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Notes -
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.
Note that the entire concept of an "independent" agency does not make sense under Constitutional theory or a theory of actual democracy. If it's "independent" ... who then holds it accountable to the public (democratic) interest? How does this foot with the "full executive power" clause that puts executive power under the President's chain-of-command.
It's simple really, you don't live in a constitutional republic but in a managerial state where a conglomeration of organizations with various levels of ties to the State interlock in a bureaucracy that produces "government" and is usually called "democracy".
The President is but a cog in this complex machine. And so are elections. The EU works this way as well, and so does most of the West. The banking system is setup this way (FATCA, FED, etc), foreign policy is setup this way, pretty much everything is setup this way, even the army to some degree. As this conglomeration of NGOs, QUANGOs, private enterprises and government departments with various degrees of control over each other but a great deal of insulation from political control (this is usually called "independence").
When people talk about the "deep state", this is who they mean.
Exactly so.
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"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. "
Congress's power: "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."
So Congress raises the money, puts it in the treasury, and gives the executive branch authorization to spend it. It never says the executive has to spend it. And "executive power" means the ability to hire and fire, to give orders, to fire people if they don't follow those orders, to suspend payments if a department is squandering the money, to audit the books etc. That is what the executive in any organization does.
It sounds like you think the President is vestigal organ that shouldn't exist. In your view, Congress establishes civil service rules that controls personnel and management of an agency, Congress controls the budget, the President has no power whatsoever. And indeed, that's how the government actually has been running the past 70 years, but that's not how the Constitution was designed. In reality, I think the Constitution was intentionally or unintentionally flexible about which branch of government is Supreme. But Congress and the bureaucracy lost the mandate of heaven, and Trump and Elon are attempting to acquire it.
DOGE is Obama's U.S. digital service renamed, it is authorized to help make all government departments more efficient, and it reports directly to the Chief of Staff who reports to the President. Additionally, the DOGE team members embedded in agencies report to that agency head. Read here: https://x.com/RenzTom/status/1887038876000079945
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