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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35681 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Reuters (with links to documents): Trump’s foreign aid freeze stops anti-fentanyl work in Mexico

All of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) programs in Mexico are currently halted due to the funding freeze, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. These programs focus heavily on dismantling the fentanyl supply chain, according to State Department budget documents reviewed by Reuters. Their activities include training Mexican authorities to find and destroy clandestine fentanyl labs and to stop precursor chemicals needed to manufacture the illicit drug from entering Mexico.

In Mexico, INL also donates drug-detecting canines that helped Mexican authorities seize millions of fentanyl pills in 2023 alone, according to a March 2024 INL report.

“By pausing this assistance, the United States undercuts its own ability to manage a crisis affecting millions of Americans," said Dafna H. Rand, former director of the Office of Foreign Assistance at the State Department from 2021 to 2023. “U.S. foreign assistance programs in Mexico are countering the fentanyl supply chain by training local security services and ensuring maximum U.S.-Mexican cooperation in the fight against this deadly drug.”

...

Through INL projects, the U.S. partners with Mexican authorities operating on the counternarcotics frontline, including the military, prosecutors and police. Beyond narcotics, INL in Mexico also provides support to combat illegal migration and human smuggling.

Hundreds of projects covering billions of dollars in assistance around the world came to a halt, including much of INL’s work globally, after Trump on January 20 ordered a freeze on most U.S. foreign aid, saying he wanted to ensure the spending was aligned with his "America First" policy.

While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued waivers for what he called “life-saving humanitarian assistance” to be exempt from the freeze, aid workers and U.N. staff have said most of the programs remain shut and that confusion persists as to what is or isn’t permissible.

One source familiar with the situation said the administration was considering a waiver to permit funding for some foreign anti-narcotics programs, but it wasn't clear if INL’s Mexico projects were among them. Two of the sources said INL’s Mexico projects have not at present been given exemptions.

The funding freeze really seems to have generated many foreseeable problems. This one seems to go pretty directly against the administration's stated policy goals, and I'm having trouble coming up with good defenses of it:

It should have been done by the DEA, not the State Department? Setting aside whether or not this would have been organizationally superior, the way to correct the error of having this be done by the State Department would be to transfer the INL to the DEA... which is apparently not being done.

The administration couldn't have expected this to be done by the State Department, not the DEA, setting aside which is organizationally superior? This would be tacitly conceding their incompetence, and they haven't fixed the problem, despite now being aware of it.

We shouldn't be devote resources to combating drug trafficking on the other side of the border, on principle? Mexico could just as easily say that international drug trafficking is a problem of the recipient country's making, since the recipient country is the one with illicit demand, so Mexico has the principled reason to not devote resources to it.

Anyone have better ideas?

These posts are tiresome. Are you going to continue to post each one you can find? It is clear the strategy implemented. It has some pluses and has some minuses. Everyone understands the blunt force approach would be over inclusive but harder to game and faster to implement.

We get it that you don’t like it, but simply posting “here is another thing I don’t like about the freeze” from sources ideologically against the freeze would be akin to me posting “here is another waste of your tax dollars” from the DOGE.

The outcome of the freeze will be measured in the coming years; not days. But will you come back and check to see if there was any more fentanyl in the US in the next year to see if your “chicken little” story comes to fruition? Or are you just finding stories to try to discourage the blunt force approach?

Are you going to continue to post each one you can find?

If there are more which I think are interesting and CW-y. Also note that the top level comment below this is me pointing out the conspicuous lack of intervention at the BATFE, despite that being an agency that commits a whole lot of fuckery that could legitimately be stopped by executive order.

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