End the Aid Charade

A reevaluation of foreign assistance programs and an America First policy directive to Secretary of State Marco Rubio were among the 46 executive orders President Trump put his Sharpie to on Inauguration Day.

Section 2 of the ”America First Policy Directive to Secretary Rubio” states,

As soon as practicable, the Secretary of State shall issue guidance bringing the Department of State’s policies, programs, personnel, and operations in line with an America First foreign policy, which puts America and its interests first.

Trump’s order on foreign assistance mandates a now widely reported on “90-day pause” on foreign development assistance, during which time  a determination will be made by the director of the Office of Management and Budget (which by that time will likely be the eminently sensible Russ Vought) together with the responsible department heads as to whether or not the administration will “continue, modify, or cease” these assistance programs. At a White House briefing on Tuesday, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the pause is “about being good stewards of tax dollars.”

Perhaps so.

Yet chaos has reigned in the days since the orders were signed thanks to the intercession of a Biden-appointed judge in US District Court in Washington, DC who put a hold on the order until February 3. Following that, the White House has compounded the confusion by issuing and then rescinding a memo from OMB relating to the freeze. Leavitt, however, insists that the EOs on federal funding will “remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.” 

Got that?

Well, if the rollout has been less than stellar, the larger point the administration is making is unmistakable. These orders are also in line with a number of bills that have been introduced by congressional Republicans in recent years. This past October, Florida’s Republican Rep. Greg Steube introduced the Securing Taxpayer Assistance during Natural Disasters (STAND) Act, which would suspend US foreign assistance during the first 60 days of a Presidentially declared disaster. Prior to that, in August 2023, five congressmen associated with the House Freedom Caucus introduced H.R.5108 which sought to abolish the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The authors of the bill accused USAID of meddling in “local elections, promoting the interests of ‘women, youth, and other traditionally marginalized groups’ ahead of the interests of the other nations’ citizenry” and called for the agency’s abolition. 

Washington being what it is, the bill went nowhere.

So Trump’s recent EOs are a step in the right direction; they are certainly in keeping with the president’s campaign promise of crafting a more America-centric foreign policy. 

But for real change to happen, the Trump administration will have to also take on the nexus of federally funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have been weaponized to foment regime change around the globe. Such operations, funded at taxpayer expense, are often laundered through NGOs that claim to exist in order to promote democracy, free speech, and independent media outlets overseas.

The Trump administration should begin a series of audits on these programs with an eye toward dismantling for good the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department’s Center for Global Engagement. Federally funded and ostensibly “independent” NGOs, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House and the Millennium Challenge Corporation should likewise be defunded.

For too long, NGOs have been tools of the national security bureaucracy, fronts by which we interfere with the political systems of other countries. Yet these projects have often backfired, leaving the U.S. open, quite understandably, to charges of hypocrisy and worse. 

Examples abound.

U.S. government–funded NGOs have been credibly linked to attempts at undermining and toppling regimes in Honduras (2009) Egypt (2011), Ukraine (2004, 2014), Georgia (2003, 2024) and many more besides.

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, a New York Times report titled “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings” noted,

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6th Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the IRI, the NDI, and Freedom House.

In Armenia, the American-funded NGO Civitas, which publishes the online news outlet CivilNet, played a leading role in advocating for the overthrow of Armenian leader Serzh Sargsyan in 2018. Readers may also recall the embarrassment USAID cooked up in Cuba when, in 2010, it covertly launched what Foreign Policy magazine described as a “Twitter-like service” with the aim of setting off a “Cuban Spring” to “help bring about the collapse of the island’s Communist government.” But the project notoriously backfired when it was infiltrated by the Cuban government, which used the platform to gather intel on the 40,000 Cubans dissidents who subscribed to the service. Mission not accomplished.

Withal, a wholesale rethinking of the way America engages with the world is sorely needed. The Trump administration might go further when it comes to foreign assistance and tie it directly to the amount of aid the U.S. budgets to assist its own people; after all, USAID’s budget for foreign assistance FY2024 was $32 billion, while FEMA’s entire budget was $1.98 billion. 

If America First is to mean anything, discrepancies like these will have to be remedied.