This week, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled “How Leftist Nonprofit Networks Exploit Federal Tax Dollars to Advance a Radical Agenda,” a look into how USAID, which was partially defunded by Congress this week, has been abused for radical causes abroad.
Nearly 20 years ago, one such scandal inspired an online database to try to weed out the worst offenders. American contractors funded by the State Department and local police staged a daring raid on a brothel in India, rescuing a number of young girls from sexual slavery. But within days, a prostitute union funded by USAID pressured the girls to stop cooperating with investigators and return to the brothel, where they were once again subjected to rape for profit.
The ensuing scandal so outraged Congress that USAID was forced to cancel the prostitute union’s funding — but unfortunately, nothing was done to curb USAID’s grotesque culture of corruption, globalist meddling, and left-wing activism.
Finally, two decades later, President Donald Trump has taken decisive action to cut off USAID’s funding. But with liberal federal judges interceding on behalf of the Washington swamp, the battle is far from over. The only permanent solution is for Congress to shut down this rogue agency for good.
USAID was created in 1961 as part of President John F. Kennedy’s effort to win developing countries to America’s cause in the Cold War against the Soviet menace. Despite such lofty intentions, USAID was quickly captured by left-wing ideologues. The agency has spent decades funneling billions of dollars into dubious projects that advance a radical agenda under the guise of “development” aid.
Recent examples of USAID’s depravity include financing a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/02/at-usaid-waste-and-abuse-runs-deep/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“transgender opera” in Colombia, producing a “DEI musical” in Ireland</a>, and providing <a href="https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mast-exposes-outrageous-usaid-and-state-department-grants/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$15 million for condoms to the Taliban</a>. These are not anomalies — they are the logical outcome of an irredeemable agency that has long prioritized social engineering over economic development and national security.
Perhaps the most egregious example remains the sex trafficking scandal in India uncovered in 2005. Despite clear evidence that USAID-funded organizations were facilitating child prostitution, agency officials not only denied involvement but actively obstructed congressional investigators. It was only through relentless congressional oversight that investigators exposed the truth.
And yet, even after the revelations, USAID faced no meaningful consequence — no bureaucrats were prosecuted or fired, no structural reforms were enacted, and the agency continued to operate as usual right up to the present day.
The Trump administration has correctly recognized that USAID is beyond reform. By cutting funding, the White House has struck a major blow against this globalist slush fund. But unless Congress acts, USAID will remain an open wound festering in the federal budget, waiting to be revived by activist judges or the next Democratic administration.
USAID has proven, time and again, that it is unaccountable, wasteful, hostile to American ideals, and antithetical to American interests. It is a weapon of ideological warfare masquerading as a humanitarian agency, using taxpayer money to fund left-wing activism abroad while ignoring real global crises that threaten national security.
The solution is simple: Congress must dismantle and permanently abolish USAID. Foreign aid should be administered through highly targeted programs closely monitored by the State Department, ensuring that assistance truly aligns with strategic interests rather than ideological whims.
President Trump has led the way by shining a light on USAID’s corruption and attempting to turn off the spigot of taxpayer dollars. Now, it’s time for Congress to finish the job and eliminate this agency once and for all.
J. Marc Wheat is the general counsel of Advancing American Freedom.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-USAID-TRUMP

Why Congress Needs To Permanently Dismantle USAID

Congress

Donald Trump

State Department

USAID

A Washington, D.C., judge on Tuesday said President Donald Trump did not have the authority to name the leader of a small, USAID-like agency after an African company sued, citing the hardship of having to lay off its workers.
Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that Trump appointee Pete Marocco, who oversaw the demolition of USAID, was not validly appointed to the African Development Foundation, where he played a similar role, and, therefore, had no authority to terminate grants.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by a consulting firm in Zambia, called Rural Development Innovations Limited, represented by lawyers from the left-wing American group Democracy Forward.
Trump fired the entirety of the African Development Foundation&#8217;s board, and the agency locked its doors to prevent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees from gaining access to its books. One of the fired board members sued, but Judge Leon tossed that lawsuit, affirming that the president had the right to fire board members.
In this second lawsuit, though, Leon indicated that Trump likely did not have the power to determine who runs the agency in the board members&#8217; absence. Under the legislation establishing the Foundation, the president nominates board members, but they must be confirmed by the Senate.
Marocco had been named &#8220;acting&#8221; chairman of the board. The chief role of the board is to appoint a president who runs day-to-day operations, and Marocco appointed himself.
The Trump administration <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789.12.0.pdf">argued</a> that &#8220;because the Federal Vacancies Act does not apply to the Foundation, the President has the inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to designate acting members of the Foundation Board until the Senate confirms his nominees to fill full terms&#8230; The President must be able to designate acting officials to fulfill his duty.&#8221;
It is unclear how Leon believes the management of the federal agency should be chosen, since he acknowledges that the agency has no board. The African Development Foundation&#8217;s previous president, Travis Adkins, who was accused of anti-white racism and abuse of employees, resigned before the DOGE takeover.
After Adkins&#8217;s resignation, the role was filled by a committee of the agency&#8217;s three top employees, including Chief Financial Officer Mathieu Zahui. The USAID inspector general presented evidence in court in November 2024 that Zahui steered contracts to a friend in exchange for kickbacks, but he has so far not been criminally charged.
If the group&#8217;s staff is reinstated and its top management structure restored, that would put the subject of a criminal investigation in charge of an agency, instead of the president&#8217;s appointee.
Rural Development Innovations Limited &#8220;offers clients broad expertise in financial management, enterprise development, organizational capacity development, strategy development and implementation, project management, marketing and market access development,&#8221; its lawyers <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789.1.0_1.pdf">wrote</a>.
Yet it doesn&#8217;t actually have any clients except the United States government. They added: &#8220;RDI receives 100% of its funding from USADF and has been awarded a USADF grant that continues through 2028. Yet in April 2025, RDI received notice from Pete Marocco that its grant was being terminated immediately because RDI somehow no longer satisfied USADF’s priorities. As a result, RDI will be forced to shut down entirely by the end of June 2025.&#8221;
Judge Leon wrote that &#8220;RDI has shown irreparable injury&#8230; Traditionally, &#8216;economic loss does not, in and of itself constitute irreparable harm,'&#8221; but an &#8220;exception exists when &#8216;the loss threatens the very existence of the movant&#8217;s business.&#8221; That exception applied because RDI had no customers other than the United States government. RDI argued that America had an obligation not to terminate its funding because Zambian law requires the payment of severance to laid-off employees, which it could not afford to do.
Two African Development Foundation employees were also plaintiffs in the lawsuit. But, unlike the African company, the American workers had no recourse, the judge <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789.26.0.pdf">ruled</a>.
Leon wrote that &#8220;RDI requests that the Court preliminarily enjoin all defendants&#8211;including the President of the United States.&#8221; The court does not have the power to enjoin the president, he wrote, but the <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789/gov.uscourts.dcd.280789.27.0.pdf">injunction</a> blocks Marocco &#8220;from taking actions as the acting chairperson of the United States African Development Foundation&#8217;s board of directors and president,&#8221; and White House, Treasury, and Department of Government Efficiency officials, from &#8220;implementing or giving effect to directives from Marocco.&#8221;
An injunction is a temporary order that gives relief to one side while a final resolution is pending. It is given when the judge believes a party is likely to win the case and will suffer harm in the meantime if it has to wait months.
Typically, a party seeking an injunction is supposed to post a monetary bond that would be used to compensate the opposing party if that party ultimately wins the case. The Trump administration has highlighted the role that such bonds would play in preventing groups from seeking endless injunctions by giving them skin in the game.
But courts have &#8220;discretion&#8230;to determine the appropriate amount of an injunction bond,&#8221; Judge Leon wrote, and he would require no bond at all from the African group, since the Trump administration has &#8220;not argued that they will suffer monetary loss if the Court were to issue an injunction.&#8221;
A four-part Daily Wire series documented significant ethical and financial problems at the African Development Foundation, which former employees said was likely the reason it was so opposed to scrutiny by DOGE:
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">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?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" target="_blank" rel="noopener">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" target="_blank" rel="noopener">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=%E2%80%98Them+White+Motherf-ers%E2%80%99%3A+Racist+Agency+Framed+Its+Lawyer+After+He+Discovered+Lawbreaking%2C+He+Says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">‘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

