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Someone's wrong on the Radio: Internal contradictions in the narratives on USAID
I was listening to NPR today. The main story seemed to be that Elon Musk's DOGE is seeking to shut down (or severely pare down) USAID, the US Agency for International Development. This would probably not be very interesting to me, except that the NPR narrative made two seemingly conflicting statements within a ten-minute time frame.
"Later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was now the acting administrator of USAID — which has long been an independent body — and that a "review" is underway aimed at the agency's "potential reorganization."
"You know, over the weekend, there were reports of two security officials at USAID who were put on administrative leave for refusing DOGE access to certain systems. Democrats have accused DOGE of inappropriately accessing, you know, classified materials, which the lawmakers are saying they're going to investigate.".
(This is being stated much more unequivocally by other outlets: "The Trump administration has placed two top security chiefs at the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to ...".)
So on the one hand, USAID is described as an independent nonpolitical agency and should not be subsumed into Rubio's State Department. On the other hand, they have troves of classified materials that should not be accessed by staff of another agency. ... Why would an independent body for economic development have classified material? I recognize that I am confused...
So I looked at the Foreign Aid Act of 1961, as amended up to 2024. It looks like amendments are added several times per year, so this is not necessarily up to date, but such is the version of the law which is easy to read, "with amendments." It is 276 pages, so I didn't read more than the first five. Searching for "indep" turns of several uses of the term "independent," but they are for functions of USAID like "support for independent media" and "independent states of the former Soviet Union" (with four hits for "independent audit[or]). So the department isn't "independent" under the law, at least not in those terms.
Surprise surprise, on page 2 or 3 USAID is defined as "Under the policy guidance of the Secretary of State, the agency primarily responsible for administering this part should have the responsibility for coordinating all United States development-related activities," and is headed by an "Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development." There is no mention of whether this is a cabinet-level position. So Rubio taking over as the director of the agency and delegating actual responsibility to someone else appears totally legal, quotes from guests on NPR to the contrary notwithstanding.
Also, USAID is tasked with funding the International Atomic Energy Agency, for "civilian nuclear reactor safety" in former Soviet states, for limiting aid to countries engaged in nuclear weapons development, and for "nonproliferation and export control assistance." So that seems to explain why classified information may be found in its headquarters.
The claims of Elon Musk and NPR actually align on the topic of aid for LGBT causes, with NPR guests stating that the loss of USAID will be a disaster for gender nonbinary people. The MAGA narrative is also supported by the Act when compared to archives of the agency's website: there are only 12 mentions of "gender" in the law, and they are exclusively for "gender-responsive interventions" for HIV/AIDS, for "gender parity in basic education", "performance goals, on a gender disaggregated basis" and for statistics about who has received how much aid, again "disaggregated" by gender. In contrast, USAID's website used to contain pages with text like "USAID proudly joins this government-wide effort with its own commitment to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ people around the world, including members of its own workforce, and supports efforts to protect them from violence, stigma, discrimination, and criminalization.". There is a Trans angle, with text like "In Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, and Nigeria, transgender-led CSOs delivered health services (including transgender-specific health and HIV services), emergency housing, and economic empowerment programs. In Burma and South Africa, the first transgender health center was organized, drawing upon best practice from Thailand." (ibid)
Then there is the pandemic angle, of which I am skeptical, but Musk did retweet that USAID provided $38M in funding to Ben Hu for "bat coronavirus emergence" research from 2014 to September, 2019, from a document which appears to have been obtained under FOIA by the White Coat Waste Project. Ben Hu was a PI with EcoHealth alliance and was previously alleged to be one of the first three Covid patients according to "sources within the government," although an intelligence community report mandated by Congress later denied that any Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists were known to have been among early Covid patients.
If the FOIA document about funding is true, that funding appears to have been outside of its mandate and potentially a misuse of public funds: the only mentions of "pandemic," "epidemic," or "virus" in the Foreign Aid Act concern HIV/AIDS.
I'm left with the impression that Musk and MAGA are being more truthful than NPR, and maybe the Agency does deserve to go into receivership.
You're missing some important context.
