Secretary of State Marco Rubio faced off with Senator Chris Van Hollen during a fiery Senate hearing on Tuesday over student visas, illegal immigrant gang members, and USAID.
The two faced off after the Maryland Democrat spent over seven minutes criticizing Rubio and expressing regret for having supported his confirmation.
“I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for Secretary of State,” Van Hollen said following his opportunity to question Rubio, choosing instead to deliver a long rant.
“Your regret for voting for me confirms that I am doing a good job based on what I know about your record,” Rubio fired back.
The Senate <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-votes-unanimously-to-confirm-marco-rubio-as-secretary-of-state" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unanimously confirmed</a> Rubio in January.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rubio-threatens-to-snatch-visas-from-pro-hamas-thugs-at-columbia-university?author=Kassy+Akiva&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Rubio+Threatens+To+Snatch+Visas+From+%E2%80%98Pro-Hamas+Thugs%E2%80%99+At+Columbia+University" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RUBIO THREATENS TO SNATCH VISAS FROM ‘PRO-HAMAS THUGS’ AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY</a>
Rubio responded to Van Hollen’s criticism of the secretary traveling to El Salvador, where illegal alien gang members have been deported and imprisoned.
“In the case of El Salvador, absolutely, absolutely. We deported gang members. Gang members. Including the one that you had a margarita with,” Rubio quipped. “The guy is a human trafficker and that guy is a gangbanger and the evidence is going to be clear in the days to come. You are going to see who you went to defend.”
Van Hollen immediately interrupted before being told to be silent by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair James Risch (R-ID).
“He can’t make unsubstantiated comments like that,” Van Hollen said. “Secretary Rubio should take that testimony to federal court in the United States because he hasn’t done it under oath.”
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sipping-margaritas-dem-senator-finally-meets-deported-illegal-immigrant-in-el-salvador" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Van Hollen visited</a> 29-year-old illegal immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is detained in a Salvadoran mega-prison, in April. Photos went viral of the two drinking margaritas while meeting at a restaurant.
<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>
“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ &amp; ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said in a <a href="https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1913028548001923259">post on X</a> that mocked the meeting.
Rubio attempted to address his former colleague’s remarks on USAID, despite the senator&#8217;s interruptions, explaining that he believes wasteful spending was cut. Rubio pointed out $10 million was cut from a program giving male circumcisions in Mozambique and $227,000 for “Big Cats YouTube channel,” and $14 million for “social cohesion” in Mali.
“I don’t know how that makes us stronger or more prosperous as a nation,” Rubio said.
The two also faced off over Rubio revoking student visas from campus disruptors, including the case of Turkish Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk, who had her visa terminated over her alleged “activities in support of Hamas.”
“A visa is not a right, it is a privilege,” Rubio said. “People apply for student visas to come into the United States and study, and if you tell me that you are coming into the United States to lead campus crusades, to take over libraries and try to burn down buildings and acts of violence, we’re not going to give you a visa.”
<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>
In 2024, Ozturk wrote an op-ed calling on her university to acknowledge the “Palestinian genocide” and to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
The Department of Homeland Security previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/morning-brief-trumps-liberation-day-doge-pr-battle-self-deportation-push" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said it had found</a> Ozturk to have “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” though details are scarce, and a federal judge ordered her release on May 9.
“The bottom line is if you come here to stir up trouble on our campuses, we will deny you a visa,” Rubio said. “These kids pay money to go to school, and they have to walk through a bunch of lunatics who are here on student visas.”
Rubio added that the State Department will continue to revoke visas and stated, “I hope we can find more of these people.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Rubio Faces Off With Democratic Senator During Heated Confrontation

antisemitism

Marco Rubio

Senate

Trump Administration

USAID

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.

Africa

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Foreign Funding

A USAID employee in charge of managing contracts for the agency created a fake company to fraudulently secure coronavirus benefits for himself, federal prosecutors said Friday.
“Yusuf Akoll worked as a Senior Procurement Contract Specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development,” according to a previously unreported <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.280449/gov.uscourts.dcd.280449.2.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">court document</a>. “From at least in or around March 2021, and continuing through at least in or around August 2021, Akoll [made] materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements…that resulted in Akoll receiving two [Paycheck Protection Program] loans totaling approximately $16,666 that he was not entitled to receive.”
Prosecutors said that in November 2020, Akoll registered a company in Virginia called Naagode Consulting LLC, then applied for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan under the coronavirus bailout package, claiming he worked at Naagode and the money was necessary to prevent job losses.
Only companies in operation in February 2020 were eligible, so he falsely said it was established in January 2020. To establish a loss of income, he said the company had $40,000 in income in 2019 when it actually had no income, prosecutors said.
Akoll was accused of making false statements in Washington, D.C., federal court via an “information,” which typically signals a plea deal.
The fact that the money was paid out highlights how carelessly the government disbursed massive sums during coronavirus. The claim that the company had $40,000 in revenue in 2019 contradicts his own claim that it didn’t exist until January 2020.
The fact that Small Business Administration officials didn’t check state corporation records and catch the fact that it was actually established in November 2020 — or federal tax returns to verify the $40,000 — indicate that the government wasn’t doing basic database cross-referencing, the kind of thing the Department of Government Efficiency has made its bread and butter.
USAID was shuttered, with its remnants folded into the State Department, amidst concern by Republicans and the Department of Government Efficiency that the money was mismanaged. Akoll was in charge of hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing to foreign countries, where the money could be difficult to monitor, records <a href="https://www.highergov.com/people/yakoll-usaid-dot-gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">show</a>.
Coronavirus payments were disbursed with little vetting under a “pay and chase” model, where fraudulent claims would ostensibly be recovered later. But the Biden administration quickly gave up on chasing.
The Biden administration said in 2023 that it <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sba-wont-even-try-to-collect-on-ppp-loans-that-are-supposed-to-be-paid-back-citing-equity" target="_blank" rel="noopener">would not seek to collect</a> on loans of less than $100,000 that were required to be paid back, citing “equity.” Most of the loans were designed to be forgiven, but those who did not meet the requirements were supposed to repay them.
That’s despite the Small Business Administration’s inspector general saying the move “is not in compliance with applicable criteria,” and that not even attempting to stop people from cheating the government encouraged future fraud.  
Congress nearly let the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery, which was set up to police fraud in the pandemic bailout, expire in March 2025, which would have quickly closed the book on the government’s largest and most chaotic payment frenzy ever.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery had only recovered three dollars for every dollar spent on its staff, which should have been higher. <a href="https://www.courtwatch.news/p/court-watch-112-you-re-about-to-lose-577-billion-dollars" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CourtWatch</a>, which advocated for its continuance, said the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery had meager resources of only a few dozen employees, and that shutting it down could lead to even less recovery. CourtWatch said the Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery had open investigations into $577 million in suspected fraud.
 Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the head of the Senate DOGE Caucus, fought to keep the inspector general, saying, “I will not allow fraudsters to get away with stealing hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayers.”
The head of Lexis Nexis Risk Solutions testified to Congress that criminals stole <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/witness-at-first-doge-hearing-confronts-lawmakers-with-scale-of-covid-fraud-they-stole-1-trillion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$1 trillion</a> in COVID money, most of which went overseas.

Trump And Musk’s USAID ‘Shut Down’ Threat Opens Door For China

USAID Contracting Officer Charged With Pandemic Bailout Fraud

Coronavirus

Joni Ernst

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)

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)

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>
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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>
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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 

