President Joe Biden’s administration is “grossly misusing foreign aid,” says Max Primorac, director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

“The Biden administration has subordinated U.S. foreign policy to its radical domestic social agenda and [is] grossly misusing foreign aid as a taxpayer-funded vehicle to promote abortion, gender ideology, and climate fanaticism that is catapulting Africa towards deeper and deeper poverty,” Primorac told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) 

“The administration is making thinly veiled threats to [sub-Saharan] Africa about continued critical program support. In effect, they are tying future lifesaving aid to forcing Africans to dispense with their traditional family values. Such blackmail should have no place in our foreign assistance programs,” said Primorac, who previously held a number of high-ranking posts at the U.S. Agency for International Development, adding:

This is a serious threat to our national security. Africans and others in the developing world have told us that they consider aid linkage to Western radical ideologies as a form of cultural imperialism that will push Africa into the arms of communist China. 

Primorac’s remarks were in response to a Wednesday event hosted by the Atlantic Council featuring Samantha Power, the administrator for USAID, an agency that “leads international development and humanitarian efforts to save lives, reduce poverty, strengthen democratic governance and help people progress beyond assistance.”

The discussion, moderated by Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC and The Washington Post, was “about the United States’ efforts to advance global LGBTQI+ human rights and USAID’s commitment to global inclusion,” according to the Atlantic Council’s website. 

Capehart, who is gay, referenced a memorandum Biden issued in the first month of his administration “that directed various parts of the U.S. government responsible for foreign policies, such as USAID, to prioritize efforts to advance LGBTQ+ rights around the world,” and asked Power about the efforts and “the biggest challenges.”

“Well, first to say that USAID is one of 15 agencies that is being responsive to President Biden’s direction to promote and protect and respect the human rights of LGBTQI+ people around the world,” said Power, who has served as administrator since May 2021. “And I’d say I feel very fortunate every day, no matter what issue I’m working on, to be at USAID because we have this toolkit.”

“We have programming in public health, on maternal and child health. Of course, we have PEPFAR, where we work with the State Department and [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], which has, of course, made a major difference saving 25 million lives and 5.5 million babies, is the estimate for what the good that it has done over time, and that’s had a particular effect on LGBTQI+ communities around the world,” said Power, who is also a National Security Council member and served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the first term of the Obama administration. 

PEPFAR refers to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which is “the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history, enabled by strong bipartisan support across [10] U.S. congresses and four presidential administrations, and through the American people’s generosity,” according to the State Department’s website.

Power also noted that Jay Gilliam serves as “lead LGBTQI+ coordinator at USAID,” and that the agency has “tripled the size of our staff.”

“This fiscal year, we’ve have a dedicated pool of resources of around $16 million, which does everything from spot emergency assistance to people who need legal defense because they’re being rounded up, in some cases or evicted,” Power said, “to working really closely with the State Department to help identify people who would be eligible for asylum or to become refugees because of their vulnerability, because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Victoria Coates, senior research fellow in international affairs and national security at The Heritage Foundation, criticized the Biden administration’s focus on a “radical LGBTQI+ agenda” in its international development strategy.

“Administrator Power’s definition of ‘inclusive development’ appears to be a self-appointed mandate to subvert all elements of USAID to the Biden administration’s radical LGBTQI+ agenda—the acronym of which has become so tortuously complex that Power herself couldn’t say it properly in this interview,” Coates told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement. 

“USAID’s stated charge is to engage in work that ‘advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience.’  The Administrator would do better to keep this directive in mind when deploying the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars over which she has custody,” Coates added. 

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