It is a
long running conspiracy theoeryopen secret that the Democrats and the CIA have been (are?) in the tank with Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Taliban Et Al. actively working against US/Western interests in the name of "decolonization" and that the primary role of USAID was to "launder" food, fuel, arms, and other forms of material support allocated to these groups while also as serving as a slush fund for various woke causes and NGOs. Ever wonder who was funding all thos migrant caravans? The reason the current administrator presumably doesn't want to turn over the books to Rubio is that is that they don't want the opposition (Ie the MAGA crowd) to know where the proverbial bodies are buried or who to subpoena.See, calling it a "conspiracy theory" would be borderline, but when you literally and explicitly take off the mask and call it an "open secret," you've definitely entered "inflammatory claim that should be proactively supported with evidence." To a lesser degree, same thing goes for the claims about USAID, though we are less worried about inflammatory claims about a US government agency that may or may not be true than your literal assertion that all Democrats are pro-terrorist traitors, which is definitely not true and also something you're saying about people here you are talking to. You can't just say things like that - and if you insist on claiming that yes, it's really true, then bring receipts, and if your claim is as broad as the claim you made, your receipts can't just be "Ilhan Omar" or the latest unhinged screed by a Democrat on Twitter or whoever else you want to point to.
You can absolutely criticize the Democrats, and the CIA, and you can make arguments about how you think both have damaged the interests of the US and the West. But you cannot just say "the Democrats are in the tank with terrorists and working against the US" with no justification beyond what you presume to be a shared consensus.
It gives me no joy to tell people to stop flaming their hated outgroup and then being accused of being "in the tank" for that outgroup myself, but you know better, and frankly, everyone who does this knows better, they just think it shouldn't apply to them when they talk about their outgroup because their outgroup really is that bad.
Is it really that inflammatory? It's not like i claimed that the Democrats are "barely sentient" only that they have aligned themselves with some very bad people against interests of the wider nation.
I am honestly kind of surprised that you find this claim controversial. "Why are we shipping pallets of cash to people who wish us dead, and occasionally act on that wish?" has been a boilerplate Republican talking point since the early 2010s and the reply, when the question has been acknowledged at all, has always been something about "decolonization" and spreading "American values" with the implicit understanding that "American Values" are not things like baseball and apple pie, but rather progressive values.
To that end, I want to emphasize that I do not think that Democrats are stupid. But if we assume that Democrats are not stupid, that begs the question of "what are they actually up to?". What is your theory for why the Biden administration so invested in ensuring that niether the Egyptians nor the Isrealis would be able to see what sort of aid we (the US) were supplying to Gaza? Ive already offered mine.
As for Ilhan Omar, this is someone that the Democratic National Convention has chosen to to be associated with. Hers is a constituency that the DNC has chosen to court. I find the whole "it's just some kids on campus" argument significantly less compelling when the notional "kids" are sitting members of congress. Again, i don't think the Democrats are dumb, so what what they actually up to?
Ps: don't try to claim that the linked comment was never reported, I reported it when it showed up in my inbox.
No, you are not surprised that it's controversial that Democrats hate America and side with terrorists. You are not confused about why you were modded.
If someone dropped inflammatory Democratic rhetoric (eg "Republicans are fascists who want to commit genocide and repeal civil rights for everyone but straight white men") you would not be surprised or find it controversial when I mod them.
Just so we are both on the same page...
You consider a comment dismissing the voting public as "barely sentient" to be uncontriversial and in-keeping with the spirit of theMotte, including the rule about writing like everyone is reading.
But if I cheekily allude to the publicly acknowledged policies of the outgoing administration, or the plain language meanings of statements made by people like Ilhan Omar, Maxine Waters, and Joy Reid, you will moderate me for being inflammatory and uncharitable?
We are not on the same page.
Read the rules, reread them, and then contact the mod team if you have further questions. If you wish to have this particular moderation decision reviewed by other members of the mod team, you may likewise contact the mod team, and someone besides myself will do so.
I've read the rules, I've reread the rules, and I'm pointing out what (to me at least) looks like a disparity in how allegedly inflammatory claims are being treated.
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Source on any of this? Saying the CIA is funding ISIS to sabotage America in the name of decolonization, done through USAID and migrant caravans for the nefarious goal of the subversion of MAGA sounds like a QAnon schizopost that got put through a blender one too many times.
Edit: As always, Hanania says it better than I could.
Erm, I am missing something or the point here being "maybe it's true we're being robbed to the tune of trillions of dollars but I am not willing to discuss this until people that claim that present the evidence in a form that is most fitting to my biases"? If so, this sounds extremely childish and unserious approach.
