The Left didn’t just spend the past few decades taking over such cultural institutions as universities, museums, and centers for the performing arts, in its drive to indoctrinate Americans. It also cleverly got United States taxpayers to help fund this takeover.
President Donald Trump is now not just reclaiming lost cultural ground; he is also breaking the nexus between Big Left and Our Money. One example of this connection is how the U.S. Agency for International Development teamed up with foundations created by the far-left financier George Soros to promote radical policies overseas.
The first batch, reclaiming lost cultural ground, includes Mr. Trump’s cultural battles with elite universities, the Smithsonian, and the Kennedy Center. The second, on the nexus, includes this week’s drive to defund public broadcasting and eliminate USAID.
I’m referring to the $9 billion rescission package winding its way through both houses of Congress. It codifies the Department of Government Efficiency gutting USAID, claws back $7.9 billion that Congress had appropriated for it, and takes back $1.1 billion earmarked for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS.
Though clawing back the money Congress intended for USAID is essential, the agency has probably been overhauled past a point where a future administration could reconstruct it. Not so with the CPB; this rescission package would be the first to wound public broadcasters.
That is what makes the public broadcasting part of this bill so important. The House looks as though it is about to pass the Senate version of the bill, which will then head to Trump’s desk.
But it’s important for people to understand why USAID was egregious, and why it had to be pared down. The nexus between Big Left and Our Money is so damaging that the Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing this Tuesday to air out what took place in the past, especially under Presidents Obama and Biden, and to ponder what to do going forward.
The hearing was appropriately titled “How Leftist Nonprofit Networks Exploit Federal Tax Dollars to Advance a Radical Agenda,” and I had the honor of being one of its witnesses. As I explained in my testimony, this nexus can hurt the U.S. in several ways.
One is by promoting policies here that are inimical to human flourishing, such as the decriminalization of drugs, prostitution, and euthanasia. Another is by doing the same overseas, and alienating conservative publics that are actually pro-American.
As I explained in my testimony, “The Left has for quite a few years now cleverly built this machine to finance itself with money that the taxman extorts from hardworking Americans, and conservatives have stood by as patsies, allowing themselves to be rolled.”
Using the money of all Americans, this Left has not only captured the cultural heights — that is, the institutions that create meaning — it has been able to invent new terms and breathe life into old ones. This makes resistance well-nigh impossible.
Thus, we have the terms used by NPR, the Smithsonian, and USAID: “sustainability,” “reproductive rights,” “sex workers,” “legal regulation of drugs,” “gender-affirming care,” “compassionate care,” and “restorative justice,” rather than economy-crushing climate extremism, baby killing, prostitution, government-aided drug addiction, the grotesque mutilation of minors, killing grandma once she’s become a burden, and soft-on-crime policies.
But as I said, “It doesn’t matter what you call any of these activities; however, they all undermine social structures, make cities into Dantesque hell holes, and leave behind human debris, men and women who are empty husks rather than beings with purpose and hope.”
As for turning off conservatives overseas who find transgenderism, abortion, euthanasia, and legal prostitution execrable ideas and practices, I gave the examples of Macedonia, Hungary, and Guatemala, where, under the Biden administration, USAID teamed up with foundations, including Soros’s, to promote some of this garbage. As I said in an answer to Rep. Brandon Gill’s (R-TX) question, this unconscionably played into the hands of adversaries like Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
However, this nexus can also hurt individual Americans, and I gave my own example.
In March 2017, I wrote a Heritage Foundation paper calling for Congress and the State Department to investigate the Soros-USAID node. Prophetically, as it turned out, I called for congressional hearings.
No hearings were held for eight years, but two and a half months after my report, a shadowy entity with the self-regarding name of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, published a sinister report that smeared both Heritage and me. When I looked into it, I realized it was a Soros publication that also received USAID support.
I can defend myself, and I did so by writing my own response. The OCCRP had to amend its report. But why would our own tax dollars be used to harass an American for daring to question Soros and USAID?
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This week’s hearing was a good place to air out all these issues. It had its antagonistic moments. The subcommittee’s ranking member is Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and for the committee, it’s Jamie Raskin (D-MD). Hank Johnson (D-GA) is also a member of the subcommittee. All three were in attendance, defending USAID and Soros.
They spoke of “soft power,” but what USAID often practiced was the opposite. Alienating conservative Hungarians, Macedonians, and Guatemalans is “hardness that produces weakness.”
Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T. Arredondo senior fellow on E Pluribus Unum at the Heritage Foundation and the author of NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It. Heritage is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its board of trustees.