A ProPublica site had a built-in tool that allows you to see the money wasted by USAID and DoD on failed projects in Afghanistan up until 2015. The site puts the wasted funds alongside what could have been bought with the money. This find comes from Maze Moore. Maze Moore writes on X: “USAID spent […] The post USAID for the Taliban: $500K on a Police Facility Made of Sand appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday withdrawing the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council and prohibiting future funding for the U.N. relief agency for Gaza – UNRWA. Funding for UNESCO will be reviewed. UN funding, in general, will be reviewed. President Trump said the UN has failed us. It has great […] The post President Trump Withdraws from UN Human Rights Council, Bans Funds for UNESCO appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) continued his push to reform FEMA on Tuesday when he introduced a bill to prohibit political discrimination in disaster relief, according to a copy of the bill first shared with The Daily Wire.  Lankford put forth the “Stopping Political Discrimination in Disaster Assistance Act” to add “political affiliation” as a protected class for emergency relief. The bill comes as FEMA faces criticism over its handling of recent hurricanes, including an incident in Florida where a supervisor told workers to “avoid homes advertising Trump.” The Oklahoma Republican introduced similar legislation in November before Republicans had officially regained control of the Senate. He also asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to commit to prohibiting political discrimination during one of her confirmation hearings.  Other sponsors of the legislation included Republican Senators Roger Marshall (KS), Rick Scott (FL), Ted Budd (NC), Josh Hawley (MO), Marsha Blackburn (TN), and Thom Tillis (NC).  Lankford introduced three other disaster bills on Tuesday, including one that would establish a pilot program for communities to “directly apply to the Administrator for hazard mitigation assistance for the purposes of property acquisition and structure demolition or relocation assistance.” Another bill would streamline approvals for hazard mitigation projects, and the third would encourage communities to be better prepared for natural disasters.  Lankford introduced the measures at the same time he sent a letter to President Donald Trump commending the president’s creation of a 20-person council to conduct a full review of FEMA’s activities.  “The current federal framework for responding to disasters is insufficient, and major reforms are necessary to ensure Americans are best supported in times of need,” Lankford wrote in a letter obtained by The Daily Wire. “The federal government’s labyrinthine disaster response and recovery programs have not been subject to the scrutiny needed to assess whether it is achieving its goals or whether its funding would be better spent with limited strings attached at the state and local levels.” “I ask that your Council consider whether more federal emergency response capabilities should be consolidated under FEMA, which would reduce the number of agencies constituents need to work through when seeking federal disaster assistance, and whether other, current responsibilities should be placed elsewhere,” he added.  Lankford added that all levels of government, not just the federal government, should have “skin in the game” when it comes to emergency response.  Trump has floated the idea of eliminating FEMA altogether and leaving disaster relief to the states, with some percentage of funding still coming from the federal government. In his executive order calling for an evaluation of the agency, Trump cited concerns of political bias as one of the reasons needed for reform.  “Indeed, at least one former FEMA responder has stated that FEMA managers directed her to avoid homes of individuals supporting the campaign of Donald J. Trump for President,” Trump wrote, referring to The Daily Wire’s report reporting on supervisor Marn’i Washington’s instructions for workers to skip Trump homes in Lake Placid, Florida. 

New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James warned hospitals in the state against canceling appointments for transgender procedures on minors after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to protect children from irreversible surgeries and hormone therapy. In a letter sent to New York health care providers on Monday, James said that hospitals have “obligations to comply with New York state laws,” adding that refusing service to “transgender individuals” goes against anti-discrimination laws. “Electing to refuse services to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law,” the letter stated. Hospitals across the U.S. began canceling appointments for life-altering gender procedures on children after Trump signed an order on “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan reported on Monday. “It’s already having its intended effect — preventing children from being maimed and sterilized by adults perpetuating a radical, