When JD Vance was still a senator, in January 2024, he lamented on X: “Until recently, Poland had a conservative government. Using a lot of diplomatic and economic pressure, the Biden administration (and many European nations) attacked that government as anti-democracy. … In the name of protecting democracy, they are using your tax dollars to attack a government that was a great ally of ours.”
One year later, when the new Department of Government Efficiency under the leadership of Elon Musk began auditing the U.S. Agency for International Development in January 2025, the things it exposed sent shockwaves globally. Revelations of millions of dollars in questionable grants—including funds aimed at changing Poland’s government—showed how American taxpayer money was at work in Warsaw.
Poland is a key NATO ally and one of the geopolitical hot spots located between Germany and Russia. Internally, it has long been split by a struggle between a post-communist-liberal coalition and conservative, trans-Atlantic forces centered around the PiS (Law and Justice) Party, which was ousted from power in 2023.
At that time, we already had indications of possible interference by the Joe Biden administration in Poland’s 2023 elections. Biden’s USAID supported the anti-conservative coalition that assumed power in Fall 2023 under Donald Tusk. According to the Polish website money.pl, at least 27 Polish institutions received USAID money in the last five years, mostly for leftist propaganda and anti-PiS activities.
As recently as Wednesday, authors Grzegorz Wierzcholowski and Maciej Kozuszek wrote in Gazeta Polska: “During Joe Biden’s presidency, millions of dollars from American taxpayers were funneled to organizations in Poland.”
In December 2023, two Polish authors published the article “How to Dismantle an Illiberal Democracy” in the Journal of Democracy, maintained by the National Endowment for Democracy, a private grantmaking foundation in the United States.
The article was intended as a roadmap for the fight against conservative forces and presented Poland as a testing ground for radical solutions against the Right: “Populism, however, thrives today all over the world. If we leave its crimes unchecked and unpunished, people all over the world may become even more jaded by politics. This makes the events in Poland all the more important,” it said.
The authors, Karolina Wigura and Jaroslaw Kuisz, are the backbone of the Polish magazine Kultura Liberalna (Liberal Culture), which is funded by USAID.
Mike Benz, a former U.S. State Department official highlighted the United States’ interference in Polish politics on the “Joe Rogan Experience,” stating, “This did a great job of altering the election. They create a capacity to do black propaganda, economic sabotage, and demolition. And the American people can’t find out.”
Interestingly, the most frequent American author in Kultura Liberalna was Anne Applebaum, wife of Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski and co-author of Tusk’s book “The Choice.” The magazine published 12 interviews with her and promoted her work extensively.
Today, both Tusk and Sikorski present themselves as trustworthy political partners for Donald Trump. In actuality, they oppose the ideals, values, and policies the Trump administration holds regarding Poland, NATO, and Europe.
During the 2023 parliamentary campaigns, Tusk called Trump a Russian agent while Sikorski wrote on X, “Trump. Putin’s man in the White House.” And Applebaum’s article about the U.S. presidential campaign comparing Trump to Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, completes the picture.
In 2021, Rafal Trzaskowski, Warsaw’s mayor and widely regarded as Poland’s most “woke” politician and now Civic Platform Party’s presidential candidate, launched Campus Polska, an annual event that has become the largest anti-PiS gathering in Poland. The event’s tone was laid bare at its latest edition in August, where a charged-up crowd, animated by current Minister of Sport Slawomir Nitras, shouted, “F**k the PiS!” which became the informal motto of the event.
Among the partners of the anti-conservative event were several nongovernmental organizations supported by USAID, including George Soros’ Open Society, the European Democracy Youth Network, Kultura Liberalna, and the Marxist Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique) magazine.
Another example of direct interference in the Polish election campaign was the Latarnik Wyborczy (Election Lighthouse) magazine, which didn’t merely conduct voter education but pushed to skew the process toward liberal left-wing parties. Today, we know that the Election Lighthouse was funded by USAID and the German Marshall Fund.
USAID also supported the Election Travel Office website, which encouraged a practice of “election tourism.” The strategy was clever: If the “right” group of voters cast their ballots in districts other than where they were originally registered, it could boost the anti-conservative opposition candidates. This effort got a big push from opposition-friendly media.
Additionally, Biden’s U.S. ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, aligned with the post-communist-liberal coalition, which was seen as endorsing this shift away from the conservative PiS Party, especially as the new left-wing government took authoritarian steps like the illegal takeover of public media.
The aftermath of the 2023 Polish elections reveals a grim picture: Conservative voices face legal threats, signaling a post-Soviet governing style over a democratic bloom. A push for “woke” ideologies clashes with Poland’s traditional common sense, eroding its cultural core. And the new government’s ties to Russia and China raise red flags about national security, hinting at a shift from Poland’s historic stance against communism.
The intervention in Poland’s election wasn’t about promoting democracy but reshaping Polish society in line with the liberal American establishment.
American Democrats benefited greatly: They gained a submissive NATO ally to counter Trump’s influence, they weakened conservative forces across Europe, and they likely facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars in climate and tech contracts in Poland for Democrat-friendly U.S. corporations.
While the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act’s $369 billion funds clean energy projects in the U.S., it has spurred U.S. clean tech companies—such as NextEra Energy, General Motors, and Albemarle Corporation, which donated over $4 million to Democrats in 2024—to invest in Poland’s green energy transition, boosting Democratic fundraising and policy agendas ahead of the 2024 U.S. elections.
While questions about the legitimacy of the current government in Warsaw remain open, the new American administration should investigate the overthrow of the most pro-American ally in Europe.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
Author
