My cover is blown. Decades ago, in my naïve and rambunctious (not) college years, I was apparently a low-ranking member of a vast criminal conspiracy.

 

That’s right. Between my junior and senior years, I worked a summer job as a secretary-typist with the reviled United States Agency for International Development (USAID). What can I say? I was only 18 and not yet attuned to the subtle tells typically attributed to international criminal organizations.

 

My office’s front was the promotion, via books and conferences, of the lowly winged bean as a rich food source that was also nitrogen-fixing and thus good for the soil. I’ll never know, I guess, what the real agenda was, but it must have been something to do with turning citizens into left-wing destroyers of Western Civilization while embezzling barrels of money. It surely couldn’t have had anything to do with the desperate poverty and mass starvations of the 1970s, could it? Mea culpa.

 

Timeline of the USAID Shutdown

On Sunday night, February 2, President Trump ordered a complete shutdown of USAID, a federal organization established under President Kennedy in 1961. In so doing, he abruptly shut down critical and life-saving aid programs while ordering all USAID personnel to return immediately to U.S. soil. The USAID website was deactivated early the next day, and it remains offline as of this writing (February 20, 2025).

 

Within days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was insisting that emergency food programs, medical services and military aid to Egypt and Israel would be exempted. Waivers would have to be granted for any exemption. According to some sources, the granting of waivers began almost immediately, although some employees report receiving a February 10 email instructing them to refrain from granting any more waivers pending further notice.

 

In the ensuing two weeks, there has been a series of accusations and counteraccusations, and the story is far from over. In this article, I’d like to review some of the more serious accusations that have been made.

 

On Thursday night, February 13, a federal judge ordered the administration to temporarily restore all USAID funding and to conduct a detailed review before canceling any programs.

 

A running timeline of the events leading up to the court decision can be seen in this article from Forbes.

 

The abrupt shutdown of USAID was foreshadowed by a series of tweets from President Trump and Elon Musk in the preceding days.

 

Before February 2025, Elon Musk almost never posted comments on USAID. Suddenly, on February 2, he issued a series of posts on X, calling it “a vipers nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” and “evil.”

 

For instance, on that day, Musk tweeted, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

 

After the agency was shut down, Musk boasted, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

 

Most of Musk’s posts about USAID (over 160 as of February 7) were reposts of a handful of shady accounts such as “Wall Street Apes,” “Kanekoa the Great,” “Chief Nerd” and “Autism Capital.”

 

Four days later, President Trump posted:

 

A Flood of Accusations

In recent weeks, an impressive assortment of accusations have been hurled at the agency, ostensibly to justify the shutdown. Most, but not all, are clearly false.

 

The following are but a sample. As of this writing, several listed below, though untrue, remain on the White House website, “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep,” posted on February 3, 2025.

 

CLAIM: $70,000 for the production of a DEI musical in Ireland.

 

Source: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, February 3, 2025

 

FALSE. The U.S. State Department supported a musical event at the U.S. Embassy in Dublin on September 15, 2022. USAID had nothing to do with it. Source.

 

CLAIM: “$47,000 for a Transgender Opera in Colombia.”

 

Source: Karoline Leavitt, February 3, 2025

 

FALSE. The U.S. State Department provided funding for an opera that included a transgender protagonist, performed on April 28, 2022. Again, this had nothing to do with USAID. Source.

 

CLAIM: “$32,000 for a transgender Comic Book in Peru.”

 

Source: Karoline Leavitt, February 3, 2025

 

FALSE. In 2021, the U.S. Embassy in Peru supported a comic book called “The Power of Education” that included a gay (not transgender) character. Again, USAID had nothing to do with it. Source.

 

CLAIM: “$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces.”

 

Source: Karoline Leavitt, February 3, 2025

 

TRUE. From February 2023 to October 2024, USAID provided funding of $1.5 million for a three-year program to improve the inclusion of LGBTA people in the workplace. Source.

 

CLAIM: Politico, a left-wing news site, received $8.1 million from USAID.

 

Source: Kyle Becker, a former Fox News producer, repeated by Benny Johnson, who called it “the biggest scandal in news media history.”

 

FALSE. In 2023 and 2024, individuals within USAID spent a total of $44,000 on two subscriptions to E&E, an energy and environment publication produced by Politico, LLC. The remainder of the $8.1 million came from other government agencies either for subscriptions to E&E or for access to its policy intelligence platform, Politico Pro. Source.

 

CLAIM: USAID funded the Evangelical magazine Christianity Today to the tune of $1.8 million.

 

Source: Megan Basham, picked up by Blaze Media and spread by many.

 

FALSE. This figure appears on Christianity Today’s Form 990, filed in 2023. As explained by Timothy Dalrymple, the amount represents an Employee Retention Tax Credit, a program instituted by President Trump in 2020 as a COVID relief measure. A tax credit is, as the name indicates, a credit against taxes due. Christianity Today never received a dime of federal grant money. Source.

 

CLAIM: Chelsea Clinton raked in $84 million from USAID.

 

Source: Alan Jacoby on “X.”

 

FALSE. Chelsea Clinton has received nothing from USAID. In 2019, under President Trump, USAID granted $7.5 million to the Clinton Foundation’s Health Access Initiative to fund health services in Zambia. Source.

 

CLAIM: Samantha Power earned $23 million as USAID chief.

 

Source: Elon Musk reposting an anonymous poster on “X,” who was reposting another anonymous poster claiming without evidence that Power’s net worth increased by that amount in four years. Musk’s post has recorded almost 25 million views.

 

FALSE. Federal records show that Samantha Power was paid an annual salary of $183,100 while serving as administrator of USAID. Source.

 

CLAIM: “$2 million for sex changes and ‘LGBT activism’ in Guatemala.”

 

Source: The White House.

 

PARTIALLY TRUE. In 2024, the USAID awarded a $2 million grant to Asociacion Lambda, a Guatemalan LGBTQ advocacy group. Only $350,000 has actually been disbursed as of this writing, according to USASpending.Gov.

 

CLAIM: “$6 million to fund tourism in Egypt.”

 

Source: The White House.

 

FALSE. The White House’s claim links to a 2019 (First Trump administration) press release announcing a $6 million assistance agreement to spur economic development in the Northern Sinai, which adjoins Israel. There is no mention of tourism. Source.

_____________________________

 

So, most of the accusations have been not merely false but egregiously so. The problem has been compounded by a general gullibility and lack of discernment that is deeply troubling.

 

The evidence presented supports no prima facie case for the extermination of a government agency without Congressional action. However, this matter is evolving rapidly. The Trump initiative is facing several court challenges that will almost certainly affect the eventual outcome.

 

Conclusions

• Most of the accusations are false and utterly unsupported.
• Some particular claims regarding LGBTQ activism are merited, but these were not done in the shadows. Promoting LGBTQ causes overseas was a stated objective of the Biden administration within days of his inauguration. He issued a sweeping directive ordering all American agencies operating abroad to promote LGBTQ causes. From that perspective, it was inevitable that USAID would comply. If President Trump expects agencies to honor his directives, then he cannot logically blame them for honoring the directives of his predecessor.
• There has been no evidence to justify an emergency shutdown of international relief services.