The howls of indignation over Trump and Marco Rubio pausing USAID grants rather than “gradually” examining all of the agency’s expenditures over time are particularly disingenuous. Such a stall will only mean that more taxpayer money will go out the metaphorical door for wasteful, ideological projects like what red-pilled former Rolling Stone pundit Matt Taibbi calls its “colossal library of crazy-ass contracts.” He cites the $39 million for “Gender Equality in Water, Power, and Transportation,” “Recognizing the Third Gender in Bangladesh,” “Ukrainian Resilience Through Fashion,” a “TransFormation Salon” and a pre-Taliban plan to help “Afghan Women Enter the Financial Sector,” but there are others that Elon Musk opening the ledgers on “the Matterhorn of suck that is USAID” (Taibbi again) have revealed.
Above we see the screen shot revealing that USAID gave over $8 million in grants during fiscal year 2024 to Politico, the online Axis news and punditry site. Politico is almost always critical of Trump, conservatives and Republicans and just as consistently a vocal ally of the “resistance,” Democrats and progressive policies and advocates.
Why was the Biden administration giving Politico cash in an election year, or is that the reason? How many other supposedly independent news organization were on the Biden government payroll? I can’t say this surprises me, given how important controlling the news media is to totalitarian regimes, and that’s what the previous administration and the current Democratic Party aspired and aspires to—still, it’s damning news.
Also damning is the fact that Politico never informed its readers about the money, which created an automatic conflict of interest. This would be mandatory when Politico issued such Democratic Party lapdog propaganda as this post about the House censoring lying, incompetent, Squad member Jamaal Bowman, now mercifully sent home by his New York district’s voters because he was an embarrassment as well as an anti-Semite.
I wonder if other card-carrying members of the Axis’s mainstream media propaganda club have been rewarded for their loyalty. If I were MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times or the Washington Post and saw that Politico was on the take, I’d feel unappreciated.
In related news, it was impossible to find a news report of the grant using Google. If I typed in any combination of “USAID” and “Politico,” all that Google gave me were posts at Politico, which, at least so far, in remaining mum about its connection to USAID. The metaphorical beans were spilled on Twitter/”X.” If the pre-Musk owners were still in charge, those tweets would probably have been censored as “misinformation.”
Ethics Alarms 
…because Politico is heavily invested in “International Development”?
Heck, NPR gets to suckle at the government’s bosom every year and they get a line item for it. How is THAT fair? Politico should also feel cheated, having to sneak up to the “money-laundering” teat for its fill.
Well, since we gave at lest $3 million to the BBC, I would assume that all mainstream, media got something. Bill Kristol got millions for himself, so I am guessing everyone was in on the take. I have been wondering how CNN survives with such low viewership. I guess government subsidies are the answer.
On twitter, follow @DataRepublican
I’m cautiously optimistic by his/her recent work. Looks to be doing a deep dive into where USAID money ends up and for what purpose.
All I can muster is a “Wow!”
An administration giving money to a news outlet? Taxpayer funds? Wow.
A domestic news outlet?
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
When Harry Truman was working for Tom Pendergast back in the day, he would approve government contracts for the lowest bidders. Pendergast found that it was useful to have at least a couple of honest guys in his organization. Harry wouldn’t hold to having the taxpayers gouged for new courthouses.
Harry chaired the Truman Committee in the Senate during WWII. Officially known as the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, it sought to uncover and eliminate fraud, waste and abuse in the funding of the war.
https://levin-center.org/harry-truman-and-the-investigation-of-waste-fraud-abuse-in-world-war-ii/
We need somebody as dogged today as Truman was then. The dollars of American taxpayers, when added up, are a huge temptation for government contractors, researchers of frivolity and college campuses all over the country.
Remember when the government was being gouged for toilet seats and wrenches back in the day? That happens because our bureaucracy tosses out money like the Easter Bunny hands out eggs.
What would happen to the price of tuition if the student loan program was revamped to permit loans only to students attending college with reasonable tuition rates? Or if there were a cap on the amount of loans a student could take out? The college system today is geared on getting as much taxpayer money as it can. After all, the schools don’t have to pay the money back. So they pull a snow job on students, convincing them that they will get high-paying jobs after graduation and milking them for every dollar that can be squeezed for technology fees and football teams. The students are pawning their financial futures for useless degrees only to demand that the taxpayers eat the cost of that, too.
That is true of any entity that banks on taxpayer money to operate. They gouge the bureaucracy with ridiculous costs. This could very well be what is driving some of the cost of medical care. It would be interesting to know how prevalent Medicare/Medicaid fraud is. There certainly are private individuals, as well as medical professionals, who try to defraud insurance companies. Why wouldn’t grabbing every dollar one can get from the deep pockets of the government be commonplace?
This is what we can expect from free healthcare in the United States should it come to pass. There would have to be rigid oversight of the costs of medical procedures to prevent the current staggering prices to rise even higher once the taxpayers are on the hook for everyone’s treatment.
How does Zelensky lose $100 billion? How is our Treasury unable to account for $1 trillion? I can’t even wrap my mind around the former number, much less the latter!
To listen to the Democrats and their allies in the news media, you’d think that it is the worst thing in the world that we aren’t sending $15 million for condoms in Afghanistan. Not food, mind you. Not medicine. Not even textbooks! You’d think the Left would be complaining about how the government could have easily given $1 million to 15 poverty-stricken schools in this country. Foreign aid to struggling countries should never be done in the service of promoting an ideological agenda.
Until or unless someone like Harry Truman can expose and eliminate this type of waste and abuse of our money, it will continue to get worse. The exposure of how much we give away and where it goes is one of the best reasons to have voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
What if student loans were only available for majors of ‘societal need’? So, loans for engineers, but you pay for your psychology degree yourself. We have a surplus of psychology degree holders.
The only thing that concerns me about that is that I think we still need the market to determine what skills are needed and I’m afraid that, if the government starts determining what professions are worthy or not worthy of receiving student loans, we’ll end up with a state-run higher education program ala the Soviet Union in which people are shunted into careers they shouldn’t have or don’t want because it’s what the government decrees. We end up with a glut of engineers and a shortage of psychologists.
Additionally, the colleges will bump up tuition for engineers and lower them for psychologists which will help some but hinder others.
And, in the end, education for the sake of education is lost – as if it’s not already on the way out – as people only go for degrees in fields that will get them loans.
Yes, I think the whole idea of trying to pick which college majors are ‘worthy’ and which are not is a very slippery slope. It’s the whole idea of the government picking winners and losers which we tend to dislike so much in handing out money — and they’re handing out money here too.
That said, the idea that college costs just keep spiraling up and up and up with no limits is also wrong.
Universities clearly are incapable of reining themselves in. So the big question is what is a reasonable bottom line number for university budgets? States are likely best positioned to answer — and enforce — this kind of limit, because they are also on limited budgets and have constituents to answer to.
Or at least that is the theory.
One of the problems we have now is that there is no incentive to major in anything ‘difficult’ in college. In fact, there are lots of incentives not to. Math, science, and engineering areas have more work and more difficult classes. In addition, the grades awarded in those courses are lower, putting scholarships at risk. So, by majoring in one of those fields you work harder, get a lower GPA, and make it more difficult to pay for college.
You might say “But there is an incentive after you leave college to major in something that has job opportunities.” Yes, but almost no students see that. There is no peer pressure pushing them to this, and they had 13+ years of public school that emphasized sports and social clubs as more important than excellence is academics.
to say nothing of the constant drumbeat of “just pick something. It doesn’t really matter what your degree is in, employers simply want to see that you got a degree in something. Heck, most people don’t work in the fields they got their degrees in. So just pick something you love and can make it to the end of.” They always seem to forget the 100k bill attached to the process, though.
Which is incentivized by the federal student loan program. Students aren’t encouraged to carefully consider their career choices, they are not encouraged to make sure their degrees are relevant or marketable, but they are encouraged to do what they love – not for the pursuit of education – but because they will be hired by someone to do something, even if it’s not connected to the degree and because the “government” will pay for it.
They aren’t told that the bottom of the totem pole job they will get won’t generate enough income to make ends meet, much less pay the massive amount of money they borrowed to get a useless degree.
And the colleges are complicit in this scheme because they increase tuition costs to get more and more of the the federal governments handouts that their students, not they, will have the obligation to repay.
This USAID, what a giant slush fund for all the Dems and friends. Also, funny enough, Bill Kristol, the former conservative, Never-Trumper extraordinaire also got some of that sweet funding for his current vehicle, The Bulwark. PJ media article about Kristol.
And Althouse cites articles that peg the number paid to Politico at between 27 and 32 million USD.
Subscriptions for government entities and companies are $40,000 a year and more.
I just went on DuckDuckGo and articles there are saying that (in typical Dem slight of hand) that it’s a big conspiracy theory, because Politico got only $44,000 from USAID, the rest of the $8M came from various other government entities…..and they think that sounds better.
Amazing. The government should be giving no funds to journalistic entities whatsoever…including PBS and NPR. And may I add: DUH!
Anyone have a handy list of all the questionable donations? Not just the Trans opera stuff, but also BBC, Bill Kristol, Politico, et.
I was thinking about what this could do to the churches. Bishop Budde, who lectured Trump on immigrants, heads up a ministry that gets $50 million to bring people from Afghanistan to Vietnam to the US. That works out to about $10,000/person. Catholic groups have been working in Central and South America to organize ‘migrant’ groups to enter the US illegally, giving them supplies, maps to the border, and training on what to say to open a fraudulent asylum case. I’m sure the Methodists are as well. Now, many of these are through government programs. However, how many are really legal? I mean, how is it legal to send a plane to South America and fly it back full of illegal immigrants? Isn’t it against the law to aid people in illegally entering the US? How many of these ‘refugee’ programs are at risk of being declared illegal? If so, what percentage of the US churches are involved in human smuggling rings? What if we find the ‘migrants’ involved working illegally or under slave wage conditions? What if the churches were prosecuted under RICO for that? Shouldn’t the people at USAID and other federal agencies also be prosecuted for funding illegal activities?
Now, I think the chances of this happening are remote. However, if we really were a nation of laws, wouldn’t illegal activity of this magnitude be prosecuted and punished?
It is closer to $35 million, if you include other government agencies beyond USAID. In other words, the US government in toto spent almost $35 million on Politico. For example, the FDA alone had 37 “pro” users of Politico, paid by us, to the tune of $517,855.00
Even 8.1 million is a scandal, though. I guess we now know how Politico stays in business.
I suspect we’ll find many other ways the Left has funded their media machine from government sources. Stay tuned, there are a lot of agencies left to examine.
So now we’re seeing how the money-laundering works: hide the money transfers behind the moniker of “paid subscriptions”, then order hundreds (or thousands) of taxpayer-funded subscriptions.
Imagine Republicans in government getting caught opening thousands of subscriptions to some conservative news outlet / periodical…
Yep. It’s okay for Democrats to do this, but if Republicans do, it’s a scandal.
Time to change the narrative. Republicans ought to either set up their own money-laundering operation or start bringing criminal charges against those who participated in this scam.
Middle ground is no longer an option. Time for the law of the jungle, sadly. Every time restraint is a policy, it turns into license in the Washington swamp.
Your post has lots of factual errors and unfounded conspiratorial questions. But rather than take the time to correct them 1 by 1, I’d just suggest you ask yourself this question:
How much money was given to Politico under the first Trump administration and why? (hint: it wasn’t $0)
If you take the time to answer this question you will hopefully realize that this information is being cherry-picked and presented without context precisely so people will freak out and theorize and make themselves feel better about what’s happening – and more specifically, how it’s happening. They’ll keep spoon feeding you this crap – are you going to keep swallowing it without doing even the most basic level of verification?
Is that an answer to my question? I will assume, if the source is USAID, that the payments were going on during the Trump administration as well. And as the USAID had been revealed as a source of Deep State leftist propaganda and expenditures, I assume that would have been the case during Trump’s first term as well. Now, if you can find evidence of Fox News being paid by the government during the Trump administration, that would be rebuttal of widespread assumptions regarding the Politico story.
Meanwhile, I don’t usually pass through moderation comments that begin “Your post has lots of factual errors and unfounded conspiratorial questions” without stating what those alleged flaws are. I’ll give you until this time tomorrow to deliver those, or you’re banned from future commentary.
The paid social media monitors are back! Interesting! Maybe the DNC’s new head gave the go-ahead to restart that effort. Boy, they’ve sure been silent since the election. It’s the uncivil, accusatory tone that identifies them.
Drink!
Exactly. This post is wrong.
Apparently part of the USAID’s Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation purchased subscriptions to Politico’s energy and environment publication for $20,000. Twice over two years or something totally 44k.
The post is wrong in that it understates the amount of money USAID sent to Politico. The subscription dodges is called “money laundering.” It is similar to what Newt Gingrich got caught doing selling thousands of his books to get around campaign contribution laws
What you just said is totally wrong and ignores reality. I just told you what is real. But go ahead.
becauset trust me bro.
I’m banning this asshole.
He’s not an asshole. He’s just stupid.
As a wise man once said, “You can’t fix stupid.”
No need to tolerate anymore stupidity than, say, Memeorandum every day.
Funny you say that. Memeorandum hasn’t touched the Politico story all day. That’s three strikes for that site: if I want to find want The Bulwark has written I’ll check there, but balance? I’ve got to look elsewhere.
I go there just for laughs at all the breathless lefty headlines they promote. It’s really laugh-out-loud funny. Jen Rubin’s deranged craziness is almost worth it by itself.
You’re banned, and also ridiculous. I warned you. I gave you a chance to make a productive comment. You defaulted to non-substantive denial because you’re incapable of honest discussion and debate. You’re irredeemable. I don’t have time for lazy ideologue liars like you.
NOTICE: “Travis” is BANNED. Don’t respond if he tries to sneak back on—unauthorized comments go along with their replies.
“Can Anyone Think of an Innocent, Ethical Explanation For USAID’s Giving $8.1 Million to Politico? Because I Can’t“
There is none, of course; it’s just now the light is shining on the cockroaches.
Can anyone explain why the IG never noticed this?
I don’t want to hear how wonderful our Inspector Generals are when apparently they are asleep at the switch.
Well, $2 million went to the BBC to promote how wonderful Libya is. We also spent a lot of money to promote Beirut as a tourist destination. Any IG paying attention should have done a double-take on those. A lot of these grants are to ‘promote’ things. My suspicion is that most of the ‘promoting’ was done halfheartedly (if at all) and most of the money went to well-connected people or got donated to political campaigns. My suspicion is partially due to how ridiculous these things are. I think we are just being punked by these USAID people who are writing the most ridiculous grant titles possible just to mock the US taxpayers. Now, writing the grant to ‘promote’ things is smart, it is hard to disprove that you ‘promoted stuff last year’, unlike building a bridge. The advertising could be long gone by then. However, I get the feeling that the USAID people are writing grants to give to political causes.
USAID employee #1: We need to funnel more money to our favorite causes. What should the grant be for?
USAID employee #2: What about ‘Change!”, people like change!
USAID employee #1: Great!, But what ‘change’ should we promote?
USAID Troll: Underwear!
Everyone laughs
Grant #5464324, “Improved Hygiene in Malaysia through Promotion of Frequent Undergarment Refreshes”, $20 million, awarded to ACTBLUE Humanitarian Services
USAID IG: Seems legit.
I went on usaspending.gov to get something other than a news article to confirm payments. In a single fiscal year (2022) it listed 84 agencies spending between $30k and $800k on subscriptions under the Politico LLC umbrella.
