The Trump Administration is committed to getting America's fiscal house in order by cutting government spending that is woke, weaponized, and wasteful. Now, for the first time in 50 years, the President is using his authority under the Impoundment Control Act to deploy a pocket rescission, cancelling $5 billion in foreign aid and international organization funding that violates the President's America First priorities.
EXAMPLES OF WHAT THE RESCINDED ACCOUNTS FUND
United States Agency for International Development (USAID) - Development Assistance (DA) - $3.2 billion
The Development Assistance (DA) account was established to fund programs that work to end poverty in the developing world. However, the account has come to bankroll initiatives that are antithetical to American values and represented the worst of USAID's woke excesses. Development Assistance has provided endless handouts that allow recipient governments to eschew responsibilities to their own citizens, rather than equipping countries to build their own workforces and self-reliance. This account has been used to fund radical, leftist priorities, including climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), LGBTQ activities, and other projects like baking and beauty therapy in Zimbabwe that are of no value to American taxpayers and American foreign policy interests. Examples include:
- $400 million per year for global climate grift projects like:
- A partnership with the Green Climate Fund, for the Barbados Blue-Green Bank for climate change mitigation.
- $650,000 for micro-insurance for smallholder farmers and microbusinesses in Colombia for climate disaster response.
- $60,000 for listening tours on local development in Timor-Leste.
- $12,000 for "telling the USAID story" in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- $13.4 million for civic engagement in Zimbabwe.
USAID and Department of State (State) - Democracy Fund - $322 million
Thisaccount funds the "democracy promotion activities" of the Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In practice, so-called democracy promotion activities undermine American values, weaken the perception of America abroad, and interfere with the sovereignty of other countries-including our allies. For example, this account funded "gender responsive governance" and "strengthening information integrity, equality, and democracy for LGBTQI+ populations."
This action would eliminate programs that have conducted censorship operations and meddled in elections in foreign countries. This proposal aligns with the Administration's efforts to return funding from wasteful foreign assistance programs to the American taxpayers.
- $2.7 million to advance "inclusive democracy" in South Africa through the Democracy Works Foundation, which has published articles such as "The Problem with Whiteness," and "The Problem with White People." One article claims that White South Africans are "not even aware" of the "hostility they unleash" against black people; another lauds terrorism and communism as an effective means of deconstructing White Afrikaner identity.
- $4 million for the New Alliance for Global Equality to advance "global LGBTQI+ awareness."
- $3.9 million to promote "democracy" for LGBTQI+ populations in the Western Balkans.
- $2 million for "Organizing for Feminist Democratic Principles" in Africa
- $40 million to address "the needs, opportunities, and challenges identified by activists, and other civic actors engaged in nonviolent collective action"
State - Contribution to International Organizations (CIO) - $521 million
This account provides funding for the assessed contributions to the United Nations (UN), UN-Affiliated organizations, and various other international organizations that do not support major U.S. policies or priorities or have been operating contrary to American interests for many years. This account funded:
- $45 million to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is the regional arm of the World Health Organization, and has faced credible accusations of forced labor and human trafficking of Cuban doctors.
- $75 million per year to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which works to advance divisive social and cultural causes, with an outsized focus on the globalist ideological agenda in the UN's "Sustainable Development Goals" and has long fostered antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment.
- $29 million to the toothless World Trade Organization (WTO), which has for decades aided and abetted global trade cheating by the Chinese Communist party.
- $107 million for the International Labor Organization (ILO), a group that works to unionize foreign workers and punish U.S. corporate interests abroad.
- U.S. contributions to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) facilitated a harmful global tax deal, allowing other countries to dictate American tax policy.
- U.S. budget support for countless organizations like the Colombo Plan Council for Technical Cooperation, the International Tropical Timber Organization, and the Pan American Institute on Geography and History.
- $2.3 million for desert locust risk reduction in the Central Region and Horn of Africa, with a focus on "gender equality," "interculturality," and supporting "indigenous peoples."
State - Contributions for International Peacekeeping Activities (CIPA) - $393 million
This account provides payments for the U.S. share of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping assessments. UN peacekeeping without specific, measurable, and time-bound goals simply does not work, as the world recognized just this week when voting to wind down the failed 40-year mission in Lebanon. Through America First diplomacy, the President has ended more wars in 8 months than the UN has in 80 years.
UN peacekeeping has been fraught with waste and abuse, as evidenced by the ongoing sexual exploitation and abuse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. There have been thousands of credible allegations of sexual abuse and other crimes against UN peacekeepers from across the world, including when underage girls in Kosovo were kidnapped, tortured, and prostituted - with UN peacekeepers driving demand for these horrific practices. The UN even admitted that peacekeepers were part of the problem in trafficking.
- In 2023, 43 people were killed during demonstrations against the Democratic Republic of the Congo Mission and DRC presidential candidates have threatened to remove the UN's consent to operate.
- In addition to sex exploitation and abuse, the Central African Republic mission has become fully aligned with Russia which continues to extract the country's natural resources.
- The Mali mission's failure to retain host country consent and protect civilians is another stain on the UN's tattered history of peacekeeping.
IAP - Peacekeeping Operations - $445 million
This account is a slush fund used to support projects counter to a core security focus, including hybrid energy power generation pilot projects in Nepal and South Sudan. This action would eliminate programs, such as the Global Peace Operations Initiative, and undirected Africa Regional funding but will not impact the United States' commitment to the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty of Peace through our contributions to the Multinational Force and Observers.
- Hundreds of millions in security assistance have been provided to Niger, and yet in 2023, its military overthrew the democratically elected government, wasting American taxpayers' investments. Over $30 million of PKO funding was planned in 2023, the same year the coup occurred.
- Annually, $71 million of PKO's funds have been allocated to the Global Peace Operations Initiative to ready other countries' militaries to support UN peacekeeping. Not only is the U.S. overpaying its assessed contributions, but it pays twice to pick up global slack. Programs undergoing termination include:
- Nearly $11 million for armored personnel carriers for Uruguay's quick reaction force.
- Nearly $4 million for infrastructure and facilities at the Zambia Training Center.
- Nearly $3 million for barracks for Kazakhstan peacekeepers.
- Over $500,000 for a body armor pilot program in Ghana.
- Nearly $300 million annually to Somalia for peacekeeping and UN programs that have manifestly failed to stop piracy or provide lasting peace and security.
