Free Republic

WASHINGTON — President Trump is moving to cancel nearly $5 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid and peacekeeping spending in a rare “pocket rescission,” The Post has learned — making use of a legally debated maneuver that hasn’t been done in 48 years. Trump on Thursday night notified Congress of his request to cancel the funds, which had been tied up in a court case until earlier in the day. A pocket rescission is a request that’s presented to Congress so late in the fiscal year — which ends Sept. 30 — that it’s made regardless of whether Congress acts....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Wednesday lifted an injunction that required the U.S. State Department to continue making foreign aid payments, handing a victory to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Bangkok -- Search teams in Myanmar recovered more bodies from the ruins of buildings on Friday, a week after a massive earthquake killed more than 3,100 people, as the focus turns toward the urgent humanitarian needs in a country already devastated by a continuing civil war. United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, who is also the emergency relief coordinator, will visit the area on Friday in an effort to spur action following the March 28 quake. Ahead of the visit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to the international community to immediately step up funding for quake victims “to match the...

In May 2024, the Biden administration announced that it was providing $220 million in aid to Yemen which the United States had been at war with since the start of that year. Even while the US Navy was engaged in what the Associated Press would describe next month as the “most intense combat since World War II” with Yemen’s Houthi Jihadists, the U.S. Mission to Yemen boasted of having provided “nearly $5.9 billion” in aid beginning with the Obama administration, of being “the largest donor of humanitarian assistance” and urged that “other donors must join us in stepping up” to...

Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, refused to grant 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

The Economist has a fantastic article on aid. (The Economist doesn’t have bylines. Henry Curr tweeted the article (x’d it?) and credits Cerian Jones.) At half the dinners I go to, someone says, well, yes, a lot of the USAID money was mis-spent, but what about the poor starving children in Africa? If you are in that situation, this is the article for you.This article is about about the centerpiece of aid: “development” aid, designed to boost economic growth, not about the politicized “nonprofits” that USAID was supporting and their bloated staffs, funneling aid money to political advocacy and employment,...

The Heritage Foundation is proposing that the U.S. wind down military aid to Israel as part of a strategy to “re-orient its relationship” with the country over the next two decades, a notable stance for the prominent conservative think tank given the long and deep support for Israel among conservatives and Republicans. The Heritage report on moving the U.S.-Israel strategy, “From Special Relationship to Strategic Partnership,” was crafted by its defense experts and released on Wednesday. “Just as Israel once advanced from a financial assistance recipient to an economic partner of the United States, so, too, should it move from...

A day earlier, U.S. African Development Foundation workers had refused entry to Department of Government Efficiency workers and the State Department official in charge of foreign aid. Federal marshals on Thursday escorted officials from the Department of Government Efficiency into the U.S. African Development Foundation, a day after its employees refused entry to the Trump administration’s budget-slashing unit and Pete Marocco, the State Department official in charge of foreign aid. Once inside, security officials were directed to change the federal agency’s locks, according to a security official at the scene. Mr. Marocco was seen entering the building separately from DOGE...

The Supreme Court has denied the Trump administration’s request to block a lower court ruling that forces the State Department to pay out $2 billion in foreign assistance, despite concerns that the order was legally dubious and that much of the money would be unrecoverable.Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, dissented forcefully, warning that the ruling gives an unchecked district judge the power to compel massive taxpayer-funded payments with no higher court review.”I am stunned,” Alito wrote, calling the lower court’s actions a “lawless order” that disregarded sovereign immunity and basic judicial restraint.Additionally,...

The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s order requiring the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department to immediately pay approximately $2 billion owed to contractors for work already completed. The ruling comes after a temporary stay issued by Chief Justice John Roberts on Feb. 26, which paused a lower court’s mandate that compelled the government to disburse the funds by midnight that day. But in a 5-4 decision Wednesday, the justices denied the Trump administration’s request to vacate the lower court’s order, allowing the payments to proceed. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and...

