transgender

Closing USAID Isn’t Crazy — Here’s Why

The Trump administration pulled the plug on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), America’s largest distributor of humanitarian aid, this week following an audit of its billion-dollar books.

“For decades, USAID has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday.

She referenced some of the agency’s most unconscionable expenditures of taxpayer dollars, including:

  • $1.5 million to “advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.”
  • $6 million to Egyptian tourism.
  • Hundreds of millions to cultivate the poppy in Afghanistan (the main ingredient in heroin, the Taliban’s biggest money-maker).
  • More than $149,000 to fund foreign art projects celebrating DEI and LGBT-identified individuals, including a “transgender opera” and a “transgender comic book.”

Legislators, non-profits, activists and the United Nations have pitched an epic fit, claiming people will die without USAID’s aid. Some seemed particularly irate that Elon Musk, co-leader of the newly sanctioned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), blew the whistle on the agency’s largesse.

“This is a five-alarm fire.” New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X. “The people elected Donald Trump to be President — not Elon Musk … This should not be a partisan issue.”

But it doesn’t take a wizard to figure out that USAID squandered Americans’ money on stupid and immoral causes.

Let’s walk through a few examples.

USAID is charged with implementing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a congressional aid package tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The program will dispense $30 billion in assistance over five years.

But PEPFAR no longer distributes AIDS relief alone. In 2022, the government released a document connecting PEPFAR’s success with “sexual reproductive health, rights and services.” The semantic adjustment allows USAID to funnel PEPFAR money to fund elective abortions under the guise of “reproductive care.”

Between 2021 and 2022, more than 25 explicitly pro-abortion organizations spent a combined $1.34 billion PEPFAR donations.

One of these groups is the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). USAID paid it $8.9 million between 2015 and 2025 to execute contracts related to expanding “family planning and sexual and reproductive health.”

IPPF’s current contract with USAID would have paid out $45 million by 2028.

In a statement opposing USAID’s closure and the State Department’s temporary pause on foreign aid spending, IPPF unwittingly revealed exactly what it uses PEPFAR money for:

[The US State Department’s] funding suspension initially impacted the over 20 million people living with HIV directly supported through PEPFAR. Later, however, a life-saving humanitarian assistance waiver walked back the decision, yet excludes activities related to abortion or family planning, gender or DEI programs, gender-affirming surgeries and other activities deemed to be non-life saving assistance.

In short, IPPF resents that money from an AIDS relief program will go only toward people suffering from AIDS.

It’s also concerned about diminished “sexual and reproductive health services,” linking to an Instagram post from a company called Gender DynamiX — “Africa’s first registered public benefit organization to focus solely on issues of trans and gender diverse persons.”

Without US tax dollars, it will have to stop administering opposite-sex hormones.

IPPF is far from the only organization to rely on US assistance. America pays roughly 30% of the United Nation’s $58 billion budget every year. A hefty portion of these donations come from USAID. In 2022, the agency gave $10.9 billion to UN subsidiaries.

You remember the UN? The group behind the UN Relief Agency in Palestine, some employees of whom contributed to Hamas’ devastating attack on Israel in October 2023?

The international body that ignored Hamas’ violence against women for months?

The same body that refused to condemn Hamas, but allowed Iran to lead the Human Rights Council’s Commission on Crime Prevention and Justice just days after it executed two people for criticizing Islam?

Yes, that UN would be devastated without the US’ help. It’s particularly concerned about the impact such cuts could have on the sexual health of women in South Asia — especially those with “unintended pregnancies.”

Given these examples, and USAID’s larger disconnect from taxpayers’ interests, it’s not surprising a complete overhaul has been ordered.

But the mismanagement and misuse of USAID also illuminates crucial failures in how the government distributes taxes.

American families shouldn’t have to wade through manipulative and deceptive language to discern how their hard-earned money is being spent They shouldn’t have to wonder whether their government is bilking them, or pouring cash into corrupt and ineffective organizations in service of causes they don’t believe in.

