House DOGE Panel to Examine How Foreign Aid Spreads ‘Woke Agenda’

The House Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., will convene Wednesday to explore one question: “How Foreign Aid Undermined U.S. Interests Around the World.”

Coming amid President Donald Trump’s drastic downsizing of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the hearing will hear from three witnesses who will make the case that foreign aid organizations have weakened the United States.

Among the witnesses is Max Primorac, a Heritage Foundation research fellow who formerly served as USAID’s chief operating officer.

“I’m drawing from 35 years of experience in the sector, part of it at USAID, part of it at the State Department, part of it as [a nongovernmental organization], and part of it as a USAID contractor,” Primorac told The Daily Signal.

“What I will do is show how the woke agenda harmed the American brand name. It made us synonymous with values that are rejected by most of the world,” he said, adding:

It also helped Communist China, because we were promoting in the developing world the climate ideology that pushed countries to become dependent on Communist China for their energy needs. … So, in contrast to what many in the media are saying, foreign aid was not a counter-China tool.

Also testifying Wednesday will be The Daily Signal’s own Tyler O’Neil, who recently published “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” a new book tracing the connections between left-wing NGOs and the agenda of the Biden administration.

O’Neil says he’ll be addressing the issue during the hearing.

“What I’ll be focused on at the hearing is how this foreign funding dovetails with the Left’s dark money network here in the United States and why those connections should be very concerning,” he said. 

“The very same activist groups that infiltrated and advised the federal government under President [Joe] Biden, with support from the Left’s dark money network, have ties to USAID, and former USAID staff have gone to work at these organizations. In some cases, there’s also a funding-stream connection.”

The hearing will also feature Gregg Roman, the executive director of Middle East Forum, a think tank, which, according to its website, “promotes American interests in the Middle East.” 

Roman says he will highlight his organization’s research of how American foreign aid organizations have funneled money to Islamist groups abroad.

“We’ve compiled a substantial amount of information about public funding, governmental funding, and nonprofit involvement in Islamist organizations,” Roman told The Daily Signal. 

“The example that I’m going to speak about tomorrow is with World Vision, where in 2014 a group which has received over $2 billion in funding from USAID facilitated a [$125,000] sub-grant to an organization called Islamic Relief Agency in Sudan. Islamic Relief Agency is a designated al-Qaeda affiliate.”