Jack,
Based on your commentary, I doubt this changes the ethical calculus, but I’d enjoy your thoughts on Mediaite’s “explanation”:
https://www.mediaite.com/news/maga-influencers-push-bizarre-claim-that-politico-was-getting-funded-by-usaid-heres-the-truth/
Interestingly, the article never circles back to the accusation that the AP received money as well, nor do they adaquetly explain why this funding went to EDITORIAL content from an openly left-leaning media organization. Plenty of websites (some free) offer updates and analysis on important legislative topics that don’t display such obvious partiality. Lastly, it would suprise me if one could find equal (any) funds going to conservative think-tanks or publications during the same period.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Yeah, one thought that ran through my mind (and didn’t get committed through the keyboard) was, “I wonder how much money The Epoch Times received in 2024?”
From the Mediate article:
“Politico’s Pro product is widely subscribed to by federal employees and Washington lobbyists because it provides some of the most dedicated coverage of legislation as well as close-up analysis of technical and regulatory work across departments.”
“Additionally, far from being a ‘gotcha’ moment, the information on these subscriptions is always publicly available and no secret.”
“Over an hour after his original post Becker added another: “just to be clear” Politico was “getting funds from all sorts of government agencies” for “extremely pricey Politico Pro subscriptions.”
Then the question is why are so many federal employees subscribing to Politico’s “extremely pricey Politico Pro subscriptions.”
This is what Politico Pro claims:
Power Your Advocacy Strategies With POLITICO Pro
POLITICO Pro delivers a competitive advantage for government relations professionals seeking to drive impactful policy changes. From real-time analysis and insights across 22 policy areas to powerful tools for stakeholder management, collaboration, bill tracking, and more, Pro has everything you need to shape the future you’d like to see.
I see little reason for large numbers of government personnel to subscribe to this. They can claim they are non-partisan but we know that it leans in one direction. Government employees have no business advocating for any special interest. None of these people were elected. Therefore, I see little purpose in having any subscriptions let alone millions of dollars worth. When you spend that much money on so many expensive subscriptions it begins to look like money laundering.
“Additionally, far from being a ‘gotcha’ moment, the information on these subscriptions is always publicly available and no secret.”
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
“It depends on what your definition of ‘publicly available” is.”
So the pro-Politico argument is this: Government swamp-creatures need this political information to do politics better.
Really?
Well, we all suspected that politics today is little more than a racket to enrich politicians. This confirms it in spades.
I’m not a lawyer, but if I was, I’d suspect money-laundering, fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the government.
I don’t know that this is accurate but they say the money came from subscriptions from USAID employees:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/maga-influencers-push-bizarre-claim-that-politico-was-getting-funded-by-usaid-here-s-the-truth/ar-AA1ytyZY?ocid=BingNewsSerp
I guess it would be akin to saying that USAID does not give 8.1 Million in grants to the New York Times, they just pay 8.1 Million in daily subscriptions so that each employees has their own copy every morning.
I am not sure I am following this argument or if it is even true.
-Jut
Then I would ask the next question…why are my tax dollars funding a subscription to Politico? I could maybe understand LexisNexis…
Government employees need to subscribe to media to find out what’s happening in … government? This sounds like Bernie Sanders’ claim that all the campaign contributions from “Big Pharma” were actually from individual employees of “Big Pharma.”
Did every single USAID employee have to get their own subscription? Couldn’t they have negotiated some sort of discounted institutional subscription?
Old Bill,
I have no idea if its true. I just want to figure out what the facts are first.
Then, you render judgment.
I can see offices having media subscriptions, but, even if that is what this is, it seems excessive.
And, can you even trust MSN.com?
-Jut
I’m with you, Jut.
Honestly, the team is just using USAID to get their feet underneath them. Use a small subset of data like this ($40B – $80B) and build algorithms to process data, understand systems and structures. I hear they’re on to Medicade/Medicare next which is a much larger beast. Get ready for conservative/republican whining when they get to DOD / Military budgets.
They’ll need a bucket/mop combo the size of Texas to clean up Treasury.
DOD should be fair game as well.
Tim
I’m not sure if there will be too much whining over cutting programs that are not really defense related. If they find that generals are living large on lobster and filet mignon they can cut t with my compliments. Those of us who agree with the sentiment that our military should focus on lethality will not howl if we hear that superfluous BS spending is cut.