Judge Orders Foreign Aid Agency Resurrected After African Company Sues

Africa

Judges

The Trump administration has officially shuttered the United States Agency for International Development after rolling its operations into the State Department.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the end of the independent agency on Tuesday. Rubio said USAID funds would be better managed and more effective under State Department oversight than they have been in decades.
“USAID had decades and a near-infinite taxpayer budget to advance American influence, promote economic development worldwide, and allow billions to stand on their own two feet,” Rubio wrote in a <a href="https://statedept.substack.com/p/making-foreign-aid-great-again">statement</a>. “Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War.”
For months, the Trump administration has audited USAID, shrinking its operations and moving it underneath Rubio’s effective control. The Department of Government Efficiency has led the probe into USAID funding, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/22/us/politics/usaid-foreign-aid-trump.html">cutting</a> thousands of spending programs worth tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.
What spending is left will be reallocated and closely watched for measurable returns toward the United States’ national interest, according to Rubio. Of the regions and communities that have received funding from USAID in recent decades, American objectives have “rarely been met.” At the same time, “instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown,” Rubio said.
“[I]n 2023, sub-Saharan African nations voted with the United States only 29 percent of the time on essential resolutions at the UN despite receiving $165 billion in outlays since 1991. That’s the lowest rate in the world,” Rubio wrote. “Over the same period, more than $89 billion invested in the Middle East and North Africa left the U.S. with lower favorability ratings than China in every nation but Morocco.”
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“[USAID’s] expenditure of $9.3 billion in Gaza and the West Bank since 1991, whose beneficiaries included allies of Hamas, has produced grievances rather than gratitude towards the United States,” he continued. “The only ones living well were the executives of the countless NGOs, who often enjoyed five-star lifestyles funded by American taxpayers, while those they purported to help fell further behind.”
USAID funding has elicited complaints from some allies to the United States. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in February that non-governmental organizations in his country that have been partly funded by USAID have pushed leftist priorities and sought to “topple” his government.
“Now is the moment when these international networks have to be taken down, they have to be swept away,” Orban <a href="https://apnews.com/article/orban-hungary-eliminate-ngos-usaid-aff22b9f9003f4c6c3115a9798c18af6">said</a>. “It is necessary to make their existence legally impossible.”
Under the State Department, international aid will be directed toward “prioritizing trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, and investment over assistance,” said Rubio.
“USAID viewed its constituency as the United Nations, multinational NGOs, and the broader global community — not the U.S. taxpayers who funded its budget or the President they elected to represent their interests on the world stage,” he wrote.
“That ends today, and where there was once a rainbow of unidentifiable logos on life-saving aid, there will now be one recognizable symbol: the American flag. Recipients deserve to know the assistance provided to them is not a handout from an unknown NGO, but an investment from the American people,” he added.

Marco Rubio

Rubio: USAID Closed After Decades Of Funding Posh Lifestyles Of ‘Countless’ NGO Execs

Global Politics

U.S.

