Next up for discussion is Project 2025, Chapter 9: Agency for International Development (pp. 253-281, including endnotes). This agency’s mission does include international development and disaster relief, but it’s also about expanding markets for US exports. Plus, its initiatives “create a level playing field for US businesses; and support more stable, resilient, and democratic societies that are less likely to act against American interests and more likely to respect family, life, and religious liberty (p. 253).”
Yep, there’s a dog-whistle again. Family: binary parents plus kids. Life: ban abortion. Religious liberty: stop oppressing Christians by allowing people to believe other things.
It’s a good thing the last chapter was short and relatively painless, because this one made me hella mad.
The discussion inevitably starts with some whining about mission creep and bureaucratic constipation, plus a complaint that “humanitarian programs that were once 80 percent in response to natural disasters are now 80 percent in response to violent-man-made crises … (p. 254).” In other words, we shouldn’t be sending aid for anything except maybe a tsunami. Except they congratulate the first DJT administration for giving money to churches and building up “an unprecedented genocide-response infrastructure (p. 254).” Infrastructure without action doesn’t mean much beyond “we spent money.”
Then they claim the Biden Administration used the agency to promote “abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism (p. 254).” In other words, tried to help women control their own fertility, tried to mitigate environmentally destructive behavior, tried to help LGBTQ+ citizens cope with hostile governments, and tried to stop genocide.
P25 wants to make some cuts, “deradicalize” the agency, and tie foreign aid to foreign policy. “[T]he aid budget is divided among approximately 20 offices, agencies and departments … (p. 254).” Well, why not just close the agency and budget differently for those other offices? No, we are not actually about making the government smaller here. We are about making the agencies pawns of the president, rather than instruments of the nation.
On pp 255-256 we return to China and the need for the agency to “assess bilateral aid through the lens of US national security interests, rewarding those countries that resist China’s debt diplomacy. It should finance programs designed to counter specific Chinese efforts in strategically important countries and eliminate funding to any partner that engages with Chinese entities directly or indirectly (p. 256).” In other words, foreign aid isn’t aid: it’s investment, to be distributed only where it will benefit the US.
Next is a discussion of climate change, except P25 doesn’t believe in it, so this is really about how fossil fuel based products are key to global prosperity, so we shouldn’t be giving out aid for sustainable energy, agriculture, etc (p. 257). And then we get a call to “dismantle USAID’s DEI apparatus … cease promotion of the DEI agenda, including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda … eliminate funding for partners that promote discriminatory DEI practices … (p. 258).”
DEI, of course, stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. While DEI is a fairly new acronym, it’s a more evolved approach to what used to be called affirmative action, which meant giving minority applicants a fair shake in the education and employment systems. DEI offices all over the country will be shuttered under the new administration, including at many private companies who want government contracts.
Killing DEI = open season for workplace discrimination. In P25’s mind, trying to undo centuries of legal discrimination against nonwhite or non-straight or non-Christian people = oppressing white or straight or Christian people.
Why is this in a discussion of a foreign aid agency?
Because P25 can’t stop humping the leg of its agenda.
And it gets worse. “Instead of protecting women’s and children’s unalienable human rights and propelling their ability to thrive in society, past Democrat Administrations have nearly erased what females are and what femininity is through ‘gender’ policies and practices (p. 259).”
So discussion of a foreign aid agency is now the forum to reject recognition of nonbinary identities and deny the legitimacy of trans people’s existence. There is, naturally, no admission that a woman has the human right of making medical decisions for herself. No admission that a child has the human rights of shelter, food, and clothing. Because once a child is born, the red tide loses all interest in it, unless it’s in a public school where a book about a queer or Black or Muslim person might be found.
“Without women, there are no children, and society cannot continue. … USAID cannot advocate for and protect women when they have been erased globally along with the values and traditional structures that have supported them (p. 259).”
Um, hello? Woman here. I don’t feel erased. I like being able to get my own credit, choose my own employment, buy my own residence if I desire, decide for myself if I want to reproduce – and if so, how. P25’s “traditional structures” denied me all of those rights well into the 1970s.
Oh, and they want to strip the term “gender” from all USAID publications and policies, along with all reference to abortion, reproductive health, and sexual and reproductive rights.
Reason: they don’t want anybody but men to have sexual rights. And “men” in their world means “born with a penis and his world revolves around it.”
Remember “Your body, my choice?” That guy was speaking P25’s language.
On page 260 USAID is given the new mission of protecting families (P25’s definition only, of course) and especially “protecting life,” meaning the life of an embryo or fetus is to be given more value than the life of the person carrying it in utero. They also slip into a time warp: “Biden also restored funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which supports and implements China’s coercive abortion and sterilization regimen.” Haven’t they heard China is actively trying to get people to have more children these days? The anti-abortion ranting continues into the next page, before swerving to pro-religion ranting, but they’re only pro the religions that want to ban abortion.
Instead of focusing on reorganization, they then move to “streamlining procurement and localizing the partner base” on page 262. What that means is that USAID funds should preferentially go to the private sector, rather than to actual foreign governments, because the private sector is more efficient. Yeah. That’s literally what it says.
On page 266 P25 repeats its complaint about 80 percent blah blah and this time specifically mentions Ukraine as a source of “financial demands,” before moving on to complain about Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Burma, and Iraq as places where US aid has failed to improve matters, e.g. providing food and medical care to “persecuted Rohingya [in Burma] that the military regime forces to live in open-air concentration camps (p. 267).”
“In effect, humanitarian aid is sustaining war economies, creating financial incentives for warring parties to continue fighting, discouraging governments from reforming, and propping up malign regimes (p. 268).”
So … we should just stop distributing humanitarian aid, I guess? “The next Administration should resize and repurpose USAID’s humanitarian aid portfolio to restore its original purpose of providing emergency short-term relief … (p. 268).”
Which kind of directly contradicts what they were saying about being against genocide and, oh yes, pro life, doesn’t it? Because what happens to all those Rohingya if we pull our aid? How many starve, or die from illness or injuries?
But that doesn’t matter because they’re not in utero.
This keeps going into a list of suggested reforms (and political appointments) in the sub-bureaus within the agency. P25’s agenda is out of control. I would genuinely rather shut down USAID, full stop, than have it turn into an evangelical Christian marketing group whose only economic effect is to get government money into the hands of private companies.