President Donald Trump defended Afrikaner farmers during an Oval Office meeting today with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, playing a video of alleged incitements to violence after Ramaphosa rejected claims of a white genocide.
The video included a clip of Julius Malema, a member of South Africa’s National Assembly, singing “Kill the Boer” at a political rally, a reference to Afrikaners.
While the video played, Ramaphosa looked away from the screen, visibly uncomfortable, while Trump looked straight on.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
President Trump directly accused South African President Cyril Ramaphosa of an Afrikaner genocide.
When Ramaphosa denied the claim, Trump played a video showing anti-Afrikaner speeches and footage of white farmers&#39; burial sites. <a href="https://t.co/IgDXz1vJKQ">pic.twitter.com/IgDXz1vJKQ</a>
&mdash; Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) <a href="https://twitter.com/KassyAkiva/status/1925237856747831419?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 21, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The video also included footage of what Trump claimed was the gravesite of 1,000 Afrikaner farmers.
Ramaphosa said he had never seen the site but “would like to know where that is.”
Trump also held up articles that he said showed proof of the genocide against Afrikaners.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-trump-and-rubio-put-america-first-in-100-days?author=Kassy+Akiva&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=How+Trump+And+Rubio+Put+America+First+In+100+Days" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HOW TRUMP AND RUBIO PUT AMERICA FIRST IN 100 DAYS</a>
“I don’t know how it can get any worse,” Trump said.
Ramaphosa responded to Trump, raising concerns about the “Kill the Boer” chant, claiming that it was said by a minority party and was not representative of the government.
“When they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them,” Trump said. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
President Trump arguing with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa about the genocide of White farmers.
&quot;The farmers are not black,” Trump said. <a href="https://t.co/3kt5vbAIUc">pic.twitter.com/3kt5vbAIUc</a>
&mdash; Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) <a href="https://twitter.com/KassyAkiva/status/1925239960199684523?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 21, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Ramaphosa responded, claiming that black people are also killed by criminals in the country.
“The farmers are not black,” Trump said. “The people that are being killed in large numbers, and you saw those grave sites and those are people that loved ones are going on a Sunday morning they told me to pay their respects to their loved ones that were killed. Their heads chopped off. They died violently.”
Ramaphosa, being diplomatic, asked to discuss the “criminality” issues in South Africa outside of the media and encouraged American partnership in addressing them.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/homeland-security-to-screen-immigrants-and-foreign-students-social-media-for-anti-semitism?author=Kassy+Akiva&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=29&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Homeland+Security+To+Screen+Immigrants+And+Foreign+Students%E2%80%99+Social+Media+For+Anti-Semitism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">HOMELAND SECURITY TO SCREEN IMMIGRANTS AND FOREIGN STUDENTS’ SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ANTI-SEMITISM</a>
The meeting comes amid controversy over the Trump administration welcoming Afrikaner refugees to the United States, alleging they are the victims of a race-based genocide. 
Tensions between the two countries have increased following the passage of South Africa’s Expropriation Act, which allows the South African government to confiscate land without compensation.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=memorial&amp;utm_content=editorialmemorialday" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Memorial Day Sale – Get 40% Off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships</a>
Trump issued an executive order in February saying the act ignored citizens’ rights and enabled the government to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.” The directive cut aid or assistance to South Africa and declared that the United States would promote resettling Afrikaner refugees.
Ramaphosa denied that Afrikaner land is being taken away during the meeting. He pointed to his South African Agriculture Minister, John Steenhuisen, who is white, and claimed that the majority of white farmers want to stay. 
Steenhuisen said he joined Ramaphosa’s coalition government as an opposition party to keep the anti-white politicians out of power in South Africa.
“Why wouldn’t you arrest that man?” Trump asked, pointing out that Malema was inciting violence by calling for white people to be killed.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/deals-and-diplomacy-heres-everything-trump-accomplished-on-his-gulf-tour?author=Kassy+Akiva&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Deals+And+Diplomacy%3A+Here%E2%80%99s+Everything+Trump+Accomplished+On+His+Gulf+Tour" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DEALS AND DIPLOMACY: HERE’S EVERYTHING TRUMP ACCOMPLISHED ON HIS GULF TOUR</a>
The Trump administration accepted 59 farmers who arrived in the United States on a chartered flight earlier this month through an expedited program. Democrats <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rubio-says-dem-senator-only-opposes-afrikaner-refugees-because-of-their-race">have denied</a> that Afrikaners are being persecuted for their race and have criticized the Trump administration for resettling the refugees in the United States.
Trump pushed back on those criticisms last week, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-rips-critics-of-south-african-refugee-policy-its-a-terrible-thing-thats-taking-place?author=Tim+Pearce&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Rips+Critics+Of+South+African+Refugee+Policy%3A+%E2%80%98It%E2%80%99s+A+Terrible+Thing+That%E2%80%99s+Taking+Place%E2%80%99">saying</a> the refugees “happen to be white, but whether they’re white or black makes no difference to me.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio doubled down on the Trump administration’s belief that Afrikaners are being persecuted during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
“These are people whose farms were burned down and they were killed because of the color of their skin,” Rubio said in a heated exchange with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA).
Rubio added that the farmers qualify for refugee status because they “live in a country where farms are taken and land is taken on a racial basis.”

President Trump Meets With South African President Cyril Ramaphosa At The White House

Trump Confronts South African President In Oval Office Over White Farmer Genocide

Africa

Donald Trump

Executive

genocide

Global Politics

Politics

Racism

South Africa

African Development Foundation locked the doors when DOGE tried to gain access

This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why.