President Joe Biden’s USAID awarded a contract for up to $800 million in potential work to a joint venture even after it had substantial evidence that one of its biggest partners, Vistant, had been involved in a bribery scheme to win contracts from the foreign aid agency.
The contract was for addressing “issues affecting the root causes of irregular migration from Central America to the United States” — the work that Biden <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/after-dnc-platform-was-printed-the-program-it-touts-as-top-border-success-was-shut-down-for-fraud">assigned</a> to Vice President Kamala Harris, but which she never appeared to address, a Daily Wire investigation found.
The Department of Justice <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/usaid-official-three-contractors-plead-guilty-to-half-billion-dollar-bribery-scheme">announced Friday</a> that Walter Barnes III, the founder of government contractor Vistant (previously known as PM Consulting Group, or PMCG) and Roderick Watson, a USAID contracting official, pleaded guilty to a bribery scheme in which Barnes and two others conspired to pay Watson $1 million in exchange for $544 million in contracts.
The DOJ said Vistant as a corporation was guilty, and granted it a deferred prosecution agreement “for clearly accepting responsibility for its criminal conduct and cooperating with the investigation.” The department said that “although Vistant’s cooperation was initially delayed and limited, Vistant began to fully cooperate thereafter,” and removed Barnes as CEO.
What has not been reported is that the Biden administration continued to steer contracts to Vistant/PMCG even after it knew of the massive corruption: the migration contract, even larger than the $544 million in the indictment, and others that are still active.
The up-to-$800 million contracting opportunity went to a joint venture between Vistant and CollaborateUp, a tiny consultancy run out of a suburban home in Falls Church, Virginia, where its CEO, Richard Crespin — who runs the company while also working at a think tank — lives. The Virginia home was the address listed on the contract.
In <a href="https://collaborateup.com/central-america-regional-support-services-carss-idiq/">announcing</a> its selection for the work in late 2024, CollaborateUp said it would address the “irregular migration from Central America to the United States” by addressing “climate change.” Its <a href="https://collaborateup.com/services/our-work/">website</a> also touts its work “advancing DEIA” and combating “misinformation.”
<div id="attachment_934911" style="width: 309px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-934911" class="wp-image-934911 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/hq-299x576.jpg" alt="Contracting records list this home as the headquarters of an entity that was chosen for up to $800 million in contracts to reduce illegal immigration." width="299" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/hq-299x576.jpg 299w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/hq-156x300.jpg 156w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/hq.jpg 730w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 299px) 100vw, 299px" />Contracting records list this home as the headquarters of an entity that was chosen for up to $800 million in contracts to reduce illegal immigration.</div>
In 2025, it added Mark A. Green, a former Republican congressman who served as Donald Trump’s appointee to lead USAID during his first term, as a <a href="https://collaborateup.com/who-we-are/our-team/">“senior advisor,”</a> according to its website.
Though a previous version of this article said that Green was put on CollaborateUp’s payroll, after publication, representatives for Crespin said that Green had never been paid for his work with the company, but was added as the pair was considering &#8220;chasing business together.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_934909" style="width: 408px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-934909" class="wp-image-934909 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-398x576.jpg" alt="" width="398" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-398x576.jpg 398w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-207x300.jpg 207w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-768x1111.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green-1062x1536.jpg 1062w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/green.jpg 1206w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 398px) 100vw, 398px" />A screenshot of Mark Green listed as a senior advisor CollaborateUp&#8217;s website.</div>
Crespin did not return a request for comment before publication, but said afterward in a statement that “CollaborateUp and I had no idea what [Barnes] had done&#8230; Once we learned about it, we worked with our partner, Vistant, to assure it would no longer be connected to” its founder and CEO. Crespin says that after Barnes was removed from his position before the joint venture pressed forward with its efforts to receive an award from USAID, and says neither CollaborateUp nor Crespin were implicated in Barnes’ wrongdoing.
Vistant’s criminal scheme relied on joint ventures to exploit a DEI policy called 8(a) contracting, which lets the government award contracts with no or limited competition when the recipient is a racial minority or a small business. It formed a joint venture with a larger company —which was bribing Watson and would actually do the work — so Watson could use Barnes’ status as a black man to steer the contracts to him, rather than being obligated to go through an open competitive process.
Barnes’ company ultimately received hundreds of millions of dollars, stripping his “disadvantaged” status, and the CollaborateUp joint venture relied on CollaborateUp’s status as a small business to win a contract with limited competition, while relying on Barnes and other larger firms to actually do most of the work.
CollaborateUp says it &#8220;co-developed&#8221; USAID&#8217;s <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yo_qnb-WmfPY9YExhZ2FiqIqkOeAYubY/view">&#8220;procurement reform&#8221;</a> policies &#8220;alongside former Administrator Mark Green&#8221; when he led USAID in Trump’s first term. Then it sought business in 2025 working alongside Green when he was no longer with the agency, after learning that it was working with entities that had criminally corrupted the USAID contracting process. Again, CollaborateUp says it was unaware of the criminal activity by Barnes and Vistant, and also that it had distanced itself from Barnes before working with Green.  
The bribes by Barnes and his co-conspirators laid out in charging papers — which included cash, fake payroll payments, a country club wedding, a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, a down payment on a house, and basketball tickets — took place between 2013 and 2022. USAID inspector general investigators knew of the corruption. On November 9, 2023, the government barred Vistant and Barnes from contracting based on “evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity.” 

That same day, it notified the Vistant-CollaborateUp joint venture, called PMCG CollaborateUp JV LLC, that it had been chosen for the “root causes of migration” contract vehicle.
A USAID contracting official believed the award was “legally questionable” and told the contractors later that month that he was refusing final sign-off. He said that even though CollaborateUp owned 51% of the joint venture, according to the proposal, almost all the work would be done by Vistant or subcontractors. That meant, in that official’s view, CollaborateUp brought little to the table except being a middleman, while the contract’s “driving force” was banned for lack of integrity, according to civil court papers.
After they disassociated themselves from Barnes, the contractors took the government to <a href="https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2024cv0079-35-0">court asking</a> a judge for a permanent injunction “prohibiting USAID from rescinding its award.”
On June 10, 2024, Paul Young, a go-between who paid Watson to obscure the paper trail to Barnes, was <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.561574/gov.uscourts.mdd.561574.1.1.pdf">indicted</a> for his role in bribing Watson to influence &#8220;the award of USAID contracts valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.&#8221; The indictment refers to Vistant and Barnes as Company 3 and CC-3 and says, &#8220;Young began making payments from CC-3 to CC-1 [Watson].&#8221; It describes how, for example, in October 2022, CC-3 sent a down payment for Watson&#8217;s home to him through Young.
Two days later, on June 12, 2024, Judge Charles F. Lettow issued “a limited injunction,” punting the decision about the $800 million contract back to USAID to reevaluate. By that time, Vistant had been removed from the list of banned contractors, though the ban on its founder, Barnes, remained.
On August 22, 2024, USAID awarded the <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_72051924D00017_7200">“indefinite quantity” contract of up to $800 million</a> for “USAID Central America Regional Support Services” to PMCG CollaborateUp JV LLC. It made an initial payment of $10,000 that day.
Further demonstrating that the government knew at the time that Vistant/PMCG had gotten its previous USAID contracts through bribery, one week later, prosecutors offered a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.567709/gov.uscourts.mdd.567709.13.2.pdf">plea deal</a> to a co-conspirator of Barnes, Darryl F. Britt, that laid out the findings of a long-running investigation from USAID&#8217;s inspector general. The plea deal referred to Vistant as Company 2, and Barnes as CC-2.
“Indefinite delivery” contracts are open-ended contracts that allow the government to send repeated work to a company over a period of time up to a maximum amount, meaning the government could pay PMCG CollaborateUp as much as $800 million, but could also pay less. A handful of other companies were also eligible for work under the same contract.
The migration contract was terminated in February 2025 — not because of Vistant’s involvement,but because the Trump administration was shuttering USAID over suspicion that graft and insider deals were common, which liberals decried as a conspiracy theory.
Yet the Biden administration&#8217;s General Services Administration, which oversees government-wide contracting, also gave PMCG CollaborateUp JV LLC two contracts lasting five years each, despite the government’s knowledge that Barnes had gotten contracts through bribery.
On November 6, 2024 — the day after the presidential election — GSA awarded the joint venture an indefinite delivery <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_47QRCA25DSD24_4732">contract through 2029</a>, whose cap was listed as $999,999,999,999.00. It paid $2,500 as the opening salvo.
On December 19, shortly before the Biden administration left office, GSA gave it <a href="https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_47QRCA25DSD24_4732">another</a> indefinite delivery contract with similar terms. According to its GSA Price List, the company rents administrative assistants to the government for <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yo_qnb-WmfPY9YExhZ2FiqIqkOeAYubY/view">$93.68</a> an hour.
The half-billion dollar bribery scheme is just one instance of fraud at USAID that was known about during the Biden administration, but not prosecuted until the Trump administration.
Stephen Paul Edmund Sutton, a British citizen who worked for a USAID contractor, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/former-contractor-usaid-funded-program-extradited-united-states-convicted-and-sentenced">pleaded</a> <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/former-contractor-usaid-funded-program-extradited-united-states-convicted-and-sentenced">guilty</a> on May 19 to taking kickbacks related to an electric program in Pakistan. Sutton and a co-conspirator who worked for him were in charge of giving out subcontractors to Pakistani vendors to perform work.
In 2015, the pair created two companies and had the contractor pay them for forklift and crane services. Then, those companies hired Pakistanis for half the amount. Prosecutors said the agency was defrauded of $100,000. Sutton was ordered to be handed over to immigration authorities instead of jail.
The Daily Wire previously revealed that USAID’s inspector general told a federal court in November that another foreign aid contracting official, Matthieu Zahui of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend">African</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/foreign-aid-official-who-resisted-doge-took-secret-payments-after-steering-africa-money-to-friend">Development Foundation</a>, had steered contracts to a friend who secretly paid him personally. USAID had credible tips about Zahui for years, but didn’t take his phone until February 2024. The phone, it said, contained evidence that he was receiving wire transfers to his personal bank account from the owner of a contractor he had steered government funds to.
But USAID did not ask a judge for a search warrant to conduct further investigation until November 4, the day before the election. Zahiu has not been criminally charged as of now.
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated with additional information provided after publication by CollaborateUp.