There's also several issues here, which are related but not the same: 1. Is USAID a CIA-directed (or -influenced) front which is being misrepresented to the public as something it isn't? 2. Is USAID directing aid to causes that the American public would prefer not to finance if it knew? 3. Are those causes and recipients mostly leftist partisan organizations and benefit partisan leftist goals? 4. Are those organizations endorsing the ideology that sees US as evil and helps causes that hurt the US public? 5. Is the CIA selecting such organizations with explicit intent of hurting the US, or just tolerating them for other reasons or maybe thinking they gain "soft power" this way or some other reason?
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I would be very surprised if there was a middle eastern armed group notable enough to get an English name which didn’t receive funding from the US government somehow. ‘CIA money flowed to IS’ is a page five story. Funding armed nuts that turn out not to be our friends is the sort of thing they do all the time.
Sure I can believe this one link in the chain well enough, it's all the other links surrounding it that make it sound like a conspiratorial word-salad. CIA money made it to ISIS... but for "decolonization"? And this is linked to migrant caravans?
Also the claim of "actively working against American interests". Like, yes, obviously the CIA funds all sorts of bad people (e.g. bin Laden) if it thinks that this will serve American goals (e.g. hurting the Soviet Union), and sometimes this blows up in its face (e.g. the World Trade Center), but that's not the same thing as deliberately working against the USA.
I think the CIa serves the CIA’s interest which generally but not always aligns with the US’ interests.
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I beg your pardon, this is not a QAnon "hollywood is harvesting adrenochrome from kids at Jonas Brother's concerts" level of schitzo-posting, this is a reasonably normie-pilled "Epstien didn't kill himself", "covid was developed in a Chinese lab" and "the Biden administration built a peir in Gaza because they didn't want the Isrealis or the Egyptians inspecting the crates" level of schitzo-posting.
I'd assumed it was that they were under a lot of pier pressure.
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I think it's more fair to say that the Democrats are a big tent coalition (like every serious party in a two-party system) of which some member groups have the sympathies you described.
Motte, meet Bailey.
The more qualifiers one adds, the easier it is to defend, and the less significant. At some point it’s just six degrees of Kevin Bacon.
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Do you have anything I can read that can explain what USAID has been accused of and what the evidence is? I never heard of it before now, and I'm very doubtful that googling is going to being up anything useful.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-mast-house-foreign-affairs-chairman-face-the-nation-transcript-02-02-2025/
Rep. Mast brings up what USAID is accused of doing over that interview. I'll isolate the main claims.
and
and
and
As for evidence, I don't know what you expect; it's just people telling us what they see from looking at the organisation. For what it's worth I don't see anyone seriously disputing the claims of the Trump Administration and Republican Party that a lot of the money is mismanaged or sent to causes that don't figure in the mental image the average american has when they think "humanitarian aid", they mostly gesture at the portion that does go to real humanitarian efforts and complain that it's not necessary to cut the aid that is actually used for the intended purpose.
I would be very surprised if that was not because they're convinced that a review without a complete freeze would be ineffectual in stopping the grift.
Wow. Terrible efficiency. All that money, and we didn’t even topple one government?
Not one? Sorry bro, in this house we believe the Arabs didn't Spring themselves.
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I really wish to ask when the vetting process failed such that the vetters were these ideologues to begin with. Is it just that everyone with capability and independent thought left the US civil service because it is a bloated swamp that neither rewards financially or emotionally unless one has the specific temperament? Like I've dealt with other civil services before, and petty power politics and paper pushing bureaucratics protecting their iron rice bowls are common, but never have I encountered a bureaucrat whose mission is to destroy the nation they say they serve. Every functionary will claim that they are True American Patriots, but only the barest gust of wind is necessary to uncover the reality that they wish to create a New America that is in their preferred image instead of preserving an old or existing version of America. At least the corrupt bureaucrats here in Southeast Asia don't pretend to have the interests of the state at heart when they suggestively indicate which midget bar has the most discrete hostesses.
They’re promoting American state ideology abroad. Not at all unusual for empires.
Of course, Blue sees "the rest of the country" the way European colonists do- everything outside their city is foreign land to them. Hence, what they do is trivially derivable from a colonizing power that just so happens to share a government with the colonize-ees; their language ("right side of history", "latinx", land acknowledgements) is perfectly consistent with this outlook, as are their political strategies.
To colonize a government- to save it from itself and those savages- you hollow it out by creating paragovernmental organizations and accomplish the goals that way. Red more famously does this with paramilitary organizations (Blackwater).
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I have some thoughts on that probably deserve a top-level post.
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