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Foreign Funding

USAID

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth and final part in a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. Check out <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0">part one,</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/african-aid-agency-used-foreign-pass-throughs-to-hide-money-that-went-to-d-c-staff-friends">part two,</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans">part three</a>.
—
A small, USAID-like federal agency called the African Development Foundation refused to hire white people, and treated white employees who did slip through so poorly that one soiled herself because she was afraid to leave her desk to use the bathroom, employees told The Daily Wire.
The agency violated so many rules and laws that its general counsel was flabbergasted — but when he called attention to it, officials framed him for violent threats and removed him from his job with a bizarre manifesto that called him “grimy” and “unwholesome,” the general counsel, Mateo Dunne, who is white, said.
The agency attracted attention by locking the doors to prevent auditors from the Department of Government Efficiency from seeing its books, and suing Elon Musk to prevent a takeover. The lawsuit is pending, but all of its employees have been laid off after the Trump administration gained access to the office space using U.S. Marshals.
From 2021 until February, the agency was led by CEO Travis Adkins, who came to it after a short stint at USAID as a Joe Biden political appointee.
Adkins’ former assistant, who is black, said in a sworn affidavit that “On at least three occasions, Mr. Adkins told me that he wanted his entire team (to include the General Counsel) to consist only of Black people. He wanted all of his direct reports to be Black.”
“He was very adamant in only hiring African Americans, mainly female, and he told me many times he would not hire a white person or a veteran. I said that’s discrimination, and he said ‘I’m the president and CEO, I can do what I want,’” the assistant told The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity. Adkins is also a lecturer at Georgetown University.
The African Development Foundation was created by Congress in 1980 as a board whose members are appointed by the president of the United States to six-year terms, who in turn appoint a CEO to run day-to-day operations. The board chair was Jack Leslie, a white former staffer to former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) who was appointed to the board by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Adkins bragged about concealing operations from the board, saying “them white motherf&#8212;ers, they don’t need to know… I don’t think I should tell them sh&#8211;,” according to the assistant.
A junior employee disappeared a few months after she took complaints to the board, and the assistant asked what happened to her; Adkins replied, “I just put the white b&#8212;h on a contract and then the contract ended,” the assistant said.
The situation was the same under the prior CEO, C.D. Glin, a former Peace Corps DEI officer and later an Obama political appointee to the Peace Corps who led the agency from 2016 to 2021. “C.D. [Glin] literally said to me that he needed to hire black people,” another employee told The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity. “Virtually everyone he hired in programs was black.”
In 2021, the agency had to pay a settlement after it laid off a white senior executive without paying her severance or following federal rules, and she alleged it was because of her race. It conducted a “reduction in force” that was targeted at her, and falsely claimed she didn’t have the qualifications to shift into another job, even though many of those jobs had actually reported to her.
In previous installments in this series, The Daily Wire reported how its agency&#8217;s CFO received payments to his personal bank account from a company to which he steered $1 million. The agency gave money to African grantees and then instructed them to re-route it to the agency&#8217;s employees and friends in America, and even pushed a for-profit multi-level marketing scheme run by a board member on poor Africans.
<blockquote>
<h1>&#8220;I think USADF deserved the fate that it received, because if it couldn’t be run correctly, then it shouldn’t be run at all.&#8221;</h1>
</blockquote>
<h3>Retaliation</h3>
In a government agency, the job of the general counsel is to ensure that rules and laws are followed. Glin ensured that the role was either empty or filled with junior lawyers with no experience in government, even though the agency engaged in complex international finance.
After he departed as CEO in May 2021, there was a brief period in which the agency had no permanent leader, and a traditional general counsel managed to slip through. When Mateo Dunne, a white former high-level Defense Department executive, took the job, he was appalled by how little the African Development Foundation seemed to care about laws and rules.
The lawyer set out to interview employees about conflicts of interest, purchase card abuse, contracting fraud, and a toxic workplace environment. In a matter of days, the evidence started stacking up. He told the acting CEO, Elisabeth Feleke, that outside lawyers would have to be brought in to document the full scope of the lawbreaking.
Instead, Feleke ordered him to stop the investigation, told him to change the preliminary findings, and falsely told the board the probe was complete, he told The Daily Wire. Dunne stopped investigating, but sent his preliminary report to the board.
He soon learned that despite nearly uniform agreement that Glin had been abusive, the organization wasn’t getting a fresh start. The board agreed to hire a decades-long friend of Glin’s, Travis Adkins, to replace him. When Adkins entered the office for the first time, Glin enveloped him in a bear hug.
Adkins later testified under oath that he was selected to lead the African Development Foundation without even applying for the job, and that he couldn’t recall when or how he managed to be selected.
As Adkins’ start date neared, Dunne prepared to show him the lawbreaking he had found so that Adkins could reform the agency. But it seemed that Adkins already knew, and his first priority was shutting Dunne’s investigation down.
Within hours of Adkins being sworn in as president and CEO in January 2022, he put Dunne on leave and cut off his access to evidence before he could even speak, video shows.
“You will be on administrative leave the very moment that we hang up this call. You will have a box mailed to your home to allow you to send back to us any USADF-issued equipment,” he told Dunne. “You are not to contact any of the members of the USADF staff. And again, your access to all of our data and systems will be closed down immediately.”
Dunne replied: “I had prepared this slide deck to introduce myself and what I’ve done at USADF. This conversation obviously went a different way … I guess I have a couple of questions.”
“We’re not going to do questions and answers,” Adkins said. “We’re not going to have a back and forth about this.” Dunne was never told why he was placed on paid leave, which Adkins acknowledged was the first step in a discipline process.
Internally, the agency sought to build a justification for firing the white lawyer, with chief of staff Brandi James compiling a 75-page manifesto that called Dunne “Adversarial, Belittling, Calculating, Combative, Condescending, Deceitful, Defensive, Grimy, Sinister, and Unwholesome.”
The report called Dunne a “danger to USADF’s mission and staff.” But the details made clear that the risk was not to anyone’s life, but rather the livelihoods of law-breaking bureaucrats. The dossier faulted him for his “insistence on tying up staff time on investigatory digs.”
The evidence of insubordination was that he had investigated apparent spending on luxuries and personal items by top staff, when Acting CEO Elisabeth Feleke said, “I have not given Mateo direction or mandate to investigate credit card fraud.”
<blockquote>
<h1>&#8220;Them white motherf&#8212;ers, they don’t need to know… I don’t think I should tell them sh&#8211;.&#8221;</h1>
</blockquote>
As evidence of Dunne “circumventing and breaching USADF protocols,” the dossier complained that Dunne notified Glin that he had not filed years&#8217; worth of mandatory Office of Government Ethics conflict-of-interest forms, carrying a $600 penalty, even though Feleke told him not to raise the issue. As general counsel, Dunne was the agency’s “designated ethics officer” and required to do so by the government-wide ethics office. The forms would have revealed that the African group had paid money to a group associated with Glin, and refusal to file them can carry criminal penalties.
Adkins went as far as implying that Dunne had threatened to kill him, alluding to something “being sent to people regarding the death of government officials, as all of us are government officials.” This, it turned out, was a fantastical distortion of Dunne sharing a sentimental quote from a New York governor acknowledging the passing of a former legislator.
Then a new comment appeared on the agency’s profile on the employer-review site GlassDoor that said, under “Advice to Management”: “die.” The post was attributed to “General Counsel.” The African Development Foundation sicced four different law enforcement agencies on Dunne for making death threats.
The former Sunday school-teaching lawyer said he was framed. “If I was going to do an anonymous post I would obviously not put my job title in there,&#8221; he said.
Adkins was forthright with the board’s chair, Jack Leslie, about what was really going on. He wrote to Leslie that Dunne was placed on leave for his “efforts to damage USADF’s reputation via the Office of Inspector General…Dunne conducted an unauthorized, backward-focused investigation that unsettled staff. &#8230; He then began leveling accusations that USADF senior leadership was ‘interfering’ with his investigations and General Counsel functions.”
<h3>Lies </h3>
The African Development Foundation never told Dunne what he was being investigated for, or formally moved to fire him, which would require proving that he did something wrong. It simply left him on paid leave indefinitely, violating a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/6329b" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law</a> that limits investigative leave to 90 days. After six months, in July 2022, he quit to take another job.
An agency’s top lawyer calling attention to rampant lawbreaking, only for him to be removed from duty, is as remarkable a case of whistleblower retaliation as the government has seen. Dunne provided documentation to the Office of Special Counsel, which exists to investigate whistleblower retaliation. But it closed his file when the employee he’d been working with left her job, he said.
He filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging discrimination on the basis of his race and retaliation. In August 2024, an administrative law judge dismissed his case, even though he had an affidavit from a black employee saying that Adkins had told her repeatedly that he did not want any white people working for him. Dunne is appealing in court.
Dunne deposed African Development Foundation staff in the course of that lawsuit. In his sworn testimony, Adkins denied saying he wouldn’t hire white people — but also claimed he didn’t know how many people worked for him, that he could only remember the names of two, and that he didn’t know what race various employees were.
<div id="attachment_918261" style="width: 746px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-918261" class="size-large wp-image-918261" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep-736x576.jpg" alt="" width="736" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep-736x576.jpg 736w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep-300x235.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep-768x601.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/adkins-dep.jpg 1184w" sizes="(max-width: 736px) 100vw, 736px" />A typical exchange from Adkins’ deposition</div>
Adkins’ sworn testimony was repeatedly contradicted by documents and the testimony of other employees.
Adkins had told the board that a government-wide human resource office had “recommended Mr. Dunne immediately be placed on Administrative Leave for misconduct and performance.” A representative of that office testified that it was not true.
He denied plotting to remove Dunne as general counsel before he even started as CEO in an effort to spare his friend Glin and officials like Mathieu Zahui, the chief financial officer, and a target of the investigation.
But discovery in the lawsuit showed that Zahui had written during that time period that “The board and the incoming president would like to explore the possibilities of a do-over” on the general counsel hire.
Adkins did not return a request for comment from The Daily Wire.
Dunne said it has been painful to watch some turn the African Development Foundation into a “martyr,” seemingly to avoid acknowledging that DOGE’s scrutiny was warranted, when no one cared to fix it, though signs were abundant that it was broken.
He said he left his job at the Defense Department to come to the African agency “because I wanted to help people,” but found that widespread rule-breaking was short-changing both Africans and low-level staff.
“I think USADF deserved the fate that it received, because if it couldn’t be run correctly, then it shouldn’t be run at all. If the leaders of that agency couldn’t act, and members of the foreign policy establishment wouldn’t act,” he said. “It’s an indictment of the entire system.”
READ MORE:
<ul>
<li aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend</a> </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/african-aid-agency-used-foreign-pass-throughs-to-hide-money-that-went-to-d-c-staff-friends" target="_blank" rel="noopener">African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans</a></li>
</ul>

‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

American-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost is chosen as the next pope, the Trump administration signs a trade deal with the United Kingdom, and a Daily Wire investigation uncovers fraud in an African Aid group.
It’s Friday, May 9, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today’s episode here:
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If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/world-welcomes-american-pope-trump-secures-trade-deal-5-9-25/id1576594336?i=1000706943533" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
<h2>A New Pope</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-917987" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_00_30_17.Still001.jpeg" alt="" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_00_30_17.Still001.jpeg 640w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_00_30_17.Still001-300x169.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></div>
Topline: The world has a new pope – the first American in history — Pope Leo XIV.
A new pope was named on Thursday. Cardinal Robert Prevost, a Chicago native, was elected pope on the second day of the conclave. Leo XIV, the Church&#8217;s 267th pope, will lead 1.4 billion Catholics around the world.
Pope Leo appeared visibly emotional as he appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and addressed the massive crowd in the square.
“Peace be with you all! Dearest brothers and sisters, this is the first greeting of the resurrected Christ, the good shepherd who has given up his life for God, and I should also like this greeting of peace to enter our hearts and your families and to all those people wherever they are. All peoples throughout the world, peace be with you.”
Leo was born in the United States, but spent much of his priesthood in Peru. He became Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru for eight years until 2023, when he was made a cardinal by Pope Francis. He also led the Augustinian Order. Francis then made Prevost the Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops — this means he was a Vatican official responsible for recommending priests to be made bishops around the world. Prevost was not considered the most likely cardinal to become pope, but Vatican officials are often considered for the position.
Pope Leo has been strong on Church doctrine, but he has overall been seen as a centrist on political issues.
<h2>Trump Secures U.K. Trade Deal</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-917989" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_01_39_14.Still002.jpeg" alt="" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_01_39_14.Still002.jpeg 640w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_01_39_14.Still002-300x169.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></div>
Topline: President Donald Trump announced a trade agreement with the United Kingdom on Thursday, and the markets responded well amid hope of more trade deals to come.
Ever since President Trump rolled out his Liberation Day tariffs, he’s promised that U.S. trading partners would come to the negotiating table and that deals would follow — and on Thursday, we saw the first such deal. The president announced a “full and comprehensive” trade agreement to “cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years to come.”
&#8220;This morning, I&#8217;m thrilled to announce that we have reached a breakthrough trade deal with the United Kingdom,” Trump said. “Today is a victory day in World War II, we won the war together, so there could be no more perfect morning to reach this historic agreement.”
The president held firm on the ten percent universal tariff he put in place last month, but did offer concessions elsewhere –  for example, he agreed to lower the tariff on British automobiles from 27.5% to 10%, while the rate for steel and aluminum will fall to zero.
For their part, the British agreed to open their markets to American ethanol, beef, and poultry — the White House said that means billions of dollars in new profits for our farmers and ranchers. They also agreed to purchase $10 billion of Boeing airplanes in exchange for the elimination of U.S. tariffs on Rolls-Royce engines and plane parts. Tech stocks skyrocketed when it was announced that the Brits would also eliminate a digital tax on American tech companies.
Trump hinted that he was “very close” on “numerous deals,” adding that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would be heading to Switzerland for negotiations with China. He also made sure to note that, rather than taking a piecemeal approach with the rest of Europe, he’s working on a single comprehensive deal with all of the EU – but the president also suggested that future deals would be unlikely to lower tariffs to the same degree.
<h2>Fraud Uncovered In African Aid</h2>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-917991" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_02_32_27.Still003.jpeg" alt="" width="640" height="360" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_02_32_27.Still003.jpeg 640w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/SEGMENT-HEADERS.00_02_32_27.Still003-300x169.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" /></div>
Topline: A new Daily Wire investigation uncovers how one government agency went to great lengths to block a DOGE audit.
The African Development Foundation was deemed a resistance hero by the media for stonewalling DOGE auditors, including locking their doors. A small federal agency with 30 employees and a $45 million budget, by law, the foundation is tasked with giving grants of up to $250,000 for economic development in Africa, and it’s only allowed to give to African-run entities.
Employees at the African Development Foundation refused to let DOGE in, and said they wouldn’t recognize Trump’s appointee to lead it – Peter Moracco, who was also dismantling USAID. They also filed a lawsuit claiming DOGE was intruding on their privacy. Ultimately, the Trump administration seized the building with the assistance of U.S. Marshals.
A Daily Wire investigation found that the African Development Foundation would give money to African organizations and then require them to redirect that money back to the United States to pay officials, their friends, or former employers. Americans who worked at the headquarters of this agency in D.C. were wired money from African entities.
“I literally have a receipt for $17,000 from Kenya to a woman who was working as the assistant to the African Development Foundation’s CEO,” Daily Wire Investigative Reporter Luke Rosiak told Morning Wire. “The CEO, CD Glin, would actually push unwanted projects on Africans as a way of steering money to his friends. In one case, they told African groups that they’d give a grant to manufacture COVID masks, but they had to subcontract it to Glin’s friend in Colorado. The African groups said there’s no demand for that, we already have all the COVID masks we need, but Glin didn’t care.”
USAID inspector general agents suspect that at least some of the refusal to cooperate with DOGE was an attempt to cover up criminal conduct. The African Development Foundation’s chief financial officer, Matthieu Zahui, repeatedly steered about a million dollars in grants and contracts to an African company called Ganiam Ltd. without competition. One of them was for “travel” during COVID, when international travel dropped precipitously. USAID IG seized Zahui’s phone and found that Ganiam was owned by Zahui’s friend, and every time he gave it a contract, the friend sent money to Zahui’s personal bank account. But Zahui was never arrested.

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Morning Brief: A New Pope, Trump Secures U.K. Trade Deal & Fraud Uncovered In African Aid

Catholic Church

Christianity

Media

Morning Wire

Pope Leo

trade

United Kingdom

Editor’s Note: This is part three in a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. 
—
The Department of Government Efficiency has shuttered a small, USAID-adjacent federal agency called the African Development Foundation, over the outrage of Democrats who say it means poor Africans will suffer and public servants will lose their jobs.
But top officials used the agency to advance their own interests and live lives of luxury at the expense of those Africans, while forcing some staff to work without pay and abusing others so badly that they routinely cried, a Daily Wire investigation found.
That included helping Herbalife, a multi-level marketing scheme run by an agency board member, make inroads in Africa. John Agwunobi, who served as CEO of Herbalife, was an African Development Foundation board member until President Donald Trump fired the board in March.
Agency management locked the doors to prevent DOGE auditors from entering, and the Trump administration gained access only with the assistance of U.S. Marshals. The standoff made the agency the subject of <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/united-states-african-development-foudation-doge-lawsuit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fawning</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/federal-workers-block-musks-doge-africa-development-agency" target="_blank" rel="noopener">coverage</a> from media outlets that said it was standing up for principles.
But its employees knew better.
“The hero of the story is actually the villain,” one former employee said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It was so hard to see ADF being used as a beacon of hope and resistance against DOGE because I knew they were actually covering up horrible things…When I saw that ADF was being celebrated as a David vs. Goliath situation, I knew the doors were being kept locked for a reason.”
In 2020, the African agency partnered with Herbalife at Agwunobi’s behest. That was two months after Herbalife paid a $122 million settlement to the Department of Justice to settle criminal charges that it <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/herbalife-nutrition-ltd-agrees-pay-over-122-million-resolve-fcpa-case" target="_blank" rel="noopener">violated the Foreign Corrupt</a> Practices Act. It also paid $200 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it was a <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2016/07/herbalife-will-restructure-its-multi-level-marketing-operations-pay-200-million-consumer-redress" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pyramid scheme</a> that exploited people into opening money-losing businesses.
The African Development Foundation made it seem like the partnership was with a nonprofit affiliated with Herbalife. But it was actually with the company itself, which was seeking to expand its reach in Africa, the agency’s former general counsel, Mateo Dunne, found, according to materials obtained by The Daily Wire. The grants involved paying five Africans $5,000 and providing them “product donations, and Herbalife Nutrition staff as global volunteers in their businesses,” partnership materials said.
“The marketing materials prepared by USADF and Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. reflect that the partnership was being used to drive corporate sales and marketing, not charitable objectives,” Dunne concluded. “USADF personnel described the partnership with Herbalife Nutrition Ltd. as designed to leverage USADF’s network and reputation to promote the Herbalife brand in Africa.”
That sort of violation of conflict of interest rules was common in the agency, Dunne said.
The agency’s chief executive from 2016 to 2021, C.D. Glin — a former Peace Corps DEI officer and later an Obama political appointee to the Peace Corps — had the agency pay $5,000 a year to an organization, Root Capital, of which he was a board member, employees said. Glin did not file conflict-of-interest reports and ethics pledges, which are required <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-5/chapter-XVI/subchapter-B/part-2634" target="_blank" rel="noopener">by law</a> and designed to prevent such situations, for most of the years he worked there. He filed one in 2019, but omitted Root Capital from it.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-917689" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/unnamed-572x576.png" alt="" width="572" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/unnamed-572x576.png 572w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/unnamed-298x300.png 298w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/unnamed-150x150.png 150w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/unnamed-768x773.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/unnamed-1526x1536.png 1526w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/unnamed.png 1590w" sizes="(max-width: 572px) 100vw, 572px" /></div>
<h3>Using poverty funds for luxury.</h3>
In January 2022, Travis Adkins, who had been serving as a <a href="https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-africa-global-funders-2021-3-biden-appoints-head-of-usaid-africa-bureau/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joe Biden appointee</a> to USAID, took over as CEO of the African Development Foundation. He had a lien against him for unpaid federal taxes from 2015 until February 2021, according to public records. Landlords in New York and Washington, D.C., said in court filings that he owed them money.
Employees said both Glin and Adkins used agency spending to build their personal brands and glad-hand with celebrities and billionaires, while treating workers with the callous cruelty of which liberals accuse DOGE, employees said.
Glin had the agency pay for him to “travel to countries and network at things that had nothing to do with grassroots African economic development. He went to a Scandinavian country, a European country, African countries where there was no ADF program being considered. He was spending ADF money to get his next job,” an employee said.
Another employee said he’d have the agency pay to sponsor conferences in order to buy prominent speaking slots: “He’d pay $30,000 to speak at events.”
Glin had the agency pay $1,000 to <a href="http://theboardlist.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">theboardlist.com</a>, which helps executives get prestigious board seats based on DEI hiring in exchange for that amount, and $7,500 for a Harvard executive class just before leaving the agency, workers said.
All of that seems to have paid off: Glin is now president of the PepsiCo Foundation, overseeing $70 million.
<blockquote>
<h3>&#8220;He went to a Scandinavian country, a European country, African countries where there was no ADF program being considered. He was spending ADF money to get his next job.&#8221;</h3>
</blockquote>
Adkins, for his part, brushed off government rules about travel costs and demanded $1,000-a-night hotels, summarily firing an assistant who raised concerns about his travel arrangements, the former assistant told The Daily Wire, speaking on condition of anonymity. He had a tailor fit him for three custom suits, and sent the bill to the agency, she alleged.
The executives seemed more concerned about making the agency look good — so congressional funding would continue flowing — than they were in actually doing good, employees said.
One grantee, called Vava Coffee, violated rules about how it spent grant money, but threatened to publicly disparage the agency as “colonizers” if the checks didn’t keep coming. Glin ordered disbursements to continue, employee Kate Ristroph said in an internal interview obtained by The Daily Wire. She said she eventually succeeded in terminating the grant.
The agency entered into a partnership with the National Basketball Players Association, where NBA players could choose how to spend money in Africa, and American taxpayers would match it. Some of the money was used to build a basketball court.
<h3>Toxic workplace.</h3>
The African Development Foundation had a staff of between 30 and 60, and a budget of $45 million. By law, it was permitted to give grants only to African groups, and in the amount of $250,000 or less.
Glin and Adkins frequently hired workers as contractors instead of government employees, sometimes directing African funding recipients to, in turn, pay D.C. bureaucrats to get around rules and hide their overhead costs.
There were also other advantages. Hiring workers as contractors meant they didn’t have to follow merit-based hiring practices, prove wrongdoing when firing people, or grant them union protections.
The agency appeared so intent on avoiding those protections that it would essentially use government credit cards to pay workers in “micropurchases,” a petty cash-like payment style that avoids scrutiny from Treasury Department officials. One contractor described having to restart her employment every five weeks, each time being paid by a different pass-through LLC, and sometimes working for long periods without pay.
Staff were horrifically mistreated by Glin and Adkins, who acted as if they were global celebrities instead of what amounted to managers of a few dozen people in an obscure organization, according to Daily Wire interviews and videos of an internal investigation.
Brandi James, the chief of staff, said in a videotaped internal interview: “Toxic would be people crying or things like that. Yeah, we had that, we had [Glin] yelling.”
A junior employee said she soiled herself after Glin made her afraid to leave her desk to use the bathroom. She said Glin would pound his fists, and people would walk into his office “with their hands shaking.”
Jeff Gilleo, a senior program manager, called Glin a “narcissistic bully” who “said mean things to almost everybody.”
Associate General Counsel Nina-Belle Mbayu said Glin screamed at her until she cried, and she sought therapy after having “physical reactions” anytime she thought of him. “People were just treated, in my opinion, as disposable,” she said.
Yael Nagar, a senior program analyst, said one employee “went on extended sick leave for a mental health program because they were so stressed at work,” and Glin’s takeaway was “we need to make sure no one…finds out about this.”
Employees said they tried to warn PepsiCo against hiring Glin, sending a letter “about the horrific culture and use of money” under Glin, but that he was hired anyway.
PepsiCo and Glin did not return a request for comment.
The African Development Foundation board also received the letter. But despite widespread agreement about Glin’s toxicity, it hired a close friend of Glin’s, Adkins, without Adkins even applying, Adkins said in a deposition. And many of the patterns continued.
On GlassDoor, the website where employees rate their workplaces, the themes were consistent. “USADF is a scary place to work… Maybe one day it will be a workplace that has admirable values and care for its staff. Presently though, it is rotten to the core,” one wrote in 2023.
“Toxic work environment led by narcissists,” another said that year. “After years of mismanagement, it cannot fulfill its potential.”
Brandi James, the agency’s chief of staff, said in an internal email that she tried to use government funds to pay GlassDoor to remove negative posts about the agency, but the site refused, leaving them visible to anyone who cared to look.
Though DOGE critics now claim that the African Development Foundation was essential and mourn for the jobs lost, when it was operational, no one showed an interest.
It “just seemed like there was never going to be any consequence for any of these things,” Nagar said.
READ PART ONE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend</a> 
PART TWO: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/african-aid-agency-used-foreign-pass-throughs-to-hide-money-that-went-to-d-c-staff-friends" target="_blank" rel="noopener">African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff</a>
PART FOUR: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/them-white-motherf-ers-racist-agency-framed-its-lawyer-after-he-discovered-lawbreaking-he-says?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=‘Them+White+Motherf-ers’%3A+Racist+Agency+Framed+Its+Lawyer+After+He+Discovered+Lawbreaking%2C+He+Says">‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says</a>

