Mario Nawfal on X - "🚨EXCLUSIVE - BOUGHT AND PAID FOR: HOW $472 MILLION BUILT A GLOBAL LEFT-WING MEDIA MACHINE
In February 2025, WikiLeaks pulled back the curtain on a government-funded media empire that’s been quietly shaping what billions of people read, watch, and believe. At the center of it all? A group you’ve probably never heard of: Internews Network. Funded mostly by USAID, Internews presents itself as a friendly nonprofit supporting “independent journalism.” But behind that noble-sounding mission lies a global operation that critics say is more about managing narratives than reporting facts. The numbers are jaw-dropping. Nearly $473 million—yes, that’s nearly half a billion—has flowed to Internews from USAID and the U.S. State Department over the past 2 decades. Add in millions more from billionaire-backed organizations like George Soros’s Open Society, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and you’ve got a media Frankenstein stitched together with government cash and private influence. In 2023 alone, Internews claims to have worked with 4,291 media outlets, produced 4,799 hours of programming, and trained over 9,000 journalists. It also says it reached an audience of 778 million people worldwide. That’s more than double the population of the United States. But here’s where things get murky. Internews isn’t just giving media groups equipment and microphones. It’s tying grants to ideological conditions. In Hungary, for example, officials accused Internews of funding anti-government media under the guise of “media development.” If you didn’t toe the line, you didn’t get the money. In Ukraine, it funded 9 out of 10 major media outlets—almost all promoting pro-NATO, pro-conflict content during wartime. And it’s not just about news. In Kosovo, just months before major protests broke out in Serbia, Internews offered grants to reporters to write in Serbian. The pitch? Promote “positive” stories about Albanian-Serb relations. Sounds harmless—until you realize this was a foreign-funded push to shape how people talk about sensitive ethnic conflicts. Then there’s Internews’ Earth Journalism Network, which recently launched a $100,000 media grant focused on climate reporting in Asia. Sounds great—except that the fine print gives Internews and its donors the rights to edit and publish all the content. So yes, they’re funding journalism—but they’re also controlling the output. Even advertising isn’t off limits. Through its “Ads for News” program, Internews partners with GroupM, the world’s biggest media buyer, to funnel ad dollars to “trusted” outlets. If you’re not on the list, you get nothing. It’s a digital loyalty program—except instead of points, you get credibility and cash. Internews is led by Jeanne Bourgault, a former U.S. government official who made $451,000 last year. She previously worked on post-Soviet “transition programs” and oversaw a $250 million budget at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. In 2023, she launched a $10 million media fund at the Clinton Global Initiative—a project backed by Hillary Clinton. The Internews board includes big Democratic donors and political insiders, and WikiLeaks says at least one of its six subsidiaries is based in the Cayman Islands, a notorious offshore haven. Meanwhile, its headquarters in California? Reportedly an abandoned building still listed in official filings. Let that sink in: a half-billion-dollar media empire, pushing narratives in dozens of countries, funded by your tax dollars—and run from a ghost office. Internews says it’s here to “support press freedom.” But as one media analyst put it, “It’s not about giving journalists a voice—it’s about choosing which voices get heard.” So the next time you read a “fact-check” or see a story calling something “disinformation,” remember: it might just be brought to you by the same people who paid $473 million to decide what the world thinks is true.
Sources: Anadolu Agency, Hungary Gov, Ukrayinska Pravda, KoSSev, Earth Journalism Network, TRT World, Concordia, Shore News Network"
Insurrection Barbie on X - "Cutting USAID funding isn’t going to kill 300,000 kids. Only 8% of USAID money even makes it to the right destination. These people will say literally anything to continue to fund their CIA black ops and lefty NGOS."
Ann Coulter on X - "Amazing sentence snuck into a NYT article on USAID, then ignored: <<Much of the more than $35 billion [USAID] managed last year went to Washington-based contractors, not directly to communities in need overseas.>> So much for all those Africans who are allegedly going to die without USAID $$."
Ted Cruz on X - "The full story of USAID funding Hamas is vast, and much of it was done in secret. Before and after October 7, USAID flowed uncountable hundreds of millions of dollars toward Hamas that enabled it to launch the attack and keep battling Israel afterwards. They lied about the nature of that aid in public databases, refused to disclose what groups were getting the money, and gave tens of millions in American cash to be distributed without American supervision. They internally admitted the aid would benefit Hamas, and even exempted themselves from anti-terrorism laws, but in public issued denials. For all four years of the Biden administration, I prevented them from confirming a Middle East administrator because they wouldn’t acknowledge what they were doing, because continuing their secret pro-Hamas programs was more important to them."
At USAID, Funding for Terror-Tied Groups and Internal Hostility Toward Israel Goes Back Years - "As the Trump administration works to shutter the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), current and former U.S. officials who worked closely with the embattled aid group say they watched for years as it funneled millions of dollars to anti-Israel advocacy groups and entities linked to terrorism. That funding caused internal friction across multiple administrations... USAID fought to conceal how taxpayer funds were spent. And when it came to Israel, officials recalled battling USAID over funding for groups that worked to undermine the Jewish state or maintained ties to terror organizations."For those who believe in a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, elements of USAID have been problematic for years," said one former State Department official who worked with USAID during the Biden administration. "There was even a lack of embarrassment among some USAID staffers about being associated with terrorist organizations."Some of the terror-tied funding initiatives are publicly known. In November 2022, for instance, USAID awarded $100,000 to a Palestinian activist group whose leaders hailed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group. Just six days before Hamas's Oct. 7 assault on Israel, USAID handed $900,000 "to a terror charity in Gaza involved with the son of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh."USAID's hostilities toward the Jewish state, however, ran deeper than the agency's grantmaking.Under Samantha Power, former president Joe Biden's pick to run USAID, agency officials fought pro-Israel policymaking at the State Department, often urging their colleagues at Foggy Bottom to pare down statements that praised the Jewish state, former officials said. In 2021, during a period of conflict with Hamas, Power herself refused to meet with Israel's ambassador unless Israel reached a ceasefire with the Iran-backed terror group. The decision put Power at odds with the White House National Security Council, which had signed off on the meeting, emails obtained by the Free Beacon show. Years later, in September, Power's USAID accused Israel of deliberately blocking Gazan aid deliveries, which Hamas is known to steal for its own use and for black market sales that fund its terror activities. USAID staffers went as far as to urge the Biden State Department to end military aid to Israel. Former secretary of state Antony Blinken rejected the request. "They weren't even in line with some of the Biden administration's policies," the State Department official who worked under Biden and Blinken told the Free Beacon. "It's more than just problematic grants to anti-Israel organizations. It's also their role in the internal approval processes and statements within the administration. There's an entire bureaucratic process they're a part of. They carry out their obstructionist ideology on that front as well." The rogue nature of USAID under Power has motivated the Trump administration's push to dismantle the agency. During his recent trip to El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described a longstanding "frustration" with the agency, which he called "completely unresponsive." The "level of insubordination," Rubio said, "makes it impossible to conduct a sort of mature and serious review that I think foreign aid writ large should have." Federal investigations lend credence to that assessment. A January memo from inspector general Paul Martin, for example, noted that the agency "does not maintain a comprehensive internal database of subawardees." In other words, the foreign entities that work with a primary grantee on a USAID project often go unreported, impeding the ability of agency investigators to vet "fraud allegations," according to the memo. Such allegations often include the diversion of taxpayer-funded aid to terrorist organizations. In a November report, for example, Martin "identified deliberate interference and efforts to divert humanitarian assistance" by foreign terrorist organizations, including "systemic coercion of aid workers by FTOs" and "FTO influence over beneficiary selection." Those diversion efforts are particularly pronounced in Hamas-controlled Gaza. A February report from the Middle East Forum think tank found that USAID had awarded "millions of federal dollars" to "organizations directly in Gaza controlled by Hamas." In one Biden-era case, USAID funded an "educational and community center in Gaza" controlled by a local group called the Unlimited Friends Association. The association openly collaborated with Hamas, inviting the terror group's officials to its office and boasting of U.S.-funded projects in Hamas-controlled newspapers. In 2021, its director called for Jerusalem to be cleansed "from the impurity of the Jews." A separate report, released in January by Israeli research organization NGO Monitor, outlined millions in USAID funding for two nonprofits—Mercy Corps and American Near East Refugee Aid—that "have closely coordinated with a Gaza-based ministry, run by a senior Hamas official identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as previously responsible for part of Hamas’ smuggling operation." When it resumed funding for the Palestinians in 2021, the Biden State Department issued an internal warning that there was a "high risk" Hamas would steal U.S. aid. But information about terror-tied grant recipients in Gaza and elsewhere came mostly from watchdog groups. When members of Congress pressed USAID on those grants, they were often obstructed. In a letter sent to Rubio last week, Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) detailed USAID's "willful sabotage of congressional oversight." The agency, she wrote, falsely claimed that certain grants were classified in a "desperate attempt to limit congressional oversight of public information." Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) described similar interactions with USAID staffers. In some cases, he told the Free Beacon, USAID "refused to disclose what groups were getting money and gave tens of millions in American cash to be distributed without American supervision... USAID does fund essential work providing medicine and other lifesaving aid. Rubio has made similar statements, expressing his desire to continue funding programs "providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives and is immediate and urgent." Over time, however, "more and more money flowed to groups and organizations whose work is contrary to the interests of the United States," one official who has worked closely with USAID across multiple administrations told the Free Beacon. "How bad it got is finally coming to light and there is finally transparency.""
When left wingers claim the most vulnerable people in the world are hurt by a USAID audit...
scott budman on X - "With the all the focus on USAID right now, here’s something: Christian Holmes, father of Elizabeth Holmes (seen here during her trial), worked at USAID from 2010 - 2017, after Enron."
Meme - Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren: "A federal court just blocked Elon Musk from interfering with the federal government's payments system. There is power in fighting back. We won't let up until this block is permanent."
Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren: "Strong oversight is only a threat to those who have something to hide. The American people deserve to know their government is working for them during this pandemic, not for the President or his corporate pals' financial interests. We will hold this administration accountable."
Marco Rubio on X - "After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID. The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States. In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department. Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform."
The Grayzone on X - "EXPOSED: USAID funded Ukraine's Molfar, which smeared VP JD Vance as a "foreign propagandist," and called for his prosecution for unstated "crimes" Molfar has also doxxed The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal and targeted members of Congress By @wyattreed13"
Mike Benz on X - "The Ukranian disinfo org doxxing US journalists & calling for firings, sanctions & criminal prosecutions of US Trumpworld officials received 42% of its start-up capital from: The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)."
Tablesalt 🇨🇦 on X - "BREAKING The government of Canada announces $272 million to Bangladesh to fill in USAID gap, for:
-Intersectional Democratic Spaces in Bangladesh
-Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Education
-Community Resilience through Locally-led Inclusive Adaptation"
David Jacobs on X - "WE DON'T HAVE $272,000,000!!! WE'RE BROKE!!!"
Brian Blyther on X - "As your elderly mom sits in an ER hallway for hours, waiting for the care her taxes promised her, remember the Liberals think gender responsive education in Bangladesh is a far more pressing priority."
John LeFevre on X - "2016 wasn't supposed to happen. (fluke) 2020 was rigged by the intel agencies, big tech, and media, with ballot harvesting from Arabella and ActBlue supported orgs with laundered money. 2024 wasn't supposed to happen. (Butler) Now that the entire Democrat cheatbook is crumbling - USAID and ActBlue being dismantled, X making corporate media irrelevant - there's a good chance we will see more short-term chaos."
Wall Street Mav on X - "We are taxed. Taxes go to USAID. Leftists create a NGO. NGO is funded by USAID. Leftists in NGO do 0 real work. NGO pays Leftists huge salaries. Leftists donate salaries from NGO to Dems. It's why Dems are freaking over Trump & Elon killing USAID.
Simple!"
Update NEWS on X - "🚨🇮🇪🇺🇸BREAKING NEWS: The far-left NGO 'Concern Worldwide' states that due to USAID cuts, they will be prevented from helping migrants from Third World countries settle in Ireland."
I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 on X - "There will be protests in Washington for 3 days in a row starting today, and protesters are being paid $40 per hour. Ask yourself, who is willing to spend over $32,000 in a few days and who is benefiting from these left-wing protests?"
Alice Smith on X - "International groups that hate the US are now suddenly annoyed at the US for ceasing to fund their political hobbies."
Cynical Publius on X - "All those years of paying taxes I thought I was only funding national defense, federal law enforcement, some gorgeous national parks and providing assistance to those who cannot help themselves. I did not understand until 2025 that I was also actually paying for Washington DC elites to fund the exorbitant salaries of their NGO cronies in pursuit of off-the-books neo-Marxist nihilistic policies that Americans would never have voted for if given the chance. 😡😡😡 It's a good thing I'm not a Democrat as if I were I would probably be burning down some NGO headquarters."
Wikipedia co-founder calls on Elon Musk to investigate government influence over online encyclopedia - "Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is calling on Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to look into whether government actors have infiltrated the online encyclopedia that he helped start over two decades ago... Sanger, who left the organization in 2002, has been a heavy critic of Wikipedia since about 2005, when he says the website began to drift into left-wing bias... Sanger says the website has long abandoned its neutrality policy, which he helped develop at its beginning."
Insurrection Barbie on X - "The judge who ruled that disbanding USAID was unconstitutional wrote in the order that USAID was created by Congress. It was not. It was created by executive order by JFK."
Sad: With USAID Shut Down, This Ecuadorian Child May Never Know What Gender He Is | Babylon Bee
Wall Street Apes on X - "Barack Obama was using USAID to pretend to send money to a country for “aid” and instead laundering it to the Cayman Islands He would then use that money to fund and train “Rent-a-Riots” for protests to overthrow governments Sound familiar? Mike Benz on Joe Rogan: “A scandal during the Obama USAID era. We were running a number of rogue USAID operations in Cuba at the time. — I'm simply showing the American people where your tax dollars are going and how these things are structured in order to systematically fool you and to fool Congress and to fool the White House:
— USAID pumped $1.2 billion in, and we sponsored these activist groups and these civil society organizations to learn how to use Facebook, learn how to use Twitter, lose, learn how to use hashtags, learn how to coordinate street protests so that everyone knows where to go, what street to show up on, what kind of slogans to know, to use in order to create the pro-democracy predicate for it.”
He talks about how Obama funded a Twitter clone that would be used to push propaganda in Cuba to inspire these protests and overthrow the government (Mike Benz explains how Barack Obama overthrew many governments) “So what they did is they took the exact same thing as Twitter, same user interface, same like, and retweet button zunzunio is, is the Cuban slang word for hummingbird. So just, it means it's it's bird, it was the Twitter bird, the whole thing. But the whole trick about it was you have to make it look like it's coming from the Cubans if you're going to do this operation
— We can get into the deeper layers of this, but contractors were funded by USAID The data would then be used for micro targeting efforts towards anti and pro government users. In Cuba, the developers aim to, at first used non-controversial content such as sports and music and hurricane updates — What was the plan the whole time? Once they built up enough subscribers, they would begin to introduce political messages through social bots and encourage dissent in this, in this astroturfing — the whole point is, once they hit a critical mass, they would create ‘Rent-a-Riots” “You're using Cayman Islands bank accounts. You're saying it's, you're earmarking it for Pakistani aid.” But the money was never sent to Pakistan, it was sent to the Cayman Islands to fund this whole operation
All this and much more is broken down extremely well in this video. This is INSANE"
Elon Musk told millions of people that 8 and 11 year old children were receiving business loans from Social Security. He had his DOGE employees cut off the money. Those weren't loans. They were Social Security payments to children who didn't have mothers or fathers because their parents died. Those are survivor benefits. He stole money from f*cking orphans!!! - "Elon Musk told millions of people that 8 and 11 year old children were receiving business loans from Social Security.He had his DOGE employees cut off the money.Those weren't loans. They were Social Security payments to children who didn't have mothers or fathers because their parents died. Those are survivor benefits.He stole money from f*cking orphans!!!
What we know about claims DOGE found $312M in business loans to children | Snopes.com - "On March 12, an SBA spokesperson said via email, "According to our preliminary analysis, SBA can confirm that over 5,500 loans, totaling about $312M, were distributed to businesses whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the disbursement." The agency also said it planned to continue collaborating with DOGE to examine the matter."
When even Snopes says you're talking nonsense. But left wingers get "informed" through memes which make stuff up, so they don't care
Sky News Australia on X - "Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been urged to call an "emergency meeting" after the Trump administration cut grants to seven Australian universities."
Peter St Onge, Ph.D. on X - ""Emergency meeting" as DOGE cuts defund *Australian* universities. Is anything on the left not on the US taxpayer dime?"
Judge denies Democrat-led effort to block DOGE access, citing lack of proven harm - "The Justice Department, for its part, argued on Monday that the DOGE personnel in question are "detailed" U.S. government employees who are entitled to access the government data under provisions of the Economy Act... Trump "does not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally dismantle the government," the attorneys general said."
When you live off grift, of course cutting it off is harmful
The attorneys general offer clear proof that Trump and Musk are fascists, because that's what fascists aim to do - dismantle government
DataRepublican (small r) on X - "🔥 UPDATE: 🔥 So, two days ago, the doxxing website DOGEQUEST, primed by an article by the @sltrib , slapped my husband’s distillery front and center in an attempt to intimidate and silence me. To be honest, it did get me down. And … congratulations, they might have achieved their goal. We might just have to shutter the whole operation… … because my husband just now notified me our entire inventory got nearly cleared out in 48 hours flat. His multi-year productions, all of which he personally oversaw and toiled over. All bought out in the blink of an eye. Terrorists lose this round. And I have a great feeling that this is going to similarly backfire against @Tesla ."
Nick Sortor on X - "🚨 HOLY CRAP! Elon Musk and DOGE just revealed a whopping **40%** of calls to Social Security are fraudsters. “Fraudsters call in and claim to be a retiree. And then they convince the operator to change where the money is flowing.” “As a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive MORE money — not less.” HOW HAS THIS GONE ON FOR SO MANY YEARS?"
Elon Musk's DOGE uncovers 'mind blowing' truth about illegal immigrants on Social Security - "Elon Musk's DOGE has uncovered Social Security Administration files indicating that millions of migrants were recently added to the benefits program. The DOGE leader showed a graph to a crowd in Green Bay, Wisconsin, highlighting that over two million non-citizens received new social security numbers in FY2024. The same display showed that, according to data from an internal Social Security Administration (SSA) database, over 4.8 million non-citizens have received new SSA numbers since FY2021... of the millions of non-citizens who were recently given Social Security numbers, many of them were set to receive 'max' benefits, which the DOGE worker said was the 'default' output under the previous administration. 'The defaults in the system, from Social Security to all of the benefit programs have been set to max inclusion, max pay for these people, and minimum collection,' Gracias said of the recent migrant enrollees. 'We found 1.3 million of them already on Medicaid, as an example,' he continued. 'We found people here registered to vote in this population.' 'We found some by sampling that actually did vote, and we have referred them to prosecution at the homeland security investigation service,' Gracias said. Federal laws outlaw non-citizens from receiving social security or Medicare. They also forbid non-citizens from voting in elections... Musk also skewered former President Joe Biden for enabling the jump in social security numbers. 'People sometimes think that under the Biden administration that he was simply asleep with the switch,' Musk said. 'They weren't asleep at the switch.' 'It was a massive, large scale program to import as many illegals as possible, ultimately, to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the American people and make it a permanent, deep, blue, one party state from which there would be no escape,' the 53-year-old entrepreneur shared."
