By Michael Woyton
Seems the only way to justify getting rid of a governmental organization is to make up stuff about it.
That is what the felon-in-chief’s administration continues to do about the United States Agency for International Development, which helps people all around the world.
Within the past couple of weeks, the Musk-purchased administration has systemically been dismantling the agency that oversees “global efforts to improve health and education and decrease poverty and hunger,” NPR reported.
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First there was a stop-work order, which ended nearly all USAID programs “pending a 90-day review.”
Then there were layoffs and a shutdown of its website followed by almost the entire staff of 13,000 people put on administrative leave.
President Musk on Monday tweeted “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
The agency, whose budget is less than 1 percent of the federal budget, was set up in the early 1960s and has bases in more than 60 countries, though it works in more, according to reporting by the BBC.
“The range of activities it undertakes is vast,” the BBC said. “For example, not only does USAID provide food in countries where people are starving, it also operates the world’s gold-standard famine detection system, which uses data analysis to try to predict where food shortages are emerging.”
What was also stopped by the adjudicated rapist were programs that support 20 million people on lifesaving HIV treatments and humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip, NBC News reported.
Samantha Power was the USAID administrator during the Biden administration. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, she called the agency’s shutdown “one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in U.S. history.”
She said she was not surprised that the actions are being cheered in Beijing and Moscow.
“They understand what those seeking to dismantle the agency are desperate to hide from the American people: U.S.A.I.D. has become America’s superpower in a world defined by threats that cross borders and amid growing strategic competition.”
Powers said it set the stage for China “to become the partner of choice around the world” instead of the U.S.
In trying to justify eliminating USAID, the mayor of Mar-a-Lago’s administration claims that there are “massive” amounts of wasteful spending.
The Washington Post analyzed 12 examples issued in a news release that found that only one was accurate, with the remaining 11 either false, misleading, dubious or lacking context.
Among the ones found to be wrong were $70,000 for a DEI musical production in Ireland, $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt and $2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam.
The Post said that the examples were “plucked from the websites of right-wing media,” but the numbers that were cited “hardly justify the claim that these are ‘massive sums’ of money. In fact, they are so low that some of the funds appear to have been awarded at the ambassador level, without Washington involvement.”
So lies continue to be used by the felon-in-chief and his co-president Musk to justify tearing apart an agency established by Congress.
Lawsuits are being discussed by USAID employees and contractors that could bring to light the constitutional claims by someone who, yes, received a majority of the popular vote, but only barely and certainly not enough to justify a mandate.
Unfortunately, the longer it takes a lawsuit to work its way through the system the more damage will be done around the world and to our country’s reputation.
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