As taxpayers raise concerns about corruption in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky told Ben Shapiro he would be open to an audit into the use of American funds.
In a face-to-face exclusive interview with Shapiro in war-town Kyiv, Zelensky said he is prepared to allow inspectors to review how the more than $174 billion in American aid has been used to support Ukraine’s war against Russia.
“We’re always ready for any audit,” Zelensky said. “There’s nothing to hide. We are absolutely open, transparent, and that is what’s happening.”
Zelensky said that U.S. inspectors have had oversight following Russia attempting to “undermine the support and assistance coming from the United States” through “fake news and other tools” at the start of the war.
Zelensky added that he is “grateful to all the U.S. taxpayers.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cVRuLaEJij0?si=6ihnZq_GRHdW7Uty" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> 
“We are grateful to the bipartisan support in Congress,” he said. “We are grateful to the unity around the fight of Ukraine for independence…and the great contribution of the United States in the defense of our people.”
He added that he has his own “internal audit” where his government is “documenting how much assistance was provided.”
According to Zelensky, Ukraine has received $104-$105 billion in assistance, most of which comes in the form of military support.
“The money was paid to the transportation of those weapons,” Zelensky said. “Ukrainian companies were not allowed to transport this money. That&#8217;s why we haven&#8217;t received it — not in the public, not in the private sector — the money for the transportation.”
According to the <a href="https://www.gao.gov/ukraine-oversight">U.S. Government Accountability Office</a>, Congress appropriated more than $174 billion for Ukraine. The funds have been used for security assistance and weaponry, or for economic and humanitarian assistance, including direct budget support for the Ukrainian government, aid for refugees, improving the health sector, and repairing infrastructure such as the energy grid.
Zelensky said he is not attempting to argue with the United States by claiming he is getting nearly $70 billion less than the United States government is reporting.
“It&#8217;s important that both countries and — the taxpayers know — where their money is,” he said. “In terms of the use of that money primarily, it was for the weapons that were used on the battlefield.”
In total, the Ukrainian government was directly given $22.9 billion by USAID for direct budget support, mostly for reimbursing salaries for teachers, civil servants, and healthcare workers, according to the GAO.
“We are very grateful for all that,” Zelensky said. “The United States has to know that they were not feeding our pensioners and our soldiers with regards to the salary or the compensation. Surely you&#8217;ve provided the most important aspects — that is the weapons.”
The GAO recommended several ways to improve oversight of funding in Ukraine, including tracking the unprecedented amount of military equipment given to the country, making training initiatives more efficient, properly assessing the value of assets given, and more.
The report also points out that the State Department does not have a “systematic, comprehensive approach to specifically track funding that federal agencies have provided for economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.”
Zelensky argued that the United States benefited from providing financial support to Ukraine because it has received intel about weaponry, including drones being used in the current conflict.
Zelensky added that Ukraine is keeping Russia from invading NATO countries that would pull the United States into a much larger war.
“I’ve mentioned it many times before, the U.S will have to protect the other NATO countries, because such an agreement exists, or the U.S. will have to leave NATO,” Zelensky said. “ So as long as Russians are not in any single NATO member nation, your families are not facing this question. So that will be a major question for your families: Are they going to send your child to war?&#8221;

Ben Shapiro and President Zelensky.24-Apr-2025

Zelensky Tells Ben Shapiro He’s Open To An Audit On How Ukraine Spends U.S. Taxpayer Dollars

