America’s foreign aid programs have often failed to place U.S. interests first, or have even worked contrary to U.S. interests, according to The Daily Signal’s Tyler O’Neil, author of “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”
“The Left’s dark money network has deep ties to [the United States Agency for International Development],” which has rightly received renewed scrutiny under [the Department of Government Efficiency] and after Elon Musk shined a light on it,” O’Neil said while testifying Wednesday before the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency.
The House panel’s hearing, titled “America Last: How Foreign Aid Undermined U.S. Interests Around the World,” examined the use of taxpayer funds, which the subcommittee’s chairwoman, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., says USAID has misused to further left-wing ideologies abroad.
“The Democrat-run USAID should not get to use our federal government, our U.S. taxpayer dollars, as their party piggy bank to push their radical agenda in countries that we have no business giving money to,” Greene said in her opening statement.
The government has forced the “American people to pay for the demise of their own country,” Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, said at Wednesday’s hearing.
“We’ve seen this a number of times, especially in how foreign aid is treated, and much of this funding, we’re realizing now, as Mr. O’Neil has pointed out, we’re uncovering is the world’s largest money laundering scheme in history.”
While U.S. aid has been funneled into leftist causes, such as the promotion of abortion around the world, Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., says that had taken resources away from other efforts, such as “funding that was supposed to be helping people with AIDS.”
O’Neil calls this leftist agenda-driven allocation of resources a direct result of the of the “Left’s dark money network.”
O’Neil’s complete opening statement detailing the “Left’s dark money network” follows:
Chairwoman Greene, members of the subcommittee, the last few weeks have featured revelation after revelation of how our tax dollars have been spent propping up radical left-wing causes across the world. Yet what struck me about the abuse of foreign aid has been the connections with leftist activists here at home.
As a senior editor at The Daily Signal, I researched the Left’s dark money network, which propped up the influence campaign I expose in my book, “The Woketopus.” I found that leftist elites prop up [nongovernmental organizations] that staffed and advised the Biden administration, pushing unpopular policies on the American people through the bureaucracy.
In my remarks, I will present three examples of how the Left’s dark money network intersects with just one agency focused on foreign aid, the U.S. Agency for International Development. The views I will express in this testimony are my own.
The Left’s dark money network features George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, the Tides Foundation, and the network of nonprofits established by Arabella Advisors.
These groups, which you can see on this chart, funnel cash to DEI, transgender, and climate alarmist causes, divisive issues that the Biden administration prioritized over addressing the concrete needs of the American people.
The Left’s dark money network has deep ties to USAID, which has rightly received renewed scrutiny under DOGE and after Elon Musk shined a light on it.
While the Open Society Foundations has stated that it does not receive funds from USAID or direct USAID’s spending, the Soros-founded nonprofit has a long history with USAID. In 2001, the Soros Foundations Network, which became Open Society, listed USAID among its donor partners. Open Society and USAID have jointly funded the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a news outlet that attacked conservatives for, you guessed it, criticizing Soros.
Open Society and USAID also jointly fund the East West Management Institute. Among other things, the institute launched court changes in Albania that critics allege resulted in the prosecution of Albanian opposition leader Sali Berisha, silencing the opponent of the country’s socialist prime minister.
Open Society has hired at least five former USAID staff, including at least one high-level official who worked at USAID providing services amid political transitions in foreign countries. Former USAID Administrator Samantha Power met at least twice with Open Society leaders. USAID has directly funded a different organization in the Left’s dark money network, the Tides Center.
The agency has awarded more than $27 million in grants to the center. You’ll find the Tides Foundation right here. The Tides Center has funded many of the leftist groups that influenced the Biden administration, and it also operates its own in-house nonprofit called Palestine Legal, which represents anti-Israel rioters in court and gives them legal advice.
Former USAID staff have also gone on to work for Arabella Advisors, which is a for-profit company that set up pass-through nonprofits. These groups allow donors to support specific projects without being associated with these projects. One of the nonprofits, New Venture Fund, set up a secretive group called Governing for Impact.
Even though Governing for Impact had existed for barely two years and did not appear in a Google search at the time, its leaders met with and advised top staff in the Biden administration, executive-level bureaucrats who oversaw the vast federal bureaucracy.
Leaders of The Rockefeller Foundation, another funder in the Left’s dark money network, previously held roles at USAID, including the former administrator, who now serves as the foundation’s president.
Other USAID staff have gone on to work at the nonprofits that staffed and advised the Biden administration, including the Center for American Progress, the Human Rights Campaign, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Personnel is policy, and these connections between the Left’s influence campaign on the Biden administration and USAID reveal how woke elites have captured the enterprise of foreign aid.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
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