How many Americans had even heard of the U.S. Agency for International Development just a month ago? Now in the third week of the second Trump administration, the country is learning that USAID apparently has been running a racket that has propped up the Democratic political machine, which includes the usual big-media players, with tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars.

As political scandals go, this one could be the grubbiest of all.

Democrats are already reeling. Polls show they have become as popular as a pineapple on a pizza. This country would be well served if the party collapsed and the remaining reasonable and sane voters Democratic formed a new group.

The Democratic Party of the 21st century has revealed itself through its radical, nonsensical positions to be a party that no longer can be stomached by most of America. A recent Quinnipiac University survey found that 57% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of Democrats, “the highest percentage of voters having an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party since the Quinnipiac University Poll began asking this question.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times’ own polling shows that Americans feel that Democrats are out of touch, and don’t see the party “as an appealing alternative.”

Hastening the downfall might be the scandal that is roiling the waters of the Potomac right now. A nest of corruption, it seems, has been rooted out. And those who have relied on its success are squealing the loudest and longest.

Ostensibly an agency that shuttles financial and other resources for humanitarian reasons, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, looks and acts more like a political slush fund that has kept the political left rich with taxpayers’ dollars than a global development agency.

Earlier this week, stories broke claiming various media outlets, all more defenders of the Democratic Party and the federal administrative state than true journalistic institutions, had received millions of dollars from USAID. The New York Times, Associated Press and Politico, all hostile to the political right, were named as benefactors.

Whoa, said the fact-checkers. These payments were for subscriptions, not for favorable coverage, and the payments weren’t just from USAID, but also from other federal departments and agencies.

Maybe so. Could be that all those subscriptions added up to the millions in question. But that doesn’t fully clear up the issue.

One, did these offices also subscribe to media that dissent from the Washington narrative, which is consistent with the Democratic Party’s agenda, if not perfectly in line with it? Where are the millions in subscription payments to the New York Post, Washington Times, City Journal, Reason, National Review or … Issues & Insights?

As for I&I, we sure didn’t get any. And if we did, we’d be sure to hear about it from the very same people who’ve been squealing about the president shutting down USAID.

Also consider that federal workers are feeding their biases reading the New York Times, Politico the AP and other similar material. They’re living in a bubble in which members serve themselves at the expense of those outside the bubble – you know, the others, the deplorables, the semi-fascists, the bitter clingers, the garbage people.

That few or no federal workers are reading the New York Post, Washington Times, City Journal, Reason and others that would open up new avenues of thinking for them and challenge their political bigotry is disturbing.

Equally disturbing, however, is the strong likelihood that those “news” outlets tailored their coverage to perpetuate and grow the administrative state — and to aid the one major U.S. political party for whom that same administrative state is sacrosanct (hint: It isn’t the Republican Party).

Two, we don’t think we’re being unreasonable to say the subscription arrangement is not an innocent routine because it feels too much like a good way to funnel money to favored and friendly media outfits to get solid propaganda in return. After all, we know that Reuters raked in $300 million from taxpayers to attack Elon Musk because he dared to back Donald Trump.

But, hey, all that money we’ve heard about this week was just for subscriptions, nothing to see here. But what do those outlets provide federal workers that they couldn’t get free on the internet – and maybe by paying attention to their jobs, staying informed about the activities of other departments and agencies, and searching through federal databases? Why does the phrase “money laundering” come to mind?

As events continue to unfold, it appears USAID lavished money not just on media, but on all the right organizations. For instance, author John Ringo has tweeted that the Tides Foundation, “the Soros ‘charity’ that funded much of the Antifa BLM protests in 2020,” has been one of USAID’s primary beneficiaries.

Surprised?

We’ve also heard from Mike Benz, the former State Department official who blew the whistle on the Reuters arrangement. He tweeted earlier this week that “USAID grantee NGOs (non-governmental organizations) literally take their USAID money then turn around and lobby all key members of Congress to give more and more US taxpayer money to USAID each year in the budget. USAID buys an army of lobbyists with your tax dollars to give it more of your money.”

In response, Elon Musk, who has become a villain to the left, called USAID “a criminal organization.” It is, he said, “time for it to die.”

According to DataRepublican (small r), who says she’s cracked the code of the government’s byzantine funding of nonprofits, the scam goes this way:

• Gov-funded NGO gets a USAID grant for something vague like “strengthening education.”
• That NGO dumps millions into a DAF (Donor-Advised Fund).
• The DAF isn’t required to disclose what the NGO told them to do with the money.
• But somehow, every hyperpolitical nonprofit with a sketchy agenda ends up getting funded.

DataRepublican identifies one of those nonprofits as Defending Democracy, a never-Trump run in part by the Trump-hating Bill Kristol, as “an indirect beneficiary of USAID through Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.”

She also pointed out the millions going to nonprofits organizations provide “immigration-related services,” which is likely a euphemism for groups that help illegal immigrants skirt the law.

We are seeing, as well, accusations that USAID channels have funded outside terrorists, reports that the agency itself was involved in the 2019 Trump impeachment, and research that concluded that the Biden administration weaponized it to establish “foreign aid programs to fund abortion, gender and identity ideology, and climate alarmism.”

It’s still early. Scandals can take any number of turns and some messy situations end up not being scandals at all. But we have questions. We hope the legacy media does, too, and will dig for the story rather than reflexively protect their own. This is a huge story, possibly involving misconduct by elected officials and fraud on a massive scale. There’s no reason not to get all the facts out in the open. Maybe some media outlet that didn’t get federal dollars will give the effort a fair shot.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board