Ben Shapiro

Ukraine-Russia War

Volodymyr Zelensky

In a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/as-democrat-warplane-takes-flak-audacity-remains-intact">recent piece,</a> I analogized the Democrats&#8217; propaganda machine and the heart of their political strategy to an F-47 Stealth Fighter — one of the most expensive, sophisticated, and powerful weapons in existence. I would like to build on that comparison and clarify three big problems emerging with the Democrat warplane.
<h3>#1. Their stealth fighter has lost a lot of its stealth</h3>
Thanks to whistleblowers, the <a href="https://x.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394">Twitter Files release</a>, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jim-jordan-releases-new-facebook-files-highlights-how-biden-admin-sought-to-suppress-daily-wire-content">Facebook censorship documents</a>, a few brave reporters, and the DOGE exposure of the USAID fraud, the most surreptitious and underhanded features of the Democrat war machine have now been revealed to the American public. Their use of taxpayer money and government agency clout to simultaneously fund and/or threaten respective media platforms and individuals regarding their positions and messaging became apparent. The public now clearly sees exactly how pseudo support has been astroturfed by the Left for their causes and candidates — and competing voices extinguished.
In his recent essay &#8220;<a href="https://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2025/03/06/the_artificial_culture_1095413.html">The Artificial Culture</a>,&#8221; Mathew Gasda describes the landscape: 
<blockquote>If you want to ask why certain so-called socialist, left-leaning magazines failed to ever substantially criticize the DNC and Democratic politics in more than a superficial way (despite positioning themselves as independent or even adversarial), it&#8217;s because they were functionally part of the DNC (as evidenced by their reliance on grants from foundations tied to Democratic donors, they&#8217;re hiring patterns, favoring staff with direct party affiliations, and their editorial alignment with DNC priorities during election cycles), part of DNC patronage networks (with documented financial ties to progressive nonprofits, think tanks, and media funds that coordinate messaging with the party).</blockquote>
NGOs play a critical role in supporting this messaging, not only by funding media platforms and supportive activists, but by providing employment to loyal soldiers. In “<a href="https://amuseonx.substack.com/p/subsidizing-the-left-how-ngos-became">Subsidizing the Left: How NGOs Become a Jobs Program for Democrats</a>,” AmuseOnX explains how NGOs and USAID itself have been critical parts of this Democrat apparatus, pointing out that “over 90% of pass-through organizations are run by Left-wing activists and politically connected individuals from prior Democrat administrations.” Often, the pass-through has multiple layers, obscuring purpose and usage. As but one example, he points to the Climate Justice Alliance, which received some $50 million from the EPA supposedly to fight climate change, but instead, funneled this taxpayer money into pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel propaganda campaigns in the U.S., helping to fuel campus protests.
USAID has been exposed as a gigantic <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rubio-announces-83-of-usaid-programs-cancelled-musk-calls-move-tough-but-necessary">slush fund</a> for the Left. Elon Musk concluded bluntly that USAID is beyond repair, calling it a “<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886102414194835755">criminal organization</a>” and “<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886098373251301427?lang=en">a viper’s nest filled with radical-left Marxists that hate America</a>.” Tellingly, former State Department official <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886098373251301427?lang=en">Mike Benz responded</a> to that post with, “I cannot adequately convey to you how many dozens of former members of the intelligence community have written to me this exact sentiment about USAID.”
The public now understands both that they were deceived, and somewhat how they were deceived. But even if they don’t understand all of the parameters of the latter, they now solidly grasp the former.
<h3>#2. Their stealth fighter has lost significant clout</h3>
David Samuels’ piece “<a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment">Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment — How Barack Obama Built an Omnipotent Thought-Machine and How It Was Destroyed”</a> explains how, aided by a massive shift in consumer usage to digital format and his embrace of chief strategist David Axelrod’s “permission structures,” Obama was able to architect a “digital switchboard” controlled by a small class of operatives and essentially create the realities he desired.
With command of this network says Samuels:
<blockquote>Catchphrases like ‘defund the police,’ ‘structural racism,’ ‘white privilege,’ ‘children don’t belong in cages,’ ‘assigned gender,’ or ‘stop the genocide in Gaza’ would emerge and marinate in meme-generating pools like the academy or activist organizations, and then jump the fence — or be fed — into rich groups and threads on Twitter and Reddit.</blockquote>
He goes on to outline how Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter broke the stranglehold of this new digital leviathan which not only allowed for counter-narratives, but exposed the unethical and likely illegal methods used by the Democrat administrations to censor and promote various stories.
