Comics, Drag, and Atheism: List of USAID’s Outrageous Grants

Condoms for terrorists, “queer-feminist” lectures, and DEI musicals are among the truly outrageous funding initiatives of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). It is long past time for this unconstitutional and useless agency to be shut down so that the American people‘s money will not continue to be wasted on absolutely preposterous, woke ideological projects.

I have already exposed the billions of dollars USAID lavished on Hamas-run Gaza, and Matt Margolis and Victoria Taft discussed the cash spent on DEI overseas and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan (including the bin Laden family). But the rabbit hole only goes deeper and wackier. USAID workers and defenders are as crazy as the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat but much less amusing.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast released a lengthy list on Feb. 4 of some of the most staggeringly stupid USAID grants. Some of them you have probably seen now in other articles or social media posts, but most of them require you to do a double take and read it several times before you can believe this is not a joke.

Read Also: USAID Lavished U.S. Cash on Hamas-Run Gaza

Of course, in the long run, it really is a joke. The joke was practiced by corrupt bureaucrats on the American people. No responsible government could possibly justify “$15 million for condoms to the Taliban through USAID” (especially since the Muslim Taliban bans condoms) or “$446,700 to promote the expansion of atheism in Nepal through the State Department.” But the Democrats and some Republicans and other career bureaucrats have spent so long acting outside the purview of the Constitution and without accountability, that they are flabbergasted that the gravy train just crashed and exploded.

Read some examples below from Mast’s list of other preposterous expenditures of our hard-earned cash, and keep in mind how many Americans were struggling to pay bills or suffering from natural disasters under the Biden-Harris administration:

• $1 million to boost French-speaking LGBTQ groups in West and Central Africa through the State Department.
• $14 million in cash vouchers for migrants at the southern border through the State Department.
• $20,600 for a drag show in Ecuador through the State Department.
• $47,020 for a transgender opera in Colombia through the State Department.
• $32,000 for an LGBTQ-centered comic book in Peru through the State Department.
• $55,750 for a climate change presentation warning about the impact of climate change in Argentina to be led by female and LGBT journalists through the State Department.
• $3,315,446 for “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean” through USAID.
• $7,071.58 for a BIPOC speaker series in Canada through the State Department.
• $80,000 for an LGBTQ community center in Bratislava, Slovakia through the State Department.
• $3.2 million to help Tunisian migrants readjust to life in Tunisia after deportation through the State Department.
• $16,500 to foster a “united and equal queer-feminist discourse in Albanian society” through the State Department.
• $10,000 to pressure Lithuanian corporations to promote “DEI values” through the State Department.

• $8,000 to promote DEI among LGBTQ groups in Cyprus through the State Department.
• $1.5 million to promote job opportunities for LGBTQ individuals in Serbia through USAID.
• $70,884 to create a U.S.-Irish musical to promote DEI in Ireland through the State Department.
• $39,652 to host seminars at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on gender identity and racial equality through the State Department.
• $2.5 million to build electric vehicle charging stations in Vietnam’s largest cities through USAID [this is especially silly since most Vietnamese are too dirt-poor for any car; I’ve seen that in person].
• $425,622 to help Indonesian coffee companies become more climate and gender friendly through USAID.

It’s all a total grift. No more than 12 cents of every USAID dollar actually reaches the intended target. It seems pretty clear that the agency is little more than a money-laundering operation and, as such, it’s praiseworthy and long overdue that the Trump administration aims to shut it down.