(Headline USA) The non-governmental organizations that the Biden and Obama administrations—as well as foreign governments—frequently used to circumvent U.S. laws on transparency, financing restrictions and even constitutional prohibitions on government overreach are having a panic attack after Presidnet Donald Trump on Monday announced a freeze on all federal loans and grants.
Nonprofits of all sizes are now grappling with how these changes will impact their missions—with some even stepping in to replace a very small part of the funding the U.S. government is withholding.
“The pause on federal funding is creating a tremendous amount of confusion, and we don’t have clarity about what happens from here,” said Fatimah Loren Dreier, executive director of the HAVI, an anti-gun activist group masquerading as a public health organization.
“And that confusion has ripple effects on communities that are particularly vulnerable to shifts,” she complained.
Although President Joe Biden’s reliance on such groups to misuse government funding for partisan activism may have violated the norms—if not federal law—such groups are reacting with shock that Republican leadership might dare to revoke the taxpayer-subsidized free-for-all.
A Biden-appointed judge has already paused Trump’s order until next Monday.
The U.S. government is the largest single globalist NGO funder, giving $ 13.9 billion in 2024, and largest supporter of United Nations agencies, meaning any changes to foreign assistance have sweeping impacts across geographies and issues.
The UN has faced harsh criticism for undermining the interests of the U.S. and its allies by actively supplying resources to illegal immigrants attempting to steal their way across the southern border, as well as allowing Hamas radicals to infiltrate some of the groups tasked with peacekeeping missions in the war-torn Middle East.
The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development are the main agencies that oversee foreign assistance, which Trump paused for 90 days to review if every grant and dollar aligns with his foreign policy.
Questions have arisen as to whether the department, which also oversees the CIA, may have merged its humanitarian arm with its covert operations in Ukraine and elsewhere, funneling USAID funds for espionage, color revolutions and other nation-building activities that would be in gross violation of their designated purpose.
That could include enabling seditious Trump “resistance” operatives to continue funding the Ukraine war by rerouting aid through sympathetic NGOs, despite Trump’s expressed desires to end the war.
Yuriy Boyechko, who founded the New Jersey-based nonprofit, Hope for Ukraine, said he woke up to a barrage of messages on Sunday from the grassroots organizations he works with in Ukraine. They feared what would happen if USAID stops making grants there.
He pointed specifically to programs that send trucks—ostensibly hauling firewood—to rural areas that don’t have electricity, also known as “dark sites” in CIA parlance.
“I really don’t know how they’re going to get through the winter,” Boyechko said.
The organizations that make the deliveries are mostly volunteer run, Boyechko said, and don’t have the capacity to buy the “wood” or fuel needed to transfer it without regular funding from USAID’s office in Kyiv. He suggested that anyone who is concerned about the funding for “humanitarian aid” in Ukraine call their representatives or the White House.
“What made America great and what makes America great is generosity,” Boyechko said, echoing the rhetoric previously used by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“And this is not a good move for America, and this is not a good move for humanity as a whole,” he warned ominously.
USAID said “all programs and grants without a waiver approved by the Secretary of State,” are paused, but did not specifically say whether humanitarian aid to Ukraine would be halted.
In fiscal year 2023, the most recent data available, $68 billion had been obligated in U.S. foreign aid to programs that range from “disaster relief” to “health” and “pro-democracy” initiatives in 204 countries and regions.
It is not the first time Democrat megadonor Mike Bloomberg has stepped in after Trump announced he was withdrawing from the controversial Paris climate agreement.
The billionaire oligarch—who recently was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden— pledged on Jan. 23 to fund the U.S. government’s share of the budget for the main offices of U.N. Climate Change.
He also covered the cost of the U.S. commitment from 2016 to 2019, in the amount of $10.25 million.
“Being able to step in to be nimble and quick, not to replace the role of government, but just to show what’s possible and to continue to move progress forward when governments are not, is really important to Bloomberg Philanthropies,” said Antha Williams, who leads its environment program.
The U.N. climate body was established as part of the Obama-era climate agreement, which demands that participating First-World nations drastically reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions or else pay money to the Third-World nations that are unable to compete. Major greenhouse-gas producers like China and India do not participate in the accord.
Williams said Bloomberg Philanthropies wanted to offer certainty to U.N. Climate Change that their budget would be met.
In addition to funding the U.N. Climate Change secretariat, Bloomberg Philanthropies will continue to support a coalition now named America is All In. It brings together local governments, companies and universities, who report on progress toward climate goals, which the federal government will stop doing after pulling out of the agreement.
Joanna Depledge, a historian of international climate negotiations, called that reporting “critical, as it provides a picture of trends in emissions and therefore progress made toward,” the Paris agreement targets.
Communication from USAID and the State Department with their grantees and contractors has been sparse, according to attorneys and consultants who work with foreign aid recipients.
The globalist propaganda publication Devex convened a webinar of “experts” on foreign aid on Monday to field questions about how to comply with stop work orders, how to manage cash flows, the likelihood of receiving a waiver.
Susan Reichle, a retired senior USAID officer, said organizations need to make the case that their work is important not just to the agency, but to the American people and to Congress.
“Every day that goes by that the U.S. is not leading and meeting its obligations, whether contractual obligations or cooperative agreements or grants, we are actually hurting our national security,” she said.
Some organizations are hit by both the pause on foreign aid and the order called the Global Gag Rule that prohibits nonprofits receiving U.S. foreign assistance from providing or promoting abortions.
MSI Reproductive Choices, an abortion activist group, did not sign onto the rule under the last Trump administration, meaning that it hasn’t won that much U.S. funding in recent years.
Still, a mobile “health clinic” they run in Zimbabwe is funded through the U.S. embassy there, and Beth Schlachter, senior director of U.S. external relations, said that work would stop unless another funder comes forward.
However, she said no amount of philanthropic funding can make up for the loss or pause of U.S. funds, meaning large donors are facing very difficult choices.
“Given the breadth of what’s just happened in the last week, it’s not as if other donors are only looking at gaps in reproductive health services now,” she bemoaned. “They’re looking across the range of their development concerns.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