The 2024 Presidential election pivoted largely on a growing portion of the electorate <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-2024-election-was-a-referendum-on-reality">recognizing the absurdity</a> of many leftist claims. The Left had finally jumped the shark. <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2025/03/18/nolte-disgraced-ap-lies-about-tulsi-gabbard-describing-trump-and-putin-as-very-good-friends/">John Nolte</a> outlines a sampling of over 40 hoaxes reported as truths by the AP over the last several years including topics ranging from the origins of COVID, the lockdown mandates, and vaccine efficacy, to Hunter Biden’s laptop, to tropes about various leaders like Trump, Biden, Pelosi, and Gabbard to the belief in multiple genders, to the environment, to January 6, and more.
Thanks to the debunking of those hoaxes and others, most Americans, including a growing number of Independents, no longer trust or believe in the Democrat orthodoxy that has been endlessly repeated through mainstream and social media.
Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan first advised us that the medium cannot be separated from the message. And a bit prior to him, Aristotle admonished us that “We are what we repeatedly do.” Thus, a growing number of Americans are rightly concluding, ipso facto, that the people who have been trying to get them to swallow these whoppers are liars.
Thus exposed, Democrats and their media sycophants have been reduced to <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5176848-democrats-protest-trump-congress/">pouting</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/10-dems-join-gop-to-censure-rep-al-green-for-heckling-trump">yelling</a>, and crying while their approval ratings plummet to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-closes-out-2024-with-cratering-approval-rating">record lows</a>. Further, in lock-step, the credibility/viewership of sycophant media outlets is withering. A <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx">2024 Gallup poll</a> shows that Americans now see the news media as the least trusted group among 10 U.S. civic and political institutions involved in the democratic process — even lower than Congress. The polling firm reported, “For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express ‘not very much’ confidence.” This means that trust in the mass media is at its lowest point in five decades.
This sharp drop in credibility is utterly devastating to Democrats. Since the Obama reign, Democrats have grown accustomed to the luxury of being able to spin whatever hokum they desired with unquestioned belief and support from the requisite number of politicians and voters.
<h3>#3. Their stealth fighter is very, very expensive to operate</h3>
How do you ensure that media outlets and their representatives will push some stories and quash others? You pay them. A quick review of the <a href="https://www.newstarget.com/2025-02-08-usaid-funds-6000-journalists-1000-platforms-worldwide.html">USAID funding</a> shows that some 6,200 journalists at nearly 1,000 different platforms, including hundreds of NGO’s, were receiving USAID payments of some form — including but in no way limited to the AP, Reuters, The BBC, and Politico. This was an expensive proposition indeed — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Even more <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/release/doge-subcommittee-chairwoman-greene-opens-hearing-by-exposing-the-dark-truth-about-usaids-mission-to-undermine-u-s-interests/">USAID funds</a>, perhaps tens of billions of dollars, were funneled to far-Left opposition groups, NGOs, and <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3313896/usaid-gave-270-million-soros-ngo-only-needed-9-million-doom-democracy-albania/">Soros-related projects</a> and candidates. DOGE is now working to shut that down.
One of Democrats’ largest fundraising organizations, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/serious-loophole-allowing-democrats-actblue-to-potentially-accept-illegal-political-contributions-congress">ActBlue</a>, which has funneled over $16 billion to all levels of Democrat campaigns since its inception seems to be imploding amid <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/texas-attorney-general-finds-suspicious-untraceable-donations-made-on-dem-fundraising-site">allegations of fraud</a>, foreign money <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/serious-loophole-allowing-democrats-actblue-to-potentially-accept-illegal-political-contributions-congress">laundering</a>, and sponsoring terrorism. At least seven senior officers have left the organization and congressional investigations loom. To make matters worse, the Dem’s usual billionaire class may be defecting. <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/27/the-real-oligarchs-whove-been-running-our-country/">Victor Davis Hanson</a> speculates that Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, and perhaps even Jeff Bezos appear to be questioning their Democrat loyalty as demonstrated by some of their recent hesitancy to provide usual levels of support.
Without the usual hundreds of billions of dollars, clandestine and otherwise, to update and expand the capabilities of their warplane, it will quickly become both antiquated and impotent.
The Democrat stealth fighter has been exposed. Its methods of funding and the damage it has both inflicted and incurred over the last few years are massive stories. The future of the Democratic Party in the near term seems inextricably bound to this machine — particularly because Democrats seem to be doubling down on keeping it as an integral part of their strategy. Damaged or not, that is currently all they have.
* * *
Greg Salsbury, Ph.D. is former president of Western Colorado University and Board of Advisor member for <a href="https://starrs.us">STARRS.US</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

TOPSHOT-US-VOTE-POLITICS-DEMOCRATIC-CONVENTION

‘Mayday, Mayday’ For The Democrat Warplane

'Mayday, Mayday' For The Democrat Warplane

Congress

Democratic Party

Democrats

DOGE

Opinion

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Elon Musk hinted at a Wisconsin town hall that he and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project might be planning to do some digging on Capitol Hill.
Musk was in Wisconsin ahead of the state&#8217;s Tuesday Supreme Court election, which conservative Brad Schimel ultimately lost to liberal Susan Crawford, and some of the questions he took from those in the audience centered around his work in President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration with DOGE.
One attendee asked whether DOGE had uncovered any payments from USAID to far-Left members of Congress like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) or Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — and Musk noted that it wasn&#8217;t quite as simple as finding bank records that showed direct payments to specific members of Congress.
WATCH;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Elon Musk: “There is a massive amount of corruption… effectively there’s a giant fraud loophole where the government can send money to an NGO that is then no longer the government by the laws of the U.S., let’s just say there are a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress..” <a href="https://t.co/Gy2Q38o5hj">pic.twitter.com/Gy2Q38o5hj</a>
&mdash; America (@america) <a href="https://twitter.com/america/status/1906516590595572106?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;There is a massive amount of corruption,&#8221; Musk began. &#8220;But it is circuitous, so what happens is there&#8217;s money that — obviously it&#8217;s your taxpayer money — that is then sent to various government organizations who then send it to NGOs. An NGO is a Non-Governmental Organization, but obviously if it&#8217;s a government-funded Non Governmental Organization, it&#8217;s just an organization, it&#8217;s just the government.&#8221;
&#8220;And effectively, there’s a giant fraud loophole, which is that the government can send money to an NGO that is then no longer governed by law — the laws of the United States,&#8221; Musk continued. &#8220;They’ll send the money overseas to one NGO, then they’ll go through a bunch of them, and then I’m highly confident that a bunch of that money then comes back to the United States and lands in the pockets of the people you just mentioned.&#8221;
&#8220;But it is a circuitous route,&#8221; he repeated. &#8220;It doesn’t go directly, but let’s just say that there’s a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress where I’m trying to connect the dots of, ‘How did they become rich?&#8217;”

US-POLITICS-TRUMP

Elon Musk Hints Next DOGE Target Could Be The ‘Strangely Wealthy’ Members Of Congress

Donald Trump

Politics

WASHINGTON—The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) submitted an official notification to Congress on Friday that the State Department will be assuming responsibility for most of the agency&#8217;s functions and ongoing programming.
All personnel will receive a Reduction in Force (RIF) notification on Friday, a USAID official shared with The Daily Wire, informing them that all non-statutory positions at USAID will be eliminated. That includes USAID employees around the world.
Approximately 4,600 USAID personnel will be RIF&#8217;d across the agency&#8217;s foreign and civil service.
Personnel will begin receiving RIF notices via email within a few minutes of that notification. Those notices will specify one of two final separation dates: either July 1, 2025, or September 2, 2025.
The historic move realigns the United States&#8217; handling of foreign aid, implementing foreign policy to align with the interest of President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration. USAID officials say that bringing its programs under the State Department umbrella will enhance the impact, efficiency, accountability, and uniformity of its foreign assistance programs.
In a Friday statement, USAID Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Lewin said the agency has strayed from its original mission to help stem the world&#8217;s &#8220;gravest crises and support allies in need.&#8221; 
&#8220;But the independent establishment of USAID has grown inefficient and unwieldy, too often contradicting rather than reinforcing the foreign policy of the President and nation,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;By bringing USAID’s core life-saving and strategic aid programs under the umbrella of the State Department, this Administration will significantly enhance the efficiency, accountability, uniformity, and strategic impact of foreign assistance programs – and ensure that our nation and President speaks with one voice in foreign affairs,&#8221; Lewin added.
USAID argues that the move is not about ending foreign aid, but reorienting how the United States delivers aid to &#8220;maximize impact,&#8221; adopting a &#8220;returns-oriented mindset&#8221; and centering on &#8220;American strategic interests.&#8221;
&#8220;Like any restructuring, there will inevitably be disruptions,&#8221; Lewin said. &#8220;From Secretary Rubio down, we are committed to ensuring that USAID personnel remain safe and that the Agency’s ongoing life-saving aid programs remain both intact and operational.&#8221;
Over the next three months, USAID and the State Department will work closely to transfer USAID&#8217;s programming over. During this period, the State Department will be assessing its own needs and conducting an independent hiring process, which will be available to eligible USAID employees. A USAID official told The Daily Wire that the agency has to wait 60 days before they can rehire someone at a different government agency — giving notice today will potentially allow employees who are RIF&#8217;d to be rehired at State in 60 days.
By July 1, 2025, the State Department will have assumed responsibility for USAID&#8217;s remaining programming, and many USAID employees will have gone over to the State Department or will be seeking other employment. Officials expect that USAID&#8217;s operations will all have been transferred, or otherwise shut down, over to the State Department by September 2, 2025.
Currently, USAID has 898 active and ongoing programs that total an estimated cost of about $78 billion and an unobligated remaining value of $8.3 billion.
Since January 20, a total of 5,341 awards have been terminated, USAID says, representing a total estimated cost of $75.9 billion and unobligated savings of $27.7 billion.

