A nation must think before it acts.
USAID Should Further U.S. Interests, Not ‘Safe Spaces’
The Trump administration’s new budget outline calls for a 28% cut in funding for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Defenders of USAID insist that foreign aid is vital to advancing U.S. interests. They’re right—but there’s also plenty of waste.
On its website, USAID explains that the “Purple My School” program, a joint venture with the United Nations, “encourages peers, teachers and parents to become allies of LGBTI students” in eight Asian countries. “Through teachers’ facilitation, students discuss issues surrounding homophobia, how to create safe spaces for LGBTI students, and are encouraged to wear, draw, or make something purple.”
To promote transgender rights in Central America, USAID has “helped Guatemala’s Election Tribunal update election manuals and provide trainings to electoral officials on how to be sensitive to people whose appearances are not congruent with the birth name on their personal identification card.”
During the Obama years, USAID was prominent in sectors like LGBTI rights, abortion and “social justice”—promoting agendas that were neither supported by large segments of the U.S. population nor of clear benefit to American national interests. The agency often acted as if it were a private nonprofit organization with a liberal agenda, rather than a taxpayer-funded arm of the U.S. government….
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