My biggest surprise is to find that people think the money actually got to where USAID said it was going, especially in the case of overseas funding. Zelensky says he only got about 40% of the funding sent to him (I know that …. mostly? … wasn’t from the USAID bucket) and so why do you think the percentage is higher for any other bucket of cash.
I can see people criticising Zelensky for not speaking up earlier, but a billion is a billion, and if you squeal you get nothing!
I’m not sold. I have looked at the link showing the 8.2 million and I don’t see anything specifically linked to USAid. There are several large awards from various agencies (https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/fa0cefae-7cfb-881d-29c3-1bd39cc6a49e-P/latest). Some do seem excessive, but the problem is that I do not know the going rate for an enterprise level subscription to a news service. A full ride for all employees in, say HHS, may reasonably cost several hundreds of thousands.
For comparison, LexisNexis pulled in over $32 million (https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/e46e4a5e-0808-76be-0305-4ceb3e64f2fa-C/latest), so maybe not the smoking gun everyone seems to want it to be.
It is a larger and smokier gun, in fact. And no money given to a news outlet by the government is ethical. Where it comes from is a detail.
Jack I’m a loooong time reader and wanted to chime in since data is my background. I just spent some time today since this hit the news on the USASPENDING site and confirmed Politico only received two awards, one for 20 thousand, the other for 24 thousand dollars from the USAID. So it does appear your post is wrong.
Here are the PIID numbers you can look them up for yourself 72REFS24PC00047 and 720DD123PCOO130.
Ann
That’s because the rest of the money was in outrageously expensive “subscriptions” paid by USAID for PoliticoPro that no goverment employee needed. That totaled the 8 mil, in 2024, and similar numbers in the other four years of the Biden administration. So they weren’t technically “grants,” and the apologists are standing on that. The fact is that money went from USAID to Politico and other media sources.Unethical. Corrupt. Conflict of interest. It’s bribery laundering.
USAID for PoliticoPro that no goverment employee needed. That totaled the 8 mil, in 2024,
No Jack. USAID paid Politico only 44 thousand dollars for 2 subscriptions for some specialized environmental publication. Total. That was it. Did you look at the website?
Ann…this single website is apparently either falling for or part of the USAID deceptive reporting on its outlay to media sources, especially Politico, and that subscription data is at odds with almost all the other reporting, most of it accessing multiple sources.
What? The USASpending.gov site is the only source that houses this data and where your screen shot in your post is from. It’s also the site everyone else is using but they’re reading the data wrong.
“Everyone” is reading the data wrong but you? Interesting. Even Politico has admitted that it received funds for “subscriptions” from all over the government.
Ok, so they still got 8 million dollars from the government, it just wasn’t all USAID. In an article entitled ‘No, Politico Did Not Receive Substantial Funds From USAID’ is this:
’According to USAspending.gov, an official source for U.S. government expenditure data—and the resource used by Becker in his post—Politico received $8.2 million in total payments in the previous 12 months. However, payments from USAID are a small fraction of that total. Of the two payments from the agency, only one was in that timeframe.’
The Department of Health and Services, the Department of the Interior, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce. it’s unfortunate that the person or persons who broke the story didn’t detail the sources, because now Dems will call the whole 8M story a conspiracy theory and deny it all , because ‘The money wasn’t all from USAID’. It’s still 8M.
This guy (not a leftie) has some well-done clarifying information on this issue:
https://capitalresearch.org/article/grants-to-splc-and-dei-demonstrate-federal-spending-against-taxpayer-values/
Sadly, in another article he also explains why the claims about Bill Kristol may not be accurate. (link in response below so this one doesn’t get kicked out).
Info that may explain Bill Kristol’s issue:
https://capitalresearch.org/article/who-paid-for-that-the-problem-with-analyzing-federal-grants/
and not a single USAID defender has trotted out a grant for actual aid for medical, infrastructure, or such. Seems to prove the lack of actual assistance to foreign nationals or governments.
Shut it all down!