TLDR: This author isn’t sad to see the back of USAID.

Additional Articles and Resources

The UN’s Palestinian Relief Fund is in Trouble — Here’s Why It’s a Good Thing

United Nations Round-Up: Iran Heads Human Rights Council Assembly, Fails to Condemn Hamas

Women’s Rights Groups Silent on Hamas Sexual Violence, Analysis Shows

Senator Releases Annual ‘Festivus Report’ Chronicling $1 Trillion in Government Waste

President Trump Cuts Gender Pronouns from All Gov Emails: Why That’s Important

In keeping with his swift directive to rid the federal government of DEI ideology, President Trump directed government employees to remove gender pronouns from their work emails. The internal governmental memo with this directive stated “Pronouns and any other information not permitted in the policy must be removed from … employee signatures by 5 pm ET on Friday.” That was January 31.

This is a very praise-worthy move for many reasons.

No one should be compelled to live by lies … especially at work or in government.

    Gender ideology is a false and deceptive belief system. To be human is to be male and female. Full stop. There is no third option. Thankfully, that is now official policy of the United States.  

    At the precise moment of his arrest and exile from Soviet Russia in 1974, the celebrated literary dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn released a document that was as powerful as it was brief: “Live Not By Lies.”

    Solzhenitsyn explained the simple fact that the ideological system his nation was suffering under “demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies.” Thus, he told his countrymen,

    The simple and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation is this: personal non-participation in lies.
     

    Read that statement again for emphasis and reflect upon it. This truth is equally simple and profound. Resolving to refuse to speak or assent to what you know to be false is one of the greatest revolutionary acts a human can perform. Solzhenitsyn explained,

    It is the easiest thing for us to do and the most destructive for the lies.

    Why?

    Because when people renounce lies, it cuts short their existence. Like parasites, they can only survive when carried by a person. …Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies … and we will be amazed how swiftly the lies fall away, for that which should be naked will be exposed as such to the whole world.

    Lies have no life if we all refuse to let them live in our own words and beliefs. No should be compelled to play the game of participating in lies at school or in the workplace.

    Gender pronouns are the catechism of a new fundamentalist secular faith.

    Christians, and all people of sound reason, must understand that the pressure to use gender pronouns is an indoctrination in the anti-scientific, unreasonable faith of gender ideology and transgenderism. Pronoun use is the required catechism in that new secular religion. In fact, those who refuse to play along with this false belief system are called ugly names.

    British mom-activist Kellie-Jay Keen correctly calls gender pronouns “the gateway drug” to gender brainwashing. When we go along and use them, thinking there is no harm, we are participating in and supporting a belief system that is diametrically opposed to reality.

    Using pronouns is not “just being kind” and hospitable.

    Some have wrongly framed gender pronoun use as a sign of graciousness to others. Christian author Preston Sprinkle refers to this as “pronoun hospitality.” Wheaton College professor Mark Yarhouse has written, “It is an act of respect, even if we disagree, to let the person determine what they want to be called.” As well intentioned as this opinion might be, it is wrong.

    Participating in the pronoun game is a not a matter of good manners. It is not a kindness. It is not reasonable. It is certainly not love of neighbor.

    Rosario Butterfield, a good friend of Focus on the Family, actually calls using gender pronouns sin. She writes the practice “makes no Christian sense” adding “any parachurch ministry that elevates ‘being winsome’ as the endgame” of the Christian life can be manipulated into making this mistake. Of course she is right.

    Banning gender pronouns in federal government is a very wise move. Clearly establishing that sex means male and female is true and prudent. None of us should be faced with blatant lies in the workplace and then be forced to behave as if they represent reality. Gender pronouns represent an alternative reality. Let us be done with them with all haste.

    Additional Resources

    Don’t Be Bullied in the Pronoun War

    How to Respond to “Trans” and Gender Ideology? Simple: Live Not by Lies

    Gender Pronouns are the Catechism of a New Secular Faith Being Pushed on All of Us

    Part I – Navigating Gender Pronouns at School and Work

    Part 2 – Required Personal Pronoun Use at School and Work Leads to Crazy-making, Literally

    Part 3 – What to Say When Pressured to Use Gender Pronouns

    Part 4 – Is it Ever Right to Use Personal Gender Pronouns?

