’s Pocket
Records show how the left-leaning newspaper Politico swept up around $8.2 million in state-sponsored awards after the federal government purchased hundreds of subscriptions to Politico Pro, a b2b service which offers, “non-partisan, real-time intelligence personalized to their area of policy focus.” Per online reports, these subscriptions could cost upwards of $10,000 each.
It appears media giant The Associated Press has also been taking funds from our government, netting hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years. Who knows exactly how much news agencies have been receiving from unelected bureaucrats, and for what purposes?
Media entities have been receiving taxpayer dollars while openly subverting free and open discourse on modern speech forums like YouTube, various internet sites, and more recently X. With a palpable Leftist bias which has been honed to perfect the art of fearmongering, moving the goal posts, demonizing political opponents, and shaming others for inconvenient opinions, the fact that prominent American news networks have been receiving funds from the government with barely any oversight only twists the knife deeper.
This doesn’t bode well for legacy media’s public image either. Only 31% of Americans trust legacy media a great deal or a fair amount; this number will likely drop to new lows with each new DOGE report on bureaucratic corruption and reckless spending on anything but American issues.
With tens of millions of taxpayer dollars siphoned overseas for gender programs and humanitarian end which inevitably ends up in the hands of terrorists, and hundreds of thousands more gifted to domestic news giants, American citizens continue to suffer from the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene, the East Palestine chemical spill, and the Maui fires. Even the residents of Flint, Michigan are still reeling from the failure which was the Obama EPA. Who bothered to help them while USAID sent millions out of the country?
Change is Coming, But Are We Ready?
Establishment media want Americans to believe that Trump is executing a “hostile takeover” of our country. Meanwhile in reality, there is now a conscious effort by those in power to offer more transparency on the neglectful and disastrous spending waste which robbed Americans of much needed aid for years on end—why else would legacy media, career politicians, and establishment pundits push back so hard?
While the usual suspects hem and haw, threaten the end of democracy as we know it, and cry out against an imagined fascistic regime that dares to put money back into Americans’ pockets, change is coming, and the status quo of uncontested legislative pork and questionable foreign investments will hopefully go the way of the dinosaur and leave room for a new government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
USAID was just the beginning; there’s still more fat to trim.
<img alt="Image from Grok" captext="Grok” src=”https://conservativenewsbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/shutting-down-usaid-is-only-the-first-step-to-cutting-government-pork.jpg”>
Image from Grok.