African Development Foundation

Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans

Corruption

Editor&#8217;s Note: This is part two in a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. 
—
When Department of Government Efficiency aides showed up at a small USAID-linked federal agency called the African Development Foundation in March, its management locked the doors and refused to let them in. A fired board member <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278118/gov.uscourts.dcd.278118.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> to stop DOGE, and the group was <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/united-states-african-development-foudation-doge-lawsuit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lauded</a> for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/federal-workers-block-musks-doge-africa-development-agency" target="_blank" rel="noopener">resisting</a> DOGE&#8217;s demands for “access to USADF systems including financial records, payment and human resources systems.”
But the objection, several former employees told The Daily Wire, might not have been on principled grounds, but rather because those records amounted to a crime scene.
The African Development Foundation has an annual budget of just $45 million. But, operating out of sight and out of mind, it might have been the most corrupt agency in Washington, a Daily Wire investigation found. Its employees have been sounding the alarm for years about a culture of self-dealing, abuse, and anti-white discrimination, while those who now object to DOGE’s shuttering of the agency did nothing to help fix it.
By <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/96/hr6942/text" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law</a>, the agency is only allowed to give grants to Africa-based groups. But it moved money through African entities and then back to the United States to pad salaries of D.C. bureaucrats and pay their friends and former employers, employees said.
Until the DOGE takeover, which culminated in U.S. Marshals ordering building security to let Trump administration officials in, the agency was led by CEO Travis Adkins, who arrived in 2021 after a short stint as a Biden appointee at USAID. An assistant to Adkins said after she asked why her paycheck was lower than agreed upon, Adkins informed her that the remainder would be coming from an overseas account.
He “sent me an email connecting me with this guy in Africa who asked for my banking information. Within a few days this guy wired me $17,000,” she told The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity. The Daily Wire reviewed bank paperwork showing the transfer from an account in Kenya.
Another longtime employee, she said, was eventually “put on the payroll of an African partner and was informed she was being paid through an entity in Mauritania. No payroll, state or federal taxes were withheld from her paychecks.”
“The contracts don’t make sense and they know [DOGE] will find lots of wrongdoing and illegal activity,” she said. “I’m not a fan of DOGE, but some of the things they’re doing need to be done. They have been operating like this for years and no one did anything about it.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Getting more dramatic now. They are trying to get into the office but the agency won&#8217;t let them. Here is a video, shared with permission, of Marocco and some of the DOGE folks outside the elevators <a href="https://t.co/VkLmw3hodW">pic.twitter.com/VkLmw3hodW</a>
— Brett Murphy (@BrettMmurphy) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrettMmurphy/status/1897356477725278340?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 5, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Video shows DOGE aides locked out of the African Development Foundation&#8217;s office. / @BrettMmurphy
<h3>International money-laundering?</h3>
As the Trump administration dismantled USAID and contractors in D.C.’s affluent suburbs complained about the job losses it would cause, some speculated about whether international charity funding was being laundered to politically-connected Washingtonians.
That is not dissimilar to what the African Development Foundation did regularly, according to The Daily Wire’s interviews with employees as well as videotaped internal interviews that became part of a lawsuit.
In one instance, it awarded a grant to a Kenyan journalism group called Africa 24 and directed that group to, in turn, pay the salaries of Americans at the federal agency’s D.C. headquarters. That meant Congress thought it was a charitable grant to Africa, and that the agency had a low overhead rate. In reality, the money was being spent on D.C. bureaucrats.
Chief Financial Officer Mathieu Zahui acknowledged and defended the arrangement.
“The grant was provided to an African organization&#8230;A grant can pay for people,” he told The Daily Wire in an interview at his home, where he has been spending his days after being locked out of the office. “Yeah, granted, they were in D.C.”
Part one of this series revealed that last year, the USAID inspector general seized Zahui’s phone and found that he had received <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">payments to his personal bank account</a> from the owner of a company to which he steered contracts, but he has not been charged with a crime.
<blockquote>
<h1>“We’re in that murky territory of like, is this legal?” a staffer said. “The CEO specifically directed it.”</h1>
</blockquote>
The agency hired many workers as contractors instead of official government employees, making it possible to pay them using creative funding mechanisms. Once they were hired, executives drew no distinction between contractors and government employees, even having contractors supervise employees, possess government credit cards, and make decisions about money in violation of federal rules, the agency’s former general counsel, Mateo Dunne, told The Daily Wire.
Its CEO from 2016 to 2021, C.D. Glin — a former Peace Corps DEI officer and later an Obama political appointee to the Peace Corps — reverse-engineered African grants to steer money to friends in the United States, employees said.
The agency gave grants to the Association of Ghana Industries on the condition that the African group pay Pyxera Global, a D.C. organization where Glin previously worked as director of business development, to “do a study of the artisan sector in Ghana,” agency program manager Kate Ristroph said in a videotaped internal investigative interview with Dunne.
“We’re in that murky territory of like, is this legal?” she said. “The CEO specifically directed it.”
Glin attempted to foist grants addressing nonexistent problems on African groups as a way to steer money to an affiliate of the Aspen Institute, the left-wing Colorado nonprofit, called Artisan Alliance, Ristroph said. The head of Artisan Alliance at the time “flat out tells us she’s a close personal friend of C.D. Glin,” she said.
The agency offered a grant to the Heva Fund, an African group, on the condition that it send a portion to Artisan Alliance. The grant was ostensibly to produce personal protective equipment like face masks, even though Heva told the agency there was no demand for such a thing because affordable personal protective equipment was readily available in the region.
Heva was so uncomfortable with the proposition that it asked to cancel the grant, Ristroph said. So the agency pushed the plan on a Kenyan group called Ustadi, which also balked, saying “We don&#8217;t need to pay Artisan Alliance, an American company, to help Kenyans learn how to sell masks,” she said.
In another case, a grant to the African group CS Consulting was used to pay the <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/supporting-small-and-medium-enterprises-sub-saharan-africa-through-blended-finance" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Center for Strategic and International Studies</a>, a D.C. think tank. “It’s all basically a pass through to CSIS,” Ristroph said.
She said the agency trains African grantees to avoid third-world style corruption by only giving out contracts that have been competitively bid at arm&#8217;s length, yet she was forced to tell them that the Americans were ordering them to do the opposite.
“I was on the phone with them…saying we’re signing a new grant to [the Association of Ghana Industries], and there will be a component that is a contract with Pyxera Global that is not competed. It’s already been decided,” she said. “It puts me in a compromising position.”
READ PART ONE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Foreign+Aid+Official+Who+Resisted+DOGE+Took+Secret+Payments+After+Steering+Africa+Money+To+Friend%C2%A0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend</a> 
PART THREE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans">Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans</a>
PART FOUR: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/them-white-motherf-ers-racist-agency-framed-its-lawyer-after-he-discovered-lawbreaking-he-says?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=‘Them+White+Motherf-ers’%3A+Racist+Agency+Framed+Its+Lawyer+After+He+Discovered+Lawbreaking%2C+He+Says">‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says</a>

