USAID’s Troubling Ties to the Woke Nonprofits That Called the Shots in the Biden Administration

The U.S. Agency for International Development wasn’t just spending your hard-earned tax dollars on transgender operas overseas—USAID also has troubling connections with the leftist pressure groups that infiltrated and advised the Biden administration.

My book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” exposes the woke activist groups that fed staff into the administrative state and pushed woke policies on the bureaucracy.

As President Donald Trump released information about USAID’s corruption, I started to notice a few familiar names from my research.

The American people should understand just how connected the woke enterprise is to the federal bureaucracy, and USAID provides a powerful example of those ties.

What Is USAID?

While the acronym suggests USAID is about aid, it’s really about soft power. President John F. Kennedy established USAID as a tool to fight Soviet Communism abroad, but in recent years, the agency has promoted the classic woke causes: critical race theory (the notion that America is systemically racist against blacks and favors whites and requires fundamental reform), climate alarmism, gender ideology, and a preference for technocratic government.

The Trump administration has highlighted USAID waste, particularly $1.5 million to advance “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in Serbia’s workplaces; $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia; and more. Others have highlighted grants such as $20 million for an Arabic translation of Sesame Street and $2 million for promoting sex changes in Guatemala.

USAID has also spent $250 million on a Climate Finance for Development Accelerator, aiming to “mobilize $2.5 billion in public and private climate investments by 2030.” The accelerator seeks to help countries meet their commitments in the Paris Climate Agreement, which the Trump administration rejected on the president’s first day in office.

These initiatives echo the spending of Hungarian American billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and that is no accident.

The Soros Connection

The Open Society Foundations has bankrolled many of the leftist groups in the Woketopus, which staffed and advised the Biden administration.

While Open Society Foundations has claimed that it does not receive funding from USAID or direct the funding of USAID, its ties to USAID are undeniable. Not only has Open Society funded the same projects as USAID, but its leaders met with former USAID Administrator Samantha Power at least twice, the Soros foundations network listed USAID among its “donor partners” in 2001, and an Open Society nonprofit actually sued USAID twice, with the cases reaching the Supreme Court both times.

USAID and Open Society Foundations jointly funded the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project—an organization that attacked conservatives for criticizing Soros and that published the report that sparked the first Trump impeachment. USAID’s connections to the project raise uncomfortable questions about whether the agency was trying to oust Trump.

The Organized Crime Corruption and Reporting Project also attacked Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.; Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah; and Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. These conservatives made the mistake of noticing that the U.S. Embassy to Macedonia had selected Soros’ Open Society Foundations as the main implementer for USAID projects in the Eastern European country.

According to Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., USAID awarded a $2.54 million contract to Open Society for training in “civic activism,” “mobilization,” and “civic engagement” in Macedonia in February 2017.

The East West Management Institute—which has long listed Open Society Foundations as a donor and implementing partner and which received $31.2 million from USAID in the last full fiscal year ending on Sept. 30—launched court changes in Albania that critics allege resulted in the prosecution of Albanian opposition leader Sali Berisha, silencing the opponent of the country’s socialist prime minister.

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