    Trump Signs Executive Order Protecting Women’s Sports and Spaces

    Yesterday, President Trump celebrated National Girls and Women in Sports Day by signing a much-anticipated executive order to protect women’s sports and spaces across the United States.

    The signing ceremony was packed with female athletes and other champions for women and girls in the East Room at the White House.

    Some more well known female athletes included Riley Gaines and Payton McNabb — the high school volleyball player who was knocked unconscious when a male playing on the opposing girls’ volleyball team spiked a volleyball into her face.

    President Trump told attendees that his executive order is about commonsense.

    He said, “From now on, women’s sports will be only for women.”

    The executive order is titled, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

    The order declares that the practice of letting men compete in women’s sports is “demeaning, unfair and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”

    The order continues:

    Therefore, it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy. It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.

    The order is applicable to K-12 public schools, colleges and universities.

    At the signing ceremony, President Trump said, “We are putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice – if you let men take over woman’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms, you will be investigated for violations of Title IX and risk your federal funding. There will be no federal funding.”

    The order requires the secretary of education “take all appropriate action to affirmatively protect all-female athletic opportunities and all-female locker rooms” and directs the secretary to prioritize enforcement against schools that violate the policy. 

    Additionally, the secretary of state is directed to use all appropriate and available measures to convince the Olympics Committee to limit women’s sports to only female athletes.

    The order is a victory for every girl and every woman who advocated for a level playing field in sports, talked about fairness in competition, and refused to be silenced or canceled by radical transgender activists.

    Earlier this week, a new pro-woman video with Riley Gaines went viral after being shared by J.K. Rowling. The post, featuring the video, got over six million views in the first 36 hours.

    President Trump told attendees that the war on women’s sports is over and while that might be true under this Administration there are no guarantees in the next.

    The only way forward is to cement this executive order into federal law; legislation to do so was introduced in the House of Representatives last month. 

    It is imperative that Congress act as soon as possible to protect women’s sports and spaces through statute.

    We can never go back to the dark days of the past where women were denied equal opportunities, their safety and security was sacrificed on the altar of gender ideology.

    Image from Getty.

    ‘Mass Exodus’: Dr. Jay Richards on the Demise of Gender Ideology and What It Means for the Pro-Life Movement

    What do gender and sexual ideology have to do with protecting preborn babies?

    Dr. Jay Richards explained at this year’s National Pro-Life Summit, an annual event designed to help people, particularly students, defend and advance the pro-life cause.

    Richards, who directs the DeVos Center for Life, Religion and Family at the Heritage Foundation, joined Kristen Hawkins, Charlie Kirk, Ben Carson, Kayleigh McEnany and dozens of other experts in Washington D.C. to help attendees understand the pro-life landscape in 2025.

    “To protect [preborn babies], we need to think about them [within] the institution of the family, and the destruction of the family as a result of the sexual revolution,” he exhorted aspiring activists.

    Hosted by Students for Life, the Summit drew energy and inspiration from pro-life wins in the White House. But Richards emphasized the pro-life movement’s unique opportunity to change hitherto inaccessible hearts and minds.

    To take advantage of this opportunity, he argued, pro-lifers must understand the President’s actions in the context of a larger backlash against the ideology of the sexual revolution.

    To do that, Richards explained the connection between abortion and gender ideology.

    Killing children in the womb and abolishing the sexual binary might seem unrelated. But Richards contended both are distinct consequences of the sexual revolution, an ideology that “exploded” in the 1960s with the introduction of birth control.

    Richards suggested picturing abortion and gender ideology as two stations on a train track.

    Imagine the sexual revolution is a train trip. You’re on a track, so the train is moving you in a particular direction. And there’s different stations along the way to your destinations … At every stop, people can get off the train.

    Contrary to popular belief, the sexual revolution isn’t moving passengers to a more sexually liberated society.

    “If that’s what it is [doing], we wouldn’t be sterilizing children who are confused about their bodies in 2025,” Richards remarked.

    Instead, the fundamental premise of the sexual revolution is the legal and social “fracturing” of marriage, sex and childbirth, or, “The idea that those things don’t have to go together, ought not to go together, might be better if they don’t always go together.”

    Abortion and gender ideology should be understood as phenomena that contribute to the rupture of God’s design.

    Abortion is one of the revolution’s earliest stops. It is what Richards calls an enabling technology — something that makes the ideas of the revolution feasible. The sexual revolution’s first enabling technology, and train stop, was the birth control pill.

    “There’s been types of contraception or contraceptive behaviors for as long as there have been humans,” Richards acknowledged, continuing,

    But it was not until the approved birth control pill that it seemed at least [plausible] to have sex, all you want, right in the middle of the most fertile years of your life without having to deal with the consequences, namely a baby.

    But birth control didn’t sufficiently delink sex and childbirth. In fact, Richards noted, “It so greatly increased out-of-wedlock sexual activity that it vastly increased the numbers of out-of-wedlock births as well.”

    The Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 made abortion the new stopgap — an enabling technology that stopped childbirth by killing the child.

    Gender ideology comes quite a few stations down the line, after the Supreme Court detached sex and marriage in 2015.

    Prior to the dissociation of sex and childbirth, Richards argued, the state had a compelling interest to recognize marriage as a productive partnership between a man and a woman:

    Marriage is the institution that socially ratifies, recognizes, protects and reinforces a basic biological reality, that it takes a fertile male and a fertile female, one of each, to mate.
    There’s a widespread assumption, now widely confirmed by social science, that, all things being equal, the well-being of a child is enhanced dramatically if that child is raised by his or her married mother and father.
    So, there’s a state interest in recognizing and protecting and distinguishing this institution from, say, a rotary club, voluntary association, or a religious body, or a medical license or a real estate license.

    But, by 2015, Americans had largely accepted the idea that sex, marriage and childbirth weren’t related — and didn’t need to be.

    Richards decoded the logic behind Obergefell v. Hodges: If sex doesn’t have to take place within a marriage, and marriage doesn’t have anything to do with producing or raising children, then marriage need not be between a man and a woman.

    Within a week of the Obergefell ruling, trans activists began appearing on the covers of magazines. The T, joked Richards, began jockeying for a place with the Ls, Gs, and Bs.

    Where once all relationships — including homosexual ones — assumed a sexual binary, the introduction of gender ideology now made the sexual binary obsolete, and even discriminatory.

    Richards explained the progression like this:

    Obergefell decided that the sexual binary did not matter for the institution of marriage. Gender ideology just says the sexual binary does not matter, period.

    A logical next step.

    Until gender ideology, most people had passively accepted a ride on the sexual revolution express. But this stop struck passengers differently from its predecessors, Richards found:

    We’re now far enough along that the victims [of gender ideology] are telling their stories. That makes this different from abortion. The primary victims of abortion very rarely live to tell about it. The detransitioners do. This is a different issue from every one before. This train station is different from every other train station before.

    Confronted with the consequences of demolishing the sexual binary, Richards said people have gotten off the ride.

    It’s a mass exit of people wanting off this train. People who were partisans in favor of same-sex marriage, people who had been pro-choice their whole lives, people who thought free sex was great, people who had never spent two seconds thinking about the sexual revolution saw Rachel Levine, and big ol’ Leah Thomas standing next to Riley Gaines, and said, “This is insane.”

    This is the environment pro-lifers find themselves in, Richards concluded — on a train station with a bunch of confused, disillusioned people that “are open to conversations [they] were not open to five years ago.”

    Richards urged pro-lifers to equip themselves to have these important, delicate conversations. His advice? Connect the systematic destruction of God’s design with bizarre ideology making them exit the crazy train in the first place — station by station.

    To walk it back, you have to connect pre-born babies to the sexual revolution. You have to be able to situate the sexual revolution as responsible for the destruction of the family and categorize abortion as a weapon of that attack.

    If we can convince people in the train station of that, Richards said he’s convinced we can end “the scourge of abortion.”

    This author tends to agree.

    Additional Articles and Resources

    The Two-Parent Privilege: Understanding Contemporary Family Formation

    The 4B Movement: Anti-Women, Accidentally Pro-Life

    Different Family Forms Lead to Prison or College for Young Men

    Important New Research on How Married Parents Improve Child Well-Being

    Here’s What Happens When Good People Don’t Connect Gay and Trans Ideology

    Sorry ‘Gays Against Groomers,’ But Gay Activists Helped Start This Transgender Fire

    Sorry ‘Gays Against Groomers,’ But Gay Activists Helped Start This Transgender Fire — Part Two

    WSJ is Wrong About Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Having No Dire Effects

    How the Binary in ‘LGBTQ+’ Reveals Its Utter Incoherence

    Why Christians Can’t Avoid the “Trans” and Gender Redefinition Issue

    How the “Trans” and Gender Redefinition Issue Attacks the Family

    J.K. Rowling Promotes New Viral Video with Riley Gaines

    A new video featuring Riley Gaines has gone viral, with J.K. Rowling’s help. The video illustrates the real strength and courage it takes for girls to compete, not just in sports, but against the woke mob, too.

    The powerful video is part of a campaign called Real Girls Rock.

    It highlights Gaines and her little sister, a state champion in gymnastics, among other women in different sports pursuing their athletic goals and dreams despite the criticism, hate, personal attacks and gaslighting of “trans” activists and their allies.

    As each of these female athletes train tirelessly to become the best at their sport, they are threatened with labels like “transphobic,” “right-wing bigot,” and “fearmongerer.”  

    Audio clips play in the background saying, “Who cares?” “Just be inclusive,” “Female athletes just need to work harder,” and “Don’t blame others for your lack of success.”

    The video ends with the words, “Real strength, real courage, Real Girls Rock.”

    The ad was produced by XX-XY Athletics, a pro-woman apparel company, of which Gaines is a brand ambassador.

    The video immediately received positive responses on X, including promotion by J.K. Rowling who shared the video and wrote, “This is the first and likely the last time I’ll retweet an ad, but I love it.” Rowling has consistently demonstrated courage in standing up for girls and women rights against gender ideologues.

    Gaines shared the video on her X account and wrote that her little sister is her inspiration to keep fighting to save girls sports.

    The compelling video resonates with so many viewers because we know it’s true. We all lived it.

    We saw female athletes robbed of titles, scholarships, and future sporting opportunities because they were unfairly forced to compete against males.

    And then when some of those female athletes, and some of us, pointed out the obvious — that it’s not fair to pit a girl against a boy in sports — trans activists gaslit us and said we were the problem.

    In reality, the toxic woke agenda of the transgender movement is the problem. It is fundamentally anti-woman and hurts real girls and women.

    It’s time for all people of goodwill to refuse to live by the lies being propagated by the transgender movement.

    This is our moment to stand up for the women in our lives — wives, daughters, sisters, nieces, granddaughters, and female friends.

    We need to tap into the same courage and strength we see from the girls in this video.

    Be strong in your convictions and courageous in advocating for the truth on this issue.

    There is no need to apologize for speaking the truth.

    Related Articles and Resources

    Riley Gaines to Nike: ‘Protect Girls, Just Do It!’

    The ‘Transgender’ Movement is Canceling Women, and It Must Stop

    Allowing ‘Transgender Women’ to Compete Against Biological Women in Sports is Anti-Woman

    Riley Gaines’ Sponsors ‘Real Women’s Day’ – Did Penn State Shut Her Out?Video: Riley Gaines on Being Targeted, Advice For Parents, Advocating Female Rights

    Image credit: XX-XY Athletics /X