Conflict of interest.. Out of the three federal judges who staged a judicial coup and demanded that the Trump administration do whatever they say, two, Judge Loren AliKhan, a Pakistani Muslim, and Judge Amir Hatem Mahdy Ali, an Egyptian Muslim, are Muslims. All three are highly unqualified and extremist Biden nominees who do not belong on the bench. Judge Amir Ali’s order that Trump must disburse foreign aid is particularly egregious since Ali’s ancestral Egypt remains a major beneficiary of that aid. USAID has funneled $30 billion to Egypt since 1978. Today US aid to Egypt last year was $1.5...

As Russian tanks rumble through Georgia, and Western pundits talk of the "new Cold War," one trope keeps reappearing in their discourse. Russia's newly aggressive stance, we are told, is partly our fault: After the fall of Communism, the West went out of its way to humiliate and trample Russia instead of treating it as a partner--and now, an oil-powered Russia is striking back. "Russia's litany of indignities dates to the early 1990s when the Soviet empire collapsed," Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former Barack Obama adviser, wrote in Time. "A bipolar universe gave...

Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, has rejected accusations from Washington that he was supporting a rebel leader and accused war criminal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by challenging a senior US official to send a drone to kill the wanted man. ... "I told him: 'Assistant secretary of state, you support [the UN peacekeeping force] in the Congo. Such a big force, so much money. Have you failed to use that force to arrest whoever you want to arrest in Congo? Now you are turning to me, you are turning to Rwanda?'" he said. "I said that, since you...

The International Organization for Migration, or IOM, sent out pink slips — notice of dismissal from employment — to 3,000 employees working on a United States resettlement program, including hundreds based at home in the latest blow to an aid and development community reeling from the Trump administration’s foreign aid funding freeze.

A federal judge on Thursday evening temporarily blocked President Trump from cancelling foreign aid contracts. President Trump last month froze US foreign aid for 90 days. .... Snip.... US District Judge for the District Court of Columbia, Amir Ali, a Biden appointee, said Trump’s order halting foreign funding has caused enormous harm. “At least to date, Defendants have not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shockwave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country, was a rational precursor to reviewing...

In just a few hours, 17,000 South Africans have contacted the South African Chamber of Commerce USA after President Trump signed an Executive Order granting Afrikaners refugee status. Many Afrikaners are calling for help to protect their 400-year-old community in South Africa. Elon Musk called to declare “Kill the Boer” singer Julius Malema “an international criminal.” ... Several tribal regions within South Africa have achieved independence, such as the Kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland. Under the Apartheid regime, Homeland areas such as Ciskei, Transkei, KwaZulu, Bophuthatswana, Venda and others functioned as autonomous regions with generous self-rule. With the failure of...

More than $1.3 billion in taxpayer funds from the Biden administration ended up helping groups that sponsored or committed terrorism. Federal watchdog reports and other documents show former President Joe Biden’s aid programs funneled the money toward a network of terrorism in the Muslim world — largely by reversing Trump-era policies. National security experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation the new Trump administration must take the trend more seriously. “We should not be putting money into any country or areas where a terrorist group remains in control,” Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said....

The website for the U.S. Agency for International Development appeared to be offline on Saturday, as the Trump administration moves to put the agency under State Department control. A message stating that the “server IP address could not be found” appeared when attempts were made to access the website. Two sources familiar with the discussions said on Friday that the Trump administration is moving to

“It was a surprise to us,” said Roshan Pokhrel, Nepal’s secretary of the Ministry of Health and Population. “We really did not expect all the programs to stop.” He told DW that the phone call had come early this week, announcing an end to all US-funded programs in Nepal. “The programs in nutrition and in maternal health will certainly be affected. It’s definitely a worrying sign to us,” Pokhrel said. US President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending US development aid on his very first day in office. Funds have been frozen for 90 days while his administration reviews...

KYIV — For nearly three years, distressed Ukrainian troops, veterans and their families — including some soldiers on the brink of suicide — have relied on a U.S.-funded hotline to connect with trained psychological, legal and medical experts. But after President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week suspending almost all U.S. foreign aid programs for 90 days, the... “The support line is temporarily unavailable,” a recorded voice now tells callers. “The Veteran Hub thanks you for your trust. The consultants will return to work as soon as it becomes possible.” The Trump administration’s sudden move to suspend foreign...