America's Talking - ‘Illegal Takeover’ of USAID Operations by Trump, Musk Draws Ire From Democrats

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

(The Center Square) – Foreign aid has become the newest target of the Department of Government Efficiency, with President Donald Trump reportedly planning to merge the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with the State department. Trump has already made Secretary of State Marco Rubio the acting administrator of USAID and halted the agency’s work via a foreign funding freeze, moves Democratic lawmakers say amount to an “illegal takeover.” The changes follow DOGE leader Elon Musk’s social media announcements over the weekend that Trump is planning on dismantling USAID entirely, a claim that Rubio dismissed Monday when he told reporters that the goal is “not about ending the programs that USAID does per se,” but rather ensuring it operates in a responsible, America-centric way.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx  Full story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_a2810fa0-e25d-11ef-ae2b-7be3a0f08321.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. The scrutiny of U.S. government spending heightened this week after President Trump's new Department of Government efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk started revealing all of the questionable foreign grants approved by the U.S. Agency for International Development or U.S. aid. joining me to discuss this today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, multi-million dollar grants paid for by U.S. taxpayers for DEI programs in Asia, South America, and elsewhere, tens of millions of dollars winding up in the hands of terrorists in the Middle East because of the lack of oversight by U.S.Aid.

We could go on and on. What's going on here? Well, what's going on here is just this has been business as usual, not just at U.S.Aid, but at these other federal agencies. You know, Dan, we've talked about it on this, this podcast, and at the center square.com, we've covered just kind of the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse that's been present at these agencies for so long. When you see these headlines, they seem so silly that you think, oh, this must be some kind of conservative propaganda, things about, you know, funding transgenderism and some totally impoverished, you know, central or South American country. But it's pretty, it's pretty much true. And not just the USA, I think this,

the examination of this kind of spending is going to continue. I mean, one of the main priorities of the State Department, for instance, is to push the LGBTQ, et cetera, agenda around the world in the name of human rights. I mean, this is not a tertiary or fringe agenda for the State Department. It's a core goal of the State Department to push the LGBT agenda. So when we start opening up that State Department funding, it's going to be really interesting to see. And other agencies, because of the total buy-in on DEI, have followed suit. But when it comes to USA, I mean, they're a big pipeline for funds to go to, you know, all over, all over the world.

So there's a few things happening here. One, sometimes the people receiving this money are just not the people who should be receiving it, whether it's terrorists, like, you know, Hamas getting a hold of grant money. And the reason that happens, not just Hamas, but other terror groups, is because they're so in control of these countries. It's like the mafia. I mean, if you build a nice new grocery store in a middle of a mafia's territory, then all of a sudden, the mafia comes knocking on your door. And guess what? Now you have to pay them for protection or whatever. So it's the same of these terror countries.

It's very difficult for the money not to end up in their hands, especially when you're as careless as the U.S. has been. And then when you combine that with some of the far left, you know, progressive gender and racial ideology, all of a sudden, more and more of the funding in the name of human rights. and equality is going to sort of stomach churning policies for Americans, whether it's the transgender issues in these different countries or it's the NIH, as I've reported, the National Institute of Health, instead of researching cures, researching, you know, racism and its effect on health. I mean, it's rampant throughout the government, and it's sort of a reckoning day of judgment for those agencies. Casey, it's not as if we don't have plenty of problems here in the U.S. homelessness has been on the rise for years. We've had these huge, huge

national disasters over the last couple years, hurricanes on the East Coast, the wildfires in California, I could go on and on there. Yet Democrats are being highly, let some elected Democrats anyway, are being highly critical of the scrutiny over U.S. aid and other spending overseas by the federal government. I just, I don't get it. Yeah, I mean, you have to understand it's, it is part of the gospel that is acceptable. by the federal bureaucrats here who've embraced a total, just a total liberal agenda. They believe that America's history is essentially evil, that we have a moral obligation

to help the rest of the world, to basically impoverish ourselves to help with the rest of the world because we built our country on slavery and colonialism. And so what right do we have to even have this money? And, you know, the way that they think that we, you know, they spread that gospel, as they would think of it as almost a religious idea, is by their, creating their version of racial and gender ideology all around the world. And so they're very committed to it. They're very organized. They have a lot of funding behind it, you know, just from private groups. But now even the federal government, because it's basically been institutional

capture where these large federal agencies have been almost entirely taken over by, you know, liberal federal bureaucrats. Part of that is this the Obama era. Part of that is just the kind of person who wants to be a federal employee and thinks that's a good job. It's just, more likely to be liberal. It's not necessarily a big conspiracy. It's just a personality-traded kind of person who thinks that processing grants for nonprofits is like an exciting job is just more likely to have gone to Berkeley and has a view that's far more liberal than the rest of the country. There's a lot of things happening here. But the end result is, as there's been a lot of reporting, you know, $2 million for transgender comic book in Peru, you know, paying millions for media in Cuba

sending money to the BBC, you know, millions, I even Politico Pro or Sesame Street in Iraq. The defenders of USA have been quick to try to pick apart these examples. And I think some on the right have been kind of sloppy with how they've thrown these out. Because sometimes when you look into it, it's like, well, it wasn't exactly all the money for this program. There was maybe an $8 million grant for this. And a portion of the money went to this highly controversial thing. So sometimes they're not quite specific. But by and large, I mean, I've been covering this long enough to know that, you know, I wasn't

surprised at all by these things because I've been covering different instances and different examples for many years. Casey, U.S. national debt is at 36, nearly 36.5 trillion dollars. Financial watchdogs, economists have been warning for years that the U.S. needs to curb its spending. Another thing that President Trump has done is offer buyouts to federal employees to try and cut the federal workforce, but a judge on Thursday, just yesterday, put that on pause after lawsuits challenged it. What's next there? Yeah, I mean, many of, you know, Trump came in with these sweeping orders.

Many of them may be challenged in court. But I think what, I think Trump is a good chance because he's much more organized this time around. He has good lawyers around him. He's really thought these things through. While he may riff off the cuff off the cuff at the press conference, when you look at the executive orders, they're very, you know, they're thorough. When you read the defenses for them, you know, there's a much.

been a couple that are probably too far and are not going to survive, but by and large, they seem pretty tailored, pretty thought through, pretty focused. Like they were written, you know, not after he came in office, written before he came into office. I'll say that. And so I think he, you know, he faces a good shot that on legally, but he's going to have to fight these out. And even if he wins, that is going to delay his agenda. But I think that's part of the reason he's moving so quickly now. He's flooding the zone. A lot of these are going to slip through, the ones that get challenged, at least the battle is starting now. And I think he has a decent chance in fighting a lot of these and winning the cases.

Casey, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.