African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff

Elon Musk

Editor&#8217;s Note: This is part one of a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting the microscope of the Department of Government Efficiency.
&#8212;
A foreign aid official who refused the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to his agency&#8217;s financial records may have had a reason to keep auditors out: he steered illicit contracts to a friend who sent him secret payments, according to a law enforcement affidavit obtained by The Daily Wire.
Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, refused to <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69711562/20/4/brehm-v-marocco/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">grant</a> DOGE access to its books and told the White House that the agency would not acknowledge President Donald Trump’s appointee as chairman of the board. After a dramatic showdown in March, DOGE physically took over the building with U.S. Marshals, but control of the agency is now the subject of a lawsuit objecting to “swooping in with DOGE staff, demanding access to sensitive information systems” — an objection that reads differently in light of the criminal probe.
For years, workers at the small, USAID-adjacent federal agency focused on Africa have told oversight bodies about allegations of self-dealing, procurement violations, and mysterious offshore bank accounts, many of them involving Zahui. But little was done about it, several told The Daily Wire.
One action that raised eyebrows was Zahui’s insistence on directing both grants and contracts to a company in Kenya called Ganiam Ltd. According to <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=974d7f91d366380036f5f1029bc26978" target="_blank" rel="noopener">spending records</a>, it was awarded nearly $800,000 in contracts without competition. For example, a one-year, <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_20341920P00003_2036_-NONE-_-NONE-" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$350,000</a> contract for “transport, travel, relocation” services was executed in March 2020, when few people were traveling or holding conferences because of coronavirus.
According to a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.274261/gov.uscourts.dcd.274261.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">search warrant application</a> uncovered by The Daily Wire, USAID’s inspector general established by August 2024 that the company’s owner had secretly wired money to Zahui’s personal bank account at times that matched up with the federal contracts. To date, the Department of Justice has not charged either man with a crime.
Ganiam Ltd. is owned by Maina Gakure, whom Zahui has known for decades. Both worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs in San Diego and later moved to Fairfax, Virginia. Gakure had been in charge of awarding contracts at the VA, then created his own company designed to get government <a href="http://www.ganiam.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">construction contracts</a> by taking advantage of a minority preference program. It was called Ganiam LLC and was based out of a house in Virginia. Gakure similarly created a company based in Kenya called Gakure Ltd. The African Development Foundation is permitted by <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/96/hr6942/text" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law</a> to give grants only to African entities.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Earlier this week, a briefing with Pete Marocco (the architect of Trump’s illegal dismantling of USAID) left us with more questions than answers. Worse, he left early to take DOGE staffers and federal marshals to try and forcibly close the U.S. African Development Foundation. <a href="https://t.co/Sxyf2gqL2g">pic.twitter.com/Sxyf2gqL2g</a>
— Senator Brian Schatz (@SenBrianSchatz) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenBrianSchatz/status/1898391541594419261?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
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In January 2024, inspector general agents interviewed Zahui about the Ganiam contracts, and he acknowledged having known Gakure personally since 1999, and having been to his apartment. He “could not explain why the contract with Ganiam was sole-sourced instead of being competitively bid,” the agents wrote.
Zahui — who was named chief financial officer of the federal agency after he declared bankruptcy and had his house foreclosed on — acknowledged to investigators that the travel contract was executed after COVID had already shut down travel. He told them the contract was actually used for IT services, but since Ganiam had no expertise in IT, it subcontracted it to a different company. A Department of the Treasury contracting official told the agents that was not allowed.
Zahui continued to give more contracts to Ganiam without competition, which he justified by saying he was “lazy” and didn’t want to find a new vendor. “Zahui stated that he did not receive any direct or indirect benefits from Gakure,” agents wrote.
But in February 2024, the agents seized Zahui’s work phone and examined a subset of the data.
“Agents found text messages showing at least eight instances of wire transfers or electronic payments from Gakure to Zahui’s Bank of America account, totaling over $10,000. These payments coincide with USADF’s awarding of sole-source contracts to Ganiam,” they wrote.
“After identifying these payments, the agents stopped their review. Based on the aforementioned evidence, there is probable cause to believe that there are additional relevant communications and instances of payments on the TARGET DEVICE in the applications that have not been reviewed,” they told a judge on October 29, 2024, eight months after seizing the device. They asked for a warrant to examine the rest.
On November 4, 2024, the day before the presidential election, they executed the search warrant.
This February, President Trump fired the African Development Foundation’s board members, and its CEO, Travis Adkins, resigned. A three-person committee, including Zahui, took over the duties of CEO.
On February 21, DOGE “demanded immediate access to USADF systems including financial records and payment and human resources systems,” but Zahui <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69711562/31/brehm-v-marocco/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stalled</a> them. On February 28, the White House emailed Zahui that Pete Marocco, the Trump operative tasked with dismantling USAID, had become acting chairman of the African Development Foundation. Zahui told the White House that agency staff would not honor the appointment because Marocco had not been confirmed by the Senate.
When DOGE returned, staff locked the doors and refused to let them in, creating a dramatic showdown, according to a <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69711562/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a> filed against DOGE by the now-fired board. DOGE eventually gained access to the building using U.S. Marshals, and put the staff on leave.
In an interview with The Daily Wire at his home, Zahui said DOGE changed the locks, but that they didn’t know about a back door, and he had gained access since the takeover.
He acknowledged that he selected Gakure’s firm because of their personal relationship, and said Gakure moved to Kenya before COVID.
During the same time period that Ganiam Ltd. was paid as an African company, Ganiam LLC received roughly <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/search?hash=175860208aca119e74e2819f7a2dd58a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$90,000</a> in U.S. coronavirus assistance designed to prevent the loss of American jobs. Gakure did not return a request for comment.
Zahui told The Daily Wire that Ganiam performed IT services during COVID instead of the travel services advertised on contracting documents. Contracting records show that the agency, with only 30 employees, was separately paying astronomical sums for IT, including <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_20341920D00002_2036" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$865,000</a> to another minority-owned contractor called Etranservices Corp. between 2020 and 2022, with the option to bill up to $4 million.
A former agency employee told The Daily Wire that on top of the $800,000 in contracts to Ganiam, the African Development Foundation also awarded it grants. Zahui initially denied that to The Daily Wire, then conceded it was true. He said it gave grants to Ganiam, which it was required to use to buy airline tickets for the agency’s African partners to attend events on the continent and to take a trip to the United States, where they visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The amount of “grants” to the company is unknown.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Africa Aid Standoff
Workers at the US African Development Foundation, a self-described independent agency, refused building access to the agency’s new acting director on Wednesday.
Marshalls came with DOGE Thurday for attitude adjustment
Is this a peaceful transition of power? <a href="https://t.co/ySOwWbZYNW">pic.twitter.com/ySOwWbZYNW</a>
— Jim DaBink (@JimDaBink) <a href="https://twitter.com/JimDaBink/status/1898862332631306499?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Offshore bank accounts
In November 2023, Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), then the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, asked the USAID inspector general, which has oversight of the African Development Foundation, to open an “immediate investigation” into what he said was a slew of whistleblower complaints about financial irregularities at the agency. Those included “misuse of official funds; fraudulent and corrupt spending practices; conflicts of interest [and] gross mismanagement.”
Among the irregularities cited was “an alleged $2 million deposit by [Zahui] into a bank account in Ghana in February 2023 — that typically would require signature by at least two presently responsible fiduciary agents of the agency,” Risch wrote. “This may also explain why a senior USADF official was unable to account for major financial discrepancies included in the agency&#8217;s FY2024 budget request.”
In an internal videotaped interview obtained by The Daily Wire, regional portfolio manager Jeff Gileo, who was tasked with supervising projects in Africa, said, “a lot of those projects, we never actually saw them. They were managed by [the CFO’s office] directly.” For example, he said he asked for information about a grant in the country of Mauritius and was “told no, because there might be some other information in there that people don&#8217;t need to know about, being run by finance.”
Zahui strongly denied to The Daily Wire that there was a $2 million deposit. He said it was true that there are accounts throughout Africa with money sitting in them, some in countries where the agency hadn’t been active in years. He also said that he had traveled to open and close such bank accounts, but that the money was all accounted for.
“We’ve not operated in Guinea for a long time, it&#8217;s been more than eight years now, but the bank account is there. There&#8217;s money there. When we attempted to transfer the fund to the U.S. Treasury, it didn&#8217;t work. We tried three times,” he said. “I went to Botswana, I close it, I take the money out. I went to Swaziland&#8230;.I close it, and the funds are accounted for today. I couldn&#8217;t bring it here because I couldn&#8217;t cross the — so we put it where we transfer them in an account, what we call ADF — I forget the name, but we have an account in Kenya.”
“We call it funds ‘outside of treasury,’” he said, adding that he planned to help Congress locate the money, but that he hasn’t pointed it out to DOGE because no one has made contact with him. According to its 2022-2023 <a href="https://oig.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/0-ADF-24-003-C.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">financial statement</a>, the agency had $9.7 million “held outside treasury.”
Mateo Dunne, the agency’s former general counsel, told The Daily Wire that he provided the USAID inspector general with extensive documentation of violations of procurement, personnel, and ethics regulations by African Development Foundation officials beginning in 2021, but that even clear-cut violations didn’t appear to be acted upon.
Sen. Risch warned USAID’s inspector general in the 2023 letter that if it didn’t urgently reform the African Development Foundation, Americans might lose trust in USAID and foreign funding as a whole.
“Development assistance plays an important role in U.S. foreign policy. Turning a blind eye to alleged fraud, corruption, and mismanagement in any single development agency or program would undermine the credibility of U.S. development assistance across the board,” he wrote.
Now, just over 3 months into the Trump administration, USAID and the African Development Foundation are gone.
This is Part 1 in a series.
READ PART TWO: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/african-aid-agency-used-foreign-pass-throughs-to-hide-money-that-went-to-d-c-staff-friends?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=African+Aid+Agency+Used+Foreign+Pass-Throughs+To+Hide+Money+That+Went+To+D.C.+Staff%2C+Friends">African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff</a>
PART THREE: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/aid-agency-pushed-officials-for-profit-pyramid-scheme-on-poor-africans?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Aid+Agency+Pushed+Official%E2%80%99s+For-Profit+Pyramid+Scheme+On+Poor+Africans">Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans</a>
PART FOUR: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/them-white-motherf-ers-racist-agency-framed-its-lawyer-after-he-discovered-lawbreaking-he-says?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=Investigation&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=‘Them+White+Motherf-ers’%3A+Racist+Agency+Framed+Its+Lawyer+After+He+Discovered+Lawbreaking%2C+He+Says">‘Them White Motherf-ers’: Racist Agency Framed Its Lawyer After He Discovered Lawbreaking, He Says</a>

Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation

Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend 

Three years ago, 17-year-old Gavin Guffey was playing video games with his friends on a summer night, when he got a message from who he thought was a pretty girl on Instagram. Not even two hours later, Gavin took his own life. 
Gavin is one of dozens of teen boys who was tragically victimized in a sexual extortion scheme targeting minors – <a href="https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2025/PSA250306">a growing trend</a> the FBI is warning parents about. 
Sexual extortion, also known as sextortion, occurs when an offender coerces or tricks a minor into sending them sexually explicit images or video footage, and then threatens to release that material unless the minor produces additional explicit content. Or, in the case of financially-motivated sextortion, the offender will demand payment instead of more sexual content. 
Brandon Guffey, a Republican lawmaker in South Carolina and Gavin’s father, spoke to The Daily Wire about his son’s case and how he’s working to protect other minors and hold predators and social media companies accountable.
“We as parents can lock our doors to protect our kids, but now so much of their life is online, and we don&#8217;t realize the people who are contacting our kids on the other side,” Guffey said. 
Reports of sextortion cases of minors are rising each year. The FBI saw a <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sacramento/news/sextortion-a-growing-threat-preying-upon-our-nations-teens#:~:text=The%20sextortion%20involved%20at%20least,the%20activity%20to%20law%20enforcement">20% increase</a> in reports of financially motivated sextortion in just one six-month period in 2023. From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations received more than 13,000 reports of such online activity targeting minors. There were about 12,600 victims, mostly boys, and at least 20 suicides. 
A more recent number, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2025/02/25/teenage-boys-mental-health-suicide-sextortion-scams/78258882007/">according to a USA Today report</a>, found that sextortion cases have been tied to at least 30 suicides of teen boys since 2021. And that number is likely a low estimate, since some families might not even be aware their child was a victim of sextortion, due to the online nature of the crime. 
Additionally, the <a href="https://www.missingkids.org/cybertiplinedata">CyberTipline</a>, which is run by the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), received nearly 190,000 reports of Online Enticement of Children for Sexual Acts, which includes sextortion. That number has quadrupled since 2021, when the Tipline received around 44,000 reports.
Tammy Lee is the CEO of <a href="https://ourrescue.org/?gad_source=1&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwtdi_BhACEiwA97y8BIwhSnKn23zbRPE-oMdzCOuM0zlMpDHlCAycrVcJKjTzToQZ-p7UUhoC2VMQAvD_BwE">Our Rescue</a>, a nonprofit focused on ending child exploitation that partners with law enforcement in all 50 states. She told The Daily Wire that online threats need to be taken seriously by parents. 
“We really believe that every parent has to take this to be one of the most serious threats against their children of our time, because predators are everywhere,” she said.
Talks about “stranger danger” with children must evolve to include discussions about online safety, Lee noted. 
“We used to teach our kids to watch out for strangers, or people in white vans,” Lee said. “Now, we have to worry about who is coming into our child&#8217;s bedroom through their gaming console, or through their iPhone, or their iPad, because these predators lurk online looking for kids that they can extort.” 
<a href="https://info.thorn.org/hubfs/Research/Thorn_TrendsInFinancialSextortion_June2024.pdf?sm_guid=NzcxOTIyfDc4MzA5NjAxfC0xfGNlc2VAbmNvc2UuY29tfDcyMDIwMTJ8fDB8MHwyMjU0MzA0NTd8MTEzMnwwfDB8fDc2NjM5Nnww0">Instagram and Snapchat</a>, according to NCMEC, are the two most-used apps for these crimes. Messages can disappear on both apps, which might lead to victims putting their guard down before sending over explicit images used against them.  
In financially-motivated sextortion cases, young males are most often targeted. In fact, one report found that <a href="https://www.parents.com/more-teen-boys-being-threatened-with-sextortion-8623766?utm_source=chatgpt.com">90%</a> of all financially-motivated sexual extortion victims were males between the ages of 14 and 17. 
<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2025/02/25/teenage-boys-mental-health-suicide-sextortion-scams/78258882007/">According to parents of numerous victims</a>, minors will be messaged by an account they think is being operated by a female of similar age, who might tell them they have mutual friends. The conversation then turns sexual, the victim sends over explicit material, and soon after, the blackmail begins. 
A <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sacramento/news/sextortion-a-growing-threat-preying-upon-our-nations-teens#:~:text=The%20sextortion%20involved%20at%20least,the%20activity%20to%20law%20enforcement">memo</a> from the FBI’s Sacramento Field Office says that financially-motivated sextortion offenders are often foreigners, primarily from West African countries like Nigeria and Ivory Coast, or Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines. Lee told The Daily Wire that the nonprofit, which often works with law enforcement, is seeing the same pattern. 
“Our officers that we partner with in digital forensics are definitely seeing a spike in these crimes originating from some of the African countries,” Lee said. “They&#8217;ll post and pretend to be a teenage girl or a teenage boy asking for explicit images. Once those images are exchanged, then the predator from one of these African nations will go in and threaten them.” 
After losing his son in 2022, Guffey was sworn in as a state representative in South Carolina and became a fierce advocate in the fight against sextortion. Just a year after his son’s death, Guffey got “<a href="https://governor.sc.gov/news/2023-08/governor-henry-mcmaster-signs-gavins-law">Gavin’s Law</a>” signed into law. 
“My son Gavin was contacted by a predator through Instagram messaging,” Guffey told The Daily Wire. “He jumped off the video game with friends to have a chat with this female, or so he thought. They began to share images, and within 1 hour and 40 minutes, Gavin took his life.”
“I&#8217;d never heard of what sextortion was, or had a clue of what it was,” Guffey said. 
After his son passed, Guffey said he and his family were contacted by the scammers for more money, and he was even taunted about Gavin committing suicide. 
“They began to extort Gavin&#8217;s 16-year-old brother, a 14-year-old cousin, and then, trying to extort me as well, fully aware that Gavin had taken his life,” he said. “They sent a message to me and said, ‘Did I tell you your son begged for his life?’” 
<div id="attachment_905659" style="width: 968px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-905659" class="wp-image-905659 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2195735962-958x576.jpg" alt="State Rep. Brandon Guffey of Rock Hill stands outside the federal courthouse in Columbia on Monday with a photo of his son, Gavin Guffey." width="958" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2195735962-958x576.jpg 958w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2195735962-300x180.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2195735962-768x462.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-2195735962.jpg 1006w" sizes="(max-width: 958px) 100vw, 958px" />State Rep. Brandon Guffey of Rock Hill stands outside the federal courthouse in Columbia on Monday with a photo of his son, Gavin Guffey // The State via Getty Images </div>
In January, the Nigerian scammer who blackmailed Guffey’s son was extradited to the United States and is facing life in prison. 
Hassanbunhussein Abolore Lawal has been <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sc/pr/nigerian-man-extradited-us-after-being-indicted-sextortion-scheme-caused-death-sc-teen">charged</a> with child exploitation resulting in death, the production and distribution of child sexual abuse material, coercion and enticement of a minor, cyberstalking resulting in death, interstate threats with intent to extort, and aiding/abetting, according to the Department of Justice. Additionally, Lawal is accused of targeting the victim’s family in the stalking and extortion charges.
“Often with these extortion schemes, you have money launderers within the United States that are transferring funds in order to get them overseas, and then typically overseas, in Gavin&#8217;s case, they come out of Logos, Nigeria,” Guffey explained. “There is a well-known group called the Yahoo Boys that are doing a lot of these extortion schemes.”
The “Yahoo Boys” will “‘bomb’ high schools, youth sports teams and universities with fake accounts, using advanced social engineering tactics to coerce their victims into a compromising situation,” <a href="https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/nigerian-yahoo-boys-social-media/">according</a> to Infosecurity Magazine. 
The group gets its name from the web service provider Yahoo, and the criminals are tied to past “Nigerian Prince” scams before shifting to elderly fraud, fake job scams, and sextortion, the magazine reports. 
There’s also been a rise in sextortion acts from a group called 764. Members here in the United States and abroad are forcing minors and other vulnerable people to commit disturbing sex-related crimes or self-harm. In these cases, predators are motivated by sexual gratification. 
Ashley Johnson, special agent in charge of the FBI’s St. Louis Field Office, <a href="https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/stl-fbi-warns-764-network-using-blackmail-to-exploit-minors-draft/">discussed</a> 764’s activities on FOX 2, earlier this month.
“People have been asked to engage in cruelty to animals, self mutilation of some sort,” she said. “Some cases we’ve had individuals ask children — if they knew they had a sibling — to film themselves sexually abusing their sibling.” 
Moreover, artificial intelligence is widening the net of sextortion victims, Lee told The Daily Wire. 
“More and more of these sex predators are going online and they&#8217;re becoming more sophisticated in the ways that they go after young people, minors who they&#8217;re trying to exploit,” she said. “What&#8217;s brand new that we&#8217;re seeing now is AI — AI is becoming a very emerging threat for sextortion where these predators can take an image of a fully clothed child and turn it into child sexual abuse material.” 
Addressing teens who might find themselves swept up in a sexual extortion scam, Guffey urged young people to be brave and report such crimes. 
“I tell them, number one, don&#8217;t send images to someone that you&#8217;ve never met before. I mean, you don&#8217;t want sending images, period,” he said. “But if you do, make sure that your face and your privates are not identifiable in the same picture as well. And if that does happen, don&#8217;t be scared. Be brave enough to go to your parents, to go to law enforcement to report this.”
“If you feel like you can just pay them and this’ll go away, they&#8217;re going to continue to go after not only you — ‘cause it will never stop once you pay them money, they&#8217;re going to continue to go after other teens and make them feel the same way that you feel right now,” Guffey continued. “So, it&#8217;s very important for us to report it so we can go after these criminals.”
In his son’s case, the scammers were asking for “a couple hundred” dollars, Guffey recalled.
“I think it was $25 [Gavin sent] over to them. But, of course, that&#8217;s never enough. The key to this is to ensure that you never send a penny.” 
As for parents of potential victims, Guffey is preaching grace and understanding. 
“I would say for parents, number one, I think often we as parents get very angry whenever our child makes a mistake, and we need to learn grace again,” he told The Daily Wire. “We can say, ‘don&#8217;t send pictures, don&#8217;t share pictures,’ but, nowadays you don&#8217;t even have to; it can be AI. And this is your reputation, and it&#8217;s getting spread throughout your entire community — it&#8217;s not one school where you get this name.”
“You need to be there to fight for your kid and make sure you have the conversation that regardless of what the situation is, make sure that they know that you will be there for them,” he continued. “I felt like I had that conversation and that connection with Gavin, however, this was just so much shame that he didn&#8217;t feel that he could come to me.”
Guffey is working with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R.) on the bipartisan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cruz-introduces-bill-protecting-victims-from-deepfake-revenge-porn">Take it Down Act</a>. The bill would require social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook to remove any content that features explicit images or videos of minors, known as &#8220;child sexual abuse material,” or CSAM, or “revenge porn,” within 48 hours of the content being flagged. 
On Tuesday, the Take it Down Act <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/03/readout-from-first-lady-melania-trumps-roundtable-discussion-on-online-protection-and-the-take-it-down-act/">passed</a> the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and has been championed by First Lady Melania Trump. 
&#8220;This marks a significant step in our bipartisan efforts to safeguard our children from online threats,&#8221; Mrs. Trump said in a statement. &#8220;I urge Congress to swiftly pass this important legislation. Together, we can create a safer, brighter future for all Americans!”
Lee also encouraged parents to speak to their children about this issue. “The average parent only spends 46 minutes in a child&#8217;s lifetime talking about how to stay safe online,” she told The Daily Wire. 
“This can be a very difficult topic for parents to want to talk about with their kids, but it is the next great safety factor that they have to bring up with their kids in order to keep them safe,” she added. 
Since that conversation can be a challenge for some parents, on its website, Our Rescue offers a guide called <a href="https://ourrescue.org/files/OurRescue_Start_Talking_2025.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Let&#8217;s Start Talking</a>. The nonprofit also spends time in schools across the country with its law enforcement partners to encourage online safety, Lee said. 
Outside of educating parents and children, Guffey wants social media companies to have protections stripped from them over their lack of action concerning CSAM material. 
“I think the number one thing that we have to do is to remove Section 230, or revisit Section 230, which was written in 1996,” he told The Daily Wire. “It gives these companies — who are the richest companies since the inception of man — it absolves them from being sued. So we can sue them, but things get thrown out before discovery because they just say, ‘We&#8217;re not responsible for anything online because this is a public forum.’”
Guffrey is currently suing Meta, the parent company of Instagram, over his son’s death. “I filed a suit directly on my own, not demanding money, but demanding change.” 
Addressing parents and children, Guffrey had a simple closing message: “Tomorrow needs you.” 
“Tomorrow needs adults to stand up and fight to protect our children,” he said. “But tomorrow certainly needs the next generation. If we don&#8217;t have the next generation, then what are we fighting for?” 
If you or someone you know thinks they’re a victim of sextortion, please call law enforcement. You can report it to the FBI by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI or visiting <a href="https://tips.fbi.gov/">tips.fbi.gov</a>.

Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis

Dozens Of Teen Boys Take Their Own Lives As Online Sextortion Cases Spike

Dozens Of Teen Boys Have Taken Their Own Lives As Online Sextortion Cases Continue To Spike

Social Issues

Social Media

Prince Harry and his friend Prince Seeiso of Lesotho have announced that they’re resigning as patrons of their beloved charity Sentebale, a decision they both describe as “devastating.&#8221;
The Duke of Sussex and Prince Seeiso established Sentebale in 2006 in memory of their late mothers. The charity <a href="https://sentebale.org/what-we-do/">provided</a> “comprehensive support for children and young people, including those living with HIV/AIDS, covering healthcare, critical life skills, education, advocacy, and climate resistance” in Lesotho and other areas of Africa.
Prince Harry established the charity to honor his mother, the late Princess Diana, who was also known for her efforts in helping the AIDS community in Africa.
In a joint statement, Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso said, &#8220;What’s transpired is unthinkable. We are in shock that we have to do this, but we have a continued responsibility to Sentebale’s beneficiaries, so we will be sharing all of our concerns with the Charity Commission as to how this came about.&#8221;
&#8220;Nearly 20 years ago, we founded Sentebale in honor of our mothers. Sentebale means ‘forget-me-not’ in Sesotho, the local language of Lesotho, and it’s what we’ve always promised for the young people we&#8217;ve served through this charity. Today is no different,&#8221; the statement continued, per <a href="https://people.com/prince-harry-devastated-as-he-quits-african-charity-sentebale-founded-princess-diana-honor-11703464">People</a>.
&#8220;With heavy hearts, we have resigned from our roles as patrons of the organization until further notice, in support of and solidarity with the board of trustees who have had to do the same,&#8221; it said. &#8220;It is devastating that the relationship between the charity’s trustees and the chair of the board broke down beyond repair, creating an untenable situation.&#8221;
The princes said in a statement, “These trustees acted in the best interest of the charity in asking the chair to step down while keeping the well-being of staff in mind. In turn, she sued the charity to remain in this voluntary position, further underscoring the broken relationship.&#8221;
Harry and Prince Seeiso thanked the trustees for their “service over the years” and said they’re “truly heartbroken they’ve had to follow through with this act.”
“Although we may no longer be patrons, we will always be its founders, and we will never forget what this charity is capable of achieving when it is in the right care,&#8221; the statement concluded.

Prince Harry

Prince Harry Quits African Charity He Founded: ‘What’s Transpired Is Unthinkable’

Prince Harry Quits African Charity He Founded: 'What’s Transpired Is Unthinkable'

Charity

Royal Family

Seventy Christians were found dead in a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) last week — reportedly beheaded at the hands of radical Islamic terrorists.
Christian group <a href="https://www.opendoorsuk.org/news/latest-news/drc-attack-church/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Open Doors</a>, which supports persecuted Christians around the world, said that terrorists from the rebel Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which has ties to the Islamic State, surrounded a village in Mayba in the territory of Lubero last Thursday, taking 20 men and women captive. The Islamic terrorists later returned and kidnapped 50 more Christians in the village and took them to a Protestant church in Kasanga, where they were brutally killed.
Open Doors said that, according to &#8220;field sources,&#8221; families were still waiting to bury their dead loved ones as of Tuesday while many Christians fled the area for safety.
“We don’t know what to do or how to pray; we’ve had enough of massacres,” said an elder of the CECA20 church in DRC. “May God’s will alone be done.”
As of Thursday afternoon, the massacre of Christians in DRC has received <a href="https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=9632110e93a89f4a&amp;rlz=1C5GCCM_en&amp;q=christians+beheaded+in+congo&amp;tbm=nws&amp;source=lnms&amp;fbs=ABzOT_CWdhQLP1FcmU5B0fn3xuWpmDtIGL1r84kuKz6yAcD_ip1RA3L6hbNpnjK_ML6MGeWIjTgL-AggqGM1Cmh_nFz65pNoy-s_-K4mDlh0UYPmc51dskRoyMlHnnoQayAcVZIQA7FJxW6z8vr8kXee0hJpia28bFX3oRF-0O_2ZWncGbHM2fCiLdt-OXXk7GcYUpr1D88gLj6PmUjaaV5otdKkMHQdzw&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjkhtjNktOLAxWY4skDHQoPL9YQ0pQJegQIERAB&amp;biw=1440&amp;bih=778&amp;dpr=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">no coverage</a> in the legacy media. Tristan Azbej, the Hungarian State Secretary for the Aid of Persecuted Christians, <a href="https://x.com/tristan_azbej/status/1892297095165403601?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1892297095165403601%7Ctwgr%5Ef9bf07ab4a1f0f2cf72505f70236ce200f1984df%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Fchristians-beheaded-congo-drc-2033864" target="_blank" rel="noopener">acknowledged</a> the mass killing of Christians in DRC and urged world leaders to &#8220;recognize and act against Christian persecution.&#8221;
&#8220;Horrified to learn about the 70 Christian martyrs beheaded by terrorists in a church in Kasanga, DRC,&#8221; Azbej wrote on X. &#8220;Hungary stands in solidarity with the persecuted Christians BUT we need more &#8230; the world needs to recognize and act against Christian persecution.&#8221;
Jeff King, the president of persecution watchdog International Christian Concern, told <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/70-christians-beheaded-in-drc-church-attack.html">The Christian Post</a>, “This recent massacre, where 70 Christians lost their lives, is not an isolated incident but part of a grim tapestry of violence that has claimed over 6 million lives in the DRC over two decades of on-and-off war.&#8221;
&#8220;The vast majority of the DRC’s residents are Christian, so this is a religious genocide carried out by radical Islamic terrorists (the ADF),&#8221; King added.
DRC has long faced instability and war as factions and rebel groups wrestle for control of multiple regions. Another rebel group, M23, has recently captured key cities in DRC as the Congolese government struggles to push back. Over 100,000 people have been displaced in the recent fighting, according to the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160006" target="_blank" rel="noopener">United Nations</a>.
According to Open Doors, 355 Christians in DRC were killed in 2024 for their faith, an increase from 261 in 2023.

Congo

70 Christians Beheaded In Congo Church

Persecution

Radical Islam

The U.S. military confirmed on Monday that it killed a senior member in the Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab late last year.
U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said the strike happened on December 24th in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia approximately 10km southwest of Quyno Barrow.
&#8220;The strike killed senior al-Shabaab leader, Mohamed Mire and another al-Shabaab [terrorist],&#8221; the statement said. &#8220;Mire, also known as Abu Abdirahman, was responsible for al-Shabaab’s regional governance in Somalia for the last 15 years.&#8221;
AFRICOM said that the Mire played a key role in the terrorist group&#8217;s strategic decision-making.
AFRICOM said that specifics of the mission could not be released due to operational security concerns.
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U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Michael Langley, AFRICOM commander, said that Al-Shabaab represented a &#8220;serious global threat&#8221; and that the U.S. would continue partnering &#8220;with like-minded nations in the region to combat them and other malign actors.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
UPDATE: On Dec. 24, in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia, U.S. Africa Command conducted a precision airstrike approximately 10km southwest of Quyno Barrow that resulted in the death of senior al-Shabaab leader, Mohamed Mire and another al-Shabaab militant.
— U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) (@USAfricaCommand) <a href="https://twitter.com/USAfricaCommand/status/1876245833563418797?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
Voice of America News highlighted a <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/us-somali-operation-kills-10-al-shabab-militants/7926036.html">statement</a> from the Somali government that said 10 terrorists were killed in a strike coordinated with the U.S. government.
&#8220;Over 10 al-Shabaab terrorist militants were eliminated by our brave security forces with the help of @USAfricaCommand airstrikes, in Berhano village, approximately 35km from #Kismayo town,&#8221; the statement said. &#8220;Key terrorist outposts were destroyed during the operation, and no civilians were harmed.&#8221;

TOPSHOT-SOMALIA-UNREST-SHABAB

U.S. Kills Top Al-Shabaab Terrorist In Africa

Military

Radical Islamic Terror

Terrorists

An American citizen could face ten years in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/germany" target="_blank" rel="noopener">German</a> prison for stabbing an African migrant who sexually assaulted her in a train station.
The migrant grabbed the unnamed 20-year-old woman&#8217;s buttocks, she pulled out a knife, he grabbed her arm, and she wound up stabbing him in the heart, leading to his death, according to the German newspaper <a href="https://jungefreiheit.de/politik/deutschland/2024/notwehr-frau-ersticht-eritreer-nach-sex-attacke/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Junge Freiheit</a>. German prosecutors in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate have brought charges against her.
Prosecutors don’t believe she meant to kill the man, but still don’t believe it was within the bounds of self-defense.
According to <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/news/13016849/american-woman-stabs-man-germany-kaiserslautern-eritrean/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Sun</a>, the migrant was a 64-year-old from Eritrea, and the woman, who turned herself in to police, has been charged with causing bodily harm resulting in death.
The Daily Wire asked the State Department if it is assisting the woman. A spokeswoman said, “We are aware of reports of a U.S. citizen involved in an incident at Kaiserslautern train station in Germany. We take seriously our commitment to provide all appropriate assistance to U.S. citizens abroad, and are monitoring the situation.  Due to privacy considerations, we have nothing further to share at this time.”
Udo Gehring, Kaiserslautern&#8217;s prosecutor, said in a statement that the incident occurred on June 29. “The stabbing was preceded by the 64-year-old sexually harassing the 20-year-old by grabbing her buttocks, [which led to] an exchange of words, and the 20-year-old opening a folding knife she was carrying and making stabbing movements in the direction of the 64-year-old, whereupon he backed away and the 20-year-old followed him,” he said.
&#8220;The 64-year-old then grabbed the 20-year-old&#8217;s arm, which she was using to wield the knife. The 20-year-old freed herself from this grip and stabbed once in the same movement,” he continued.
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The young woman’s possible sentence of 10 years in prison is far greater than that faced by migrants who gang-raped a German girl in a city park in 2020. Nine migrants were convicted in the case, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/multiple-immigrants-convicted-in-gang-rape-of-15-year-old-german-girl-only-one-gets-prison-time" target="_blank" rel="noopener">only one saw prison</a> time, even though none expressed regret at sentencing. The German police instead investigated more than 100 people for criticizing the culprits in that case. In June, a different 20-year-old woman in Germany was sentenced to jail for defamation for calling one of those men a “disgusting rapist pig”—meaning she faced a sterner punishment than he did.
Prosecutors said they were looking into why the girl in the latest train-station incident was carrying a knife. In August, a Syrian migrant who was supposed to have been deported <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0f95c4c3-bfe1-4c17-bd4e-d14b6937399d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stabbed three people to death</a> and injured eight others, leading a leader of a right-wing party to say, “Is that your ‘diversity’? When people are cut into pieces with machetes or horrifically slaughtered like animals?”
In 2015, more than <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/17/over-200-arrested-in-germany-after-violence-at-eritrean-diaspora-event" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1,000 women</a> were sexually assaulted by migrants at a New Year&#8217;s Eve celebration in Germany. In September 2023, 26 German police were injured as masses of Eritrean migrants fought each other in the streets.

German flag with dome of the Reichstag building (Deutscher Bundestag/ German parliament building)

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