USAID To Lay Off 4,600 Employees, Will Merge With State Department By Fall

State Department

An Obama-appointed judge who is blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to shut down the the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has donated thousands of dollars to Democrats, served as a leader in his local Democratic Party organization, and has a history of stonewalling President Donald Trump’s border security efforts.
U.S. District Court Judge Theodore David Chuang of Maryland ruled this week that the Trump administration’s attempt to shutdown USAID through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was unconstitutional, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-finds-doges-usaid-shutdown-likely-unconstitutional/">ordering</a> Elon Musk and DOGE officials to reinstate employee access to the email and payment systems.
That ruling came just after the Obama-appointed judge issued a different decision hindering the Trump administration&#8217;s ability to arrest and deport illegal aliens. Chuang <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-grants-injunction-barring-immigration-arrests-at-some-houses-of-worship/">granted a temporary injunction</a> last month preventing Department of Homeland Security agents from arresting illegal aliens at certain places of worship.
Chuang has a history of leftwing politics. The Obama-appointed judge donated over $4,700 to various Democrats, Federal Election Commission <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=theodore+chuang">data shows</a>. Chuang donated to a variety of candidates and organizations, including Obama for America, John Kerry for President, and the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee in Maryland.
Chuang even <a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Theodore-Chuang-Senate-Judiciary-Questionnaire-Final.pdf">served</a> as the vice president of the Montgomery County District 16 Democratic Club before becoming a federal judge, and was on the board of directors of the Coalition of Asian Pacific American Democrats of Maryland.
Chuang also impeded border security efforts during Trump’s first administration, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/15/520171478/trump-travel-ban-faces-court-hearings-by-challengers-today">blocking</a> the ban on travel from Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Syria, and Libya.
The Obama appointee ruled against the Trump administration again in 2020 when he <a href="https://www.lwvor.org/post/o-what-a-tangled-web-we-weave-the-fate-of-mifepristone-in-judge-kacsmaryk-s-court">issued an injunction</a> against the Food and Drug Administration’s rule that abortion drugs must be picked up in-person and could not be sent through the mail. A Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-leftist-networks-flood-red-states-with-risky-abortion-pills-with-no-consequences">investigation</a> revealed that leftwing organizations are now sending abortion pills in the mail to people without prescriptions, even when it runs afoul of state laws against abortions.
Chuang is just one of several leftwing judges who have recently worked to stonewall Trump&#8217;s agenda. Judge James Boasberg, who ruled against Trump&#8217;s use of the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport Venezuelan gang members, has repeatedly hindered the president&#8217;s immigration policies and spared one ex-FBI agent connected to the Russiagate hoax from prison. Boasberg&#8217;s wife is the founder of a Washington, D.C.-area abortion clinic and donated more than $11,000 to Democrats, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meet-the-obama-appointed-judge-trying-to-stop-trump-from-deporting-criminal-illegals">revealed.</a>
There&#8217;s also Judge Amir Ali, who recently ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze foreign aid. Ali not only donated to Democratic candidates for public office, but also worked for a far-left organization that sought to defund the police and advocated for prosecutors to drop charges against Black Lives Matter rioters, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-who-stonewalled-trumps-foreign-aid-freeze-has-a-long-history-of-liberal-activism">reported</a>.

Judge Theodore Chuang

Obama-Appointed Judge Trying To Stop The USAID Shutdown Donated Thousands To Dems

Court

deportation

Judge

Trump

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