Walter Barnes

USAID’s $800M ‘Root Causes Of Migration’ Plan Included Company That Feds Knew Previously Bribed Agency

Immigration

Kamala Harris

Three government contractors and a USAID official have pleaded guilty to a scheme involving paying bribes in order to steer more than half a billion dollars in foreign aid contracts, the Department of Justice said Friday.
Roderick Watson, a USAID contracting officer, admitted to steering money to multiple companies in exchange for more than $1 million in bribes.
“Watson exploited his position at USAID to line his pockets with bribes in exchange for more than $550 million in contracts,&#8221; Guy Ficco of IRS Criminal Investigation <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/usaid-official-and-three-corporate-executives-plead-guilty-decade-long-bribery-scheme">said</a> in a statement. &#8220;While he helped three company owners and presidents bypass the fair bidding process, he was showered with cash and lavish gifts.&#8221;
The scheme was possible because of the federal government&#8217;s racial &#8220;set-aside&#8221; laws known as 8(a) contracting, which allow contracting officers to give contracts to companies owned by minorities, women, or veterans without the usual competitive process.
Walter Barnes III, the founder of a Baltimore-area company predicated on taking advantage of those laws, admitted to paying bribes, including a country-club wedding, cash, and a trip to Martha&#8217;s Vineyard.
Barnes&#8217;s company is called Vistant, previously known as PM Consulting Group. It was awarded contracts on the pretense that it was &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; because Barnes is black, even as it took in tens of millions of dollars. Barnes used a public defender in his court case, drawing a rebuke from the judge that he presumably had ample resources to pay for his own lawyer.
Also pleading guilty was Darryl Britt, the founder of 8(a) contracting firm Apprio Inc., which is received $271 million in federal contracts since 2004. Both companies also admitted criminal liability.
Beginning in 2013, Britt — a member of <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/the-intelligent-future/our-leadership/business-board-of-advisors.html">Carnegie Mellon</a> University&#8217;s Business Board of Advisers — bribed Watson to award contracts to Apprio. When an 8(a) firm becomes too large, it &#8220;graduates&#8221; from its &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; status. But minority contracting laws are notoriously exploited, with minority-owned firms existing simply to win contracts, then subcontracting out the work to other firms. That is often done openly, and above board, with “joint ventures.”
That&#8217;s what happened in this case once Apprio could no longer receive contracts without competition. Beginning in 2018, it enlisted Barnes to have sole-source contracts be awarded to his company, Vistant, which would then subcontract to Apprio.
To obscure the money trail, bribes would often be passed through Paul Anthony Young, a friend of Barnes’ in Maryland who was president of another subcontractor, and who also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official.
Between 2013 and 2023, Britt, Barnes, and Young “bribed [Watson], a public official, repeatedly—in fact, through hundreds of monthly payments and other things of value, including laptops, cellular phones, jobs for relatives, and other gifts and favors” in exchange for “USAID contracts valued at hundreds of millions of dollars,” a statement of facts accompanying Britt’s plea deal said.
That included a $25.5 million contract for “professional management” awarded in late 2018 to Vistant, which was subcontracted out to the other companies. Initially, Britt said to give “only cash to you know who,” but eventually, Young put the USAID contracting officer on the payroll of a company.
On March 28, 2018, Watson put in paperwork for a &#8220;sole source, noncompetitive contract&#8221; to Vistant. The next day, Young spent $3,000 renting a suite for Watson to watch the Washington Wizards play basketball, according to court filings.
Minority-owned &#8220;disadvantaged&#8221; businesses typically can only get contracts under $4 million without competition, but in June 2018, Watson sought an exception from the Small Business Administration to award a contract north of $20 million.
In August, Watson grumbled that he could make much more money as an 8(a) contractor than he could as a government employee. Young encouraged him to start a firm, but Watson said he wanted to wait until he was more &#8220;thoroughly entrenched with [US]AID and now the State Department&#8221; so he could use his connections to get contracts.
<div id="attachment_934517" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-934517" class="size-large wp-image-934517" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-1024x523.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="523" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-1024x523.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-300x153.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-768x392.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts-1536x785.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/06/contracts.jpg 1640w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Department of Justice</div>
The contracts totaled $544 million between 2013 and 2022, according to Barnes&#8217; <a class="c-link" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.582064/gov.uscourts.mdd.582064.11.1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.582064/gov.uscourts.mdd.582064.11.1.pdf" data-sk="tooltip_parent">plea agreement</a>. They began with a $4.8 million &#8220;staffing contract&#8221; in 2013 and a $37 million &#8220;institutional support&#8221; contract in 2014 and escalated to a $95 million contract for &#8220;technical support&#8221; in 2022. The awarded contracts amounted to $257 million, plus there were three potential contracts totaling $287 million near the end of the scheme that were not ultimately awarded.
Two USAID contracts awarded to Apprio, for $4.4 million and $1.8 million, are listed in spending records as for “education/training-lectures.” A $30 million USAID contract to Vistant is listed as “for the innovation design and advisory services team to obtain access to specialized buy-in support to a variety of technical design firms through the management of a PMO.” A $25 million contract is listed as simply “to obtain professional management services from an 8(a) small business contractor.”
A mark of how minority set-aside contractors routinely game the system is how small companies receive contracts for widely divergent fields of work — a sign that they are simply having others do it or hiring staff afterwards with little knowledge of the subject area. Apprio’s contracts with government agencies range from developing websites to medical care to human resources to “ebola efforts.”
Other USAID contracts to Vistant include a $15 million contract “to help protect cyberspace and communications network domains to block the spread of insecure information.” A $28 million USAID contract was for “lab institutional contractor – mega bridge contract,” and a $40 million contract was for “creation of the PDEX award.” A $204,000 contract was for a “senior advisor to the Belarus country director.”
The Trump administration shuttered USAID following concerns that much of its foreign aid was wasted or diverted to politically connected Americans. That contention was met by outrage on the part of Democrat lawmakers, who stormed its office and called it a conspiracy theory. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said on Thursday that there was only <a class="c-link" href="https://puck.news/senator-brian-schatz-on-immigration-lies-medicaid-cuts-grift/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://puck.news/senator-brian-schatz-on-immigration-lies-medicaid-cuts-grift/" data-sk="tooltip_parent">$50 million in waste in total</a> at USAID
The Department of Justice said that Apprio should have to pay a $52 million penalty and Vistant should have to pay $86 million, but that the companies did not have the funds to pay. It agreed to accept $500,000 from Apprio and $100,000 from Vistant, and to defer criminal prosecution of both companies. USAID official Watson faces up to 15 years in prison, while the company owners face up to five years in prison.

Darryl Britt (left) and Walter Barnes III

USAID Official, Three Contractors Plead Guilty To Half-Billion Dollar Bribery Scheme

The GOP-led House moved on Thursday to cut billions in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, aligning with the Department of Government Efficiency&#8217;s (DOGE) recommendations to cut programs Republicans deem to be wasteful and ideologically driven.
A <a href="https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20250609/SCALIS_004_xml[6].pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rescissions bill</a> that seeks to take back $9.4 billion in discretionary spending allocated toward foreign aid projects and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funds to NPR and PBS, passed in a <a href="https://x.com/HouseDailyPress/status/1933251522961313997" target="_blank" rel="noopener">vote</a> of 214-212 <a href="https://x.com/CraigCaplan/status/1933254246561935683" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mostly along</a> party lines.
&#8220;President Trump promised to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, and today House Republicans took a strong step in delivering on that promise,&#8221; House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) told The Daily Wire. &#8220;By solidifying savings found by DOGE, we’re reining in reckless spending and getting our fiscal house in order.&#8221;
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) <a href="https://www.majorityleader.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4551" target="_blank" rel="noopener">introduced</a> the bill after President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dei-insect-powder-and-trans-resilience-trump-unveils-woke-spending-cuts-request" target="_blank" rel="noopener">submitted</a> a rescissions package seeking the cuts last week. Under the Impoundment Control Act, lawmakers have 45 days to act on the request, and it requires only a simple majority in the House and Senate — meaning the filibuster threshold can be ignored.
The legislation proposes cutting $8.3 billion from U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department programs, including funding for &#8220;Net Zero Cities&#8221; in Mexico, Iraqi &#8220;Sesame Street,&#8221; and global LGBTQ+ initiatives, and $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, targeting NPR and PBS following choices such as <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/npr-ceo-admits-outlet-was-mistaken-in-refusing-to-cover-hunter-biden-laptop-story/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ignoring</a> the Hunter Biden laptop story and trans-focused programming.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=wisepops&amp;utm_campaign=dad&amp;utm_content=fathersdaygiftpopups" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gift Dad an All Access Membership. Use code DAD40 at checkout to save 40%!</a>
While the House debated the bill, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) <a href="https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/1933236626433716523" target="_blank" rel="noopener">held up</a> a doll of Elmo from &#8220;Sesame Street.&#8221; He bemoaned how lawmakers were debating legislation that &#8220;targets Elmo, and Big Bird, and Daniel Tiger, and &#8216;Sesame Street'&#8221; rather than a bill &#8220;designed to make this country and our economy more affordable.&#8221; Scalise <a href="https://x.com/search?q=jeffries%20elmo&amp;src=typed_query&amp;f=top" target="_blank" rel="noopener">delivered</a> a rebuttal in which he affirmed &#8220;Sesame Street&#8221; is &#8220;doing just fine&#8221; after being <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/business/media/sesame-street-netflix-pbs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">picked up</a> by Netflix. &#8220;What will go away is some of the far-Left, radical views that are being espoused,&#8221; he added.
A continuation of the cuts is possible if they make it into fiscal 2026 legislation. Sources on Capitol Hill and the White House expect more requests to implement the so-called DOGE cuts to follow, assuming the first bill manages to pass through both chambers of Congress. It&#8217;s part of a wider effort to reduce the deficit, including income from tariffs and reining in the budget with the &#8220;One Big, Beautiful Bill&#8221; and the appropriations process.
In a post on Truth Social before the vote, Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114671982391481893" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called</a> the rescissions bill a &#8220;NO BRAINER&#8221; and encouraged Republicans to vote for it to &#8220;&#8216;claw back&#8217; $9.4 BILLION DOLLARS in funding for wasteful Foreign Aid, used for Radical &#8216;DEI&#8217; and the Green New SCAM, and the &#8216;Corporation for Public Broadcasting,&#8217; which funds the highly biased NPR and PBS.&#8221;

House Republicans, including Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise, and Tom Emmer

House Passes DOGE Cuts Targeting Foreign Aid, NPR, And PBS

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Hakeem Jeffries

National Public Radio (NPR)

Politics

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

Spending Bill

Steve Scalise

U.S. House of Representatives

White House

A Washington, D.C., judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump&#8217;s control of the African Development Foundation, a small federal agency that locked its doors to prevent Trump&#8217;s staff from entering and had to be physically taken over by U.S. Marshals.
The suit was brought by Ward Brehm, a former member of the agency&#8217;s board of directors, which is appointed by the president. On February 24, the White House notified Brehm that he was fired. But Brehm later insisted he was not just on the board, but had become president of the agency — not Pete Marocco, the architect of the USAID demolition, who Trump also named as president of the similar African aid group.
Senior Judge Richard J. Leon <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278118/gov.uscourts.dcd.278118.41.0_1.pdf">ruled</a> that Brehm &#8220;never lawfully held the position, and the Court is not at liberty to unilaterally install him as president. The Court therefore finds that summary judgment is warranted for the defendants.&#8221;
&#8220;The &#8216;President may remove anyone he appoints,&#8217; unless Congress &#8216;wishes to restrict the President&#8217;s removal power,&#8217; which it &#8216;must make clear in a statute,'&#8221; he wrote, citing precedent.
The White House removed all five board members on the same day, but ADF staff would not share contact info for the board members with Trump staff, and notifications to members besides Brehm were sent to invalid email addresses.
On February 28, the White House wrote to the African Development Foundation&#8217;s Chief Financial Officer, Mathieu Zahiu, that the agency had become &#8220;Board-less&#8221; and Trump had temporarily appointed Marocco as acting chair.
Zahui consulted with the fired board members, then told the White House that agency staff would not recognize Marocco as their boss because &#8220;a board nomination requires Senate confirmation.&#8221;
On March 3, the old board held a meeting that purported to appoint Brehm as the chair. They notified Congress that they had seen the February 28 email, but that Brehm was the new president.
Marocco then held a board meeting with only himself and terminated Brehm. &#8220;Since then, both Brehm and Marocco claim to be USADF&#8217;s president,&#8221; the judge wrote.
Judge Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that Brehm could not be president of the agency because he had been fired from the board before it supposedly elected him president. Even the other board members, whose emailed termination notices were bungled, knew they had been fired, he said.
&#8220;President Trump removed the board prior to Brehm&#8217;s appointment, and thus Brehm was not lawfully appointed! Brehm&#8217;s removal claims must therefore fail.&#8221;
He noted that chief financial officer Zahui consulted with the previous board members before refusing the accept the White House&#8217;s appointee, and that &#8220;Zahui effectively notified the Board members of their terminations.&#8221;
A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why">Daily Wire investigation</a> found that, according to the USAID Inspector General, Zahui received secret payments to his personal bank account after improperly steering contracts to a friend. One of the contracts was for travel during COVID, when no one was traveling. A search warrant was executed on Zahui&#8217;s phone in November, but as of now, he has not been criminally charged.
The Daily Wire&#8217;s investigation found that the African Development Foundation affirmed many of the fears that critics expressed about USAID, particularly that money advertised as going to poor people in third-world countries was being rerouted to D.C. bureaucrats and their friends.
The African Development Foundation sent &#8220;grants&#8221; to African groups on the condition that they send part of the money to American groups affiliated with agency officials and even wire money directly to the personal bank accounts of Foundation employees in Washington, the investigation found.
By law, the group is only permitted to give aid to African groups, and the maneuvering allowed Congress to think it was a low-overhead charity sending the bulk of its money to Africans, when in reality, it was essentially cooking the books.
“The grant was provided to an African organization … a grant can pay for people,” Zahiu told the Daily Wire about one instance of the agency forcing an African group to use part of its grant to pay the salaries of D.C. staff. “Yeah, granted, they were in D.C.” He also said that after DOGE changed the office&#8217;s locks, he gained access through a back door.
One longtime employee said the agency&#8217;s staff locked DOGE out because “the contracts don’t make sense, and they know [DOGE] will find lots of wrongdoing and illegal activity.”
“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,” she said.
Another employee, program manager Kate Ristroph, explained in a videotaped internal investigative interview obtained by The Daily Wire how an agency official gave a grant to an African group on the condition that it route some of the money to his former employer in D.C. “We’re in that murky territory of like, is this legal?” she said.
Mateo Dunne, the agency&#8217;s former lawyer, said he was summarily removed from his job by CEO Travis Adkins after sounding the alarm about lawbreaking.
One piece of misconduct he raised involved one of the now-fired board members, John Agwunobi.
Agwunobi was the CEO of Herbalife, a company accused of being a pyramid scheme, and used the federal agency to push the multi-level marketing firm in Africa months after it paid a $122 million settlement to the Department of Justice to settle charges that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. ADF misrepresented the partnership as being with a nonprofit when it was actually with the for-profit company, and connected Africans with the company&#8217;s reps, he said.
Adkins also bragged about concealing operations from Brehm and other board members, saying “them white motherf***ers, they don’t need to know … I don’t think I should tell them s***,” his former assistant told The Daily Wire.
The 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.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-foreign-aid-agency-locked-its-doors-to-keep-doge-out-now-we-know-why">This Foreign Aid Agency Locked Its Doors To Keep DOGE Out. Now We Know Why.</a>

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

D.C. Judge Sides With Trump In Lawsuit Over Control Of Corrupt Foreign Aid Agency

Courts

WASHINGTON—The State Department is destroying $13 million worth of contraceptives, The Daily Wire has learned, in addition to saving nearly $31 million by canceling contraceptive orders placed by President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration.
The contraceptives — including everything from hormonal birth control pills to birth control implants — were set to be distributed abroad through the U.S. Agency for International Development. But the State Department now says the Biden administration purchased much of these contraceptives in violation of the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which prevents U.S. funds from going to organizations that support or participate in programs of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.
There were some interested buyers, a State Department official said, but they were deemed ineligible since they support organizations involved in coercive abortion and sterilization. Those buyers reportedly included the Gates Foundation, the Children&#8217;s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), and the United Nations Population Fund. None of these organizations immediately responded to requests for comment.
A State Department official noted that it would cost the department several million dollars to sell the materials to other vendors, given that the department would have to rebrand some of these materials. Destroying the contraceptives, meanwhile, would cost taxpayers around $167,000, the official said. Doing so also avoids potential further violations of the Kemp-Kasten Amendment and ensures the materials don&#8217;t fall into the wrong hands — something that has happened before with USAID, according to the State Department.
The move is part of President Donald Trump&#8217;s January 2025 presidential directive that <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/memorandum-for-the-secretary-of-state-the-secretary-of-defense-the-secretary-of-health-and-human-services-the-administrator-of-the-united-states-for-international-development/">stops support</a> for organizations that are involved in coercive reproductive practices, according to a State Department memo shared with The Daily Wire. It is the Trump administration&#8217;s latest effort to curtail USAID, a once-sprawling operation that has been radically reined in and placed firmly under the auspices of the State Department.
An inventory of USAID-Funded Contraceptive Commodities held at a distribution center in Belgium shows that USAID had formerly funded millions of dollars&#8217; worth of birth control implants (including $3,850,540 for levonorgestrel rod implants and over $3,500,000 for etonogestrel rod implants).
USAID was also funding hundreds of thousands of dollars&#8217; worth of birth control pills, hormones, and IUDs, according to data reviewed by The Daily Wire.
The Belgian distribution center, Belgium RDC, was holding a total of $9,734,251 contraceptive commodities, and $3.4 million in commodities are still being held by its supplier, according to the State Department memo.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies on the 2026 Budget In House Hearing

EXCLUSIVE: State Department To Destroy $13 Million In Biden Era Contraceptives

Abortion

Contraception

The most radical thing Washington can do right now is stop spending. President Trump’s proposed $9.4 billion rescissions package won’t accomplish that on its own, but it at least, finally, moves us in the right direction.
For decades, members of both parties have treated spending growth as a measure of success. The assumption has been that government must grow, and that any program, once funded, must be permanent. That mindset has left us with a bloated federal bureaucracy that has replaced free-market policy and individual freedom with centralized control and pushed the country to <a href="https://www.usdebtclock.org/">nearly $37 trillion in debt</a>.
Still, most sitting lawmakers have never voted to cut a single dollar of federal spending. This package gives them that chance. More than that, it gives them an opening to start restoring the habits of a functioning legislature.
It’s also the first time the Department of Government Efficiency has had its work put into legislative form. Elon Musk built and led DOGE under the simple premise to stop wasting taxpayer money. Musk has since returned to the private sector, but he and the president have made clear that the mission remains. The rescissions package, which would codify spending cuts proposed by DOGE, reflects that mission. It targets corrupt USAID programs, taxpayer subsidies for ideologically biased public broadcasters NPR and PBS, and other programs that fail even a basic test of necessity in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/02/us/trump-budget-2026">$1.7 trillion discretionary budget</a>.
Fiscal conservatives, especially those complaining this package doesn’t go far enough, should not let the perfect be the enemy of the essential. Fiscal discipline, like any discipline, requires a starting point. You don’t run a marathon by starting with 20 miles, you start with one. This bill is that first mile.
Congress should treat it as such: start small, bank the win, and keep cutting wherever the rules allow. That means more rescissions, which require only a simple majority to pass. It also means using the appropriations process and, when necessary, continuing resolutions, to keep pushing the issue. Not every tool requires a supermajority, but even the ones that do are worth using to force the debate. Progress in this fight can come steadily if congressional Republicans stay united and focused.
It also means that if passed, this package should be the first of a longer series of cuts. Each one can go further, targeting programs that stray from constitutional purpose or national interest. Repetition in this case can build momentum and credibility.
It can also build legislative muscle memory. Too many lawmakers now assume the only way forward is through bipartisan overspending. A successful rescission would challenge that assumption. It would remind Congress that not every federal dollar is sacred and that cutting even a fraction of the budget is still possible with political will.
Moreover, follow-through matters just as much as passage. House and Senate Republicans must ensure these cuts aren’t restored elsewhere. Cuts that DOGE has made or proposed shouldn’t be backfilled through continuing resolutions or omnibus bills, especially those that are widely popular across America. What gets cut should stay cut. The goal is a permanent shift in direction.
DOGE’s broader purpose has always been to realign government toward greater efficiency and accountability. That vision reflects a basic expectation of public service – that government should function effectively, that leaders should make responsible decisions rather than defer them, and that taxpayers should have confidence their money is being used with care, not lost to inefficiency or corruption.
Congressional Republicans should also keep in mind that a win here sets the tone for the 2026 midterm elections. It signals that the Trump administration’s second-term agenda, as well as the party’s broader movement, is not just about executive action but real, legislative reform. Therefore, they should view these cuts not as the finish line, but as the starting point.
The stakes are about whether the federal government serves the American people or the other way around; whether Congress retains the capacity to exercise restraint, or whether inertia has become the default; and whether a new generation of lawmakers can relearn the forgotten skill of saying no.
This rescissions bill offers the chance to begin answering those questions. Conservatives should take it, and then keep going.
* * *
Paul Teller is the Executive Vice President of Advancing American Freedom.
John Shelton is a policy director for Advancing American Freedom. 
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

House Republicans

Why The First Spending Cut Is Worth Making

DOGE

Elon Musk

National Debt

Opinion

President Trump

Republicans

Taxes

President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration submitted its first rescissions package of the year to Congress, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced on Tuesday, accompanied by a list of instances of &#8220;waste, fraud, and abuse&#8221; singled out for the chopping block.
In a thread <a href="https://x.com/WHOMB/status/1929991228449312979" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> on X, OMB said lawmakers in the House and Senate &#8220;must act&#8221; on the request to claw back billions of dollars in &#8220;wasteful foreign aid and federal funding for NPR and PBS&#8221; previously appropriated by Congress, with &#8220;45 days to codify these massive cuts to woke, wasteful, and weaponized spending via a simple majority vote&#8221; using the Impoundment Control Act.
OMB specifically highlighted $67,000 for testing insect powder nutrition on children in Madagascar, $33,000 for “Being LGBTI in the Caribbean,&#8221; $643,000 for &#8220;LGBTQI+&#8221; programs in the Western Balkans, and $567,000 for &#8220;LBGTQI+&#8221; programs in Uganda.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
$67,000 for testing insect powder nutrition on children in Madagascar. <a href="https://t.co/ehLzMuIkkr">pic.twitter.com/ehLzMuIkkr</a>
— Office of Management and Budget (@WHOMB) <a href="https://twitter.com/WHOMB/status/1929991230567457260?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 3, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Scores of DEI and Global Green New Deal funding&#8221; projects were also mentioned, including: $5 million for the &#8220;Minority Serving Institute Fellowship Cooperative Agreement,&#8221; $595,400 for training women in gender equity, $500,000 for electric buses in Rwanda, $6 million for “net zero cities” in Mexico, $2.1 million for climate resilience in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and East Africa, as well as $5 million for “green transportation and logistics” in Eurasia.
OMB&#8217;s list went on to mention $4 million for “legume systems research&#8221; and $3 million for Iraqi Sesame Street.
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In addition, OMB noted millions under the PEPFAR account for so-called LGBTQIA+ programs, condoms, and vasectomies: $833,000 for &#8220;transgender people, sex workers and their clients and sexual networks&#8221; in Nepal, $5.1 million for &#8220;resilience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans gender, intersex, and queer global movements,&#8221; $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies, and condoms in Zambia, $1 billion in contributions to &#8220;wasteful, corrupt, and anti-American international organizations,&#8221; including $135 million to the World Health Organization, and $1.1 billion for the &#8220;left-wing&#8221; Corporation for Public Broadcasting, &#8220;which uses your taxpayer dollars to fund PBS and NPR.&#8221;
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) confirmed receipt of the rescissions package, which his office said focuses on $9.4 billion in &#8220;wasteful spending&#8221; identified by the Trump administration&#8217;s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative. He also gave a shoutout to Elon Musk, who earlier had <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/elon-cant-stand-it-anymore-goes-nuclear-on-big-beautiful-bill" target="_blank" rel="noopener">assailed</a> the lawmakers who voted to pass the &#8220;One Big, Beautiful Bill&#8221; last month, citing the &#8220;unsustainable&#8221; debt.
&#8220;The House will act quickly on this request,&#8221; Johnson said in a statement. &#8220;Under President Trump, every federal taxpayer dollar is actually being used to serve the American people, not to fund a bloated bureaucracy or purely partisan pet projects. We thank Elon Musk and his DOGE team for identifying a wide range of wasteful, duplicative, and outdated programs, and House Republicans are eager to eliminate them.&#8221;
He added: &#8220;This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity. Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.&#8221;
Johnson also took a shot at Democrats, who have largely opposed anything Trump supports, including DOGE.
“Democrats continue to wail and complain — NOT at the fraud, waste, and abuse — but at the Trump Administration simply for exposing it,&#8221; the speaker declared. &#8220;In fact, Democrats are the only ones in Washington who do not want to stop the egregious misspending of the people’s tax dollars. Democrats continue to defend corruption, while Republicans are delivering real accountability and real savings the American people demanded in November.&#8221;
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) criticized the spending cuts request.
&#8220;The reckless rescissions package introduced today is only the latest attempt by the Trump administration to attack the free press, decimate lifesaving humanitarian aid and hurt our national security,&#8221; Jeffries said in a statement. &#8220;House Democrats will continue to aggressively push back on the continued chaos, cruelty and corruption of this administration and on the far-right extremism being unleashed on the American people.&#8221;

DEI, Insect Powder, And Trans ‘Resilience’: Trump Unveils ‘Woke’ Spending Cuts Request

Budget

Mike Johnson

Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

Trump Administration

U.S. Senate

A key group of fiscal conservatives is calling on the GOP-led House to immediately get to work on passing President Donald Trump&#8217;s first second-term rescissions package slated to be sent to Congress this week.
In an &#8220;Official Position&#8221; released Monday, the House Freedom Caucus argued that codifying spending cuts sought by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative should be a top priority for lawmakers, who just returned to Capitol Hill after the Memorial Day recess.
&#8220;When the White House submits its first rescissions package to enact DOGE spending cuts to Congress, the House of Representatives should immediately move this to the floor for swift passage,&#8221; the group <a href="https://x.com/freedomcaucus/status/1929628818060235147" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;The House Freedom Caucus strongly supports these critical rescissions, and we will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months.&#8221;
Altogether, the rescissions package is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-budget-director-confirms-first-targets-for-clawing-back-spending" target="_blank" rel="noopener">expected</a> to cover roughly $9.4 billion. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funds to NPR and PBS, as well as foreign aid are slated to be the targets of the first request to claw back funds appropriated by Congress. More rescissions packages could follow.
&#8220;These first DOGE cuts target taxpayer-funded public broadcasters notorious for their liberal bias like NPR and PBS, as well as billions in wasteful foreign aid dollars. Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda,&#8221; the House Freedom Caucus said.
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&#8220;While the Swamp will inevitably attempt to slow and kill these cuts, there is no excuse for a Republican House not to advance the first DOGE rescissions package the same week it is presented to Congress then quickly send it for passage in the Republican Senate so President Trump can sign it into law,&#8221; the group added.
Dealing with a narrow majority and Democrats who largely vote in a block against anything they do, House GOP leaders have been under pressure from many in the Republican rank-and-file to codify the DOGE cuts, particularly after the lower chamber narrowly passed the &#8220;One Big, Beautiful Bill&#8221; that is estimated to add trillions of dollars to the national debt.
Fiscal hawks who do not think enough is being done to rein in spending could revolt if the Senate makes changes to the legislation, and it gets sent back to the House. The Trump administration wants the bill ready to go by July 4.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/speaker-johnson-reveals-two-ways-house-act-doge-findings" target="_blank" rel="noopener">listed</a> rescissions as being one of two actions the House will take based on findings from the DOGE initiative, in addition to using the appropriations process to &#8220;swiftly implement&#8221; Trump&#8217;s proposed 2026 budget. &#8220;When the White House sends its rescissions package to the House, we will act quickly by passing legislation to codify the cuts,&#8221; he <a href="https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1927749395363045819" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a Wednesday post on X.

Chair Andy Harris (R-MD) and other Freedom Caucus members

Fiscal Hawks Make Urgent Demand For ‘DOGE Cuts’

The White House plans to send its first rescissions package of the year to the Congress next week, President Donald Trump&#8217;s budget chief announced on Wednesday, aiming to gut programs that Republicans view as being wasteful and partisan.
Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said during an interview on Fox Business that the request to claw back funds appropriated by Congress will be delivered to the House on Monday or Tuesday, whenever the lower chamber is back in session.
The package will focus on removing &#8220;waste and garbage&#8221; for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and foreign aid, Vought told host Larry Kudlow.
Vought noted the package will also target NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). NPR just <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/business/media/npr-trump-lawsuit-executive-order-funding.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> Trump over his executive order for ending &#8220;taxpayer subsidization&#8221; of outlets presenting &#8220;biased and partisan&#8221; news coverage. In particular, the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ending-taxpayer-subsidization-of-biased-media/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">directive</a> seeks to end funds to NPR and PBS through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CBP).
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
🚨 <a href="https://twitter.com/WHOMB?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WHOMB</a> Director <a href="https://twitter.com/RussVought47?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RussVought47</a> confirms that President Trump&#8217;s first rescissions package — clawing back wasteful spending in USAID, foreign aid, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and NPR — will be sent to Congress next week. <a href="https://t.co/wBZp1lciat">pic.twitter.com/wBZp1lciat</a>
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1927831966658797660?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 28, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/trump-budget-doge-npr-pbs-usaid-congress" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that the rescissions package is expected to cover $9.4 billion and, once delivered, lawmakers will have 45 days to approve it. Vought noted how the measure can be passed by the House and Senate with a simple majority, meaning the filibuster will not be in play.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve had good conversations to make sure they knew it was coming,&#8221; Vought said. &#8220;They had some input as to some of the changes that could be made to make it something that could pass the House. And we&#8217;re excited for that to occur next week.&#8221;
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Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/speaker-johnson-reveals-two-ways-house-act-doge-findings" target="_blank" rel="noopener">listed</a> rescissions as being one of two actions the House will take based on findings from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, led by Elon Musk, in addition to using the appropriations process to &#8220;swiftly implement&#8221; Trump&#8217;s proposed 2026 budget.
&#8220;When the White House sends its rescissions package to the House, we will act quickly by passing legislation to codify the cuts,&#8221; Johnson <a href="https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1927749395363045819" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a Wednesday post on X.
During his appearance on Fox Business, Vought also defended the version of Trump’s &#8220;One Big, Beautiful Bill&#8221; narrowly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/house-passes-one-big-beautiful-bill-in-massive-win-for-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">passed</a> by the House last week after Musk <a href="https://x.com/CBSSunday/status/1927535075144421527" target="_blank" rel="noopener">warned</a> it &#8220;undermines&#8221; DOGE&#8217;s cost-cutting efforts because it risks further increasing the federal deficit, which has already surpassed $1 trillion in recent years.
&#8220;We have been in the process of getting the most important priority done, and that is the &#8216;One Big Beautiful Bill&#8217; &#8230; we are in the business of actually passing a law,&#8221; Vought <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1927822695145611426" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;It has $1.6 trillion in actual, mandatory savers for the first time ever.&#8221;

Trump Budget Director Confirms First Targets For Clawing Back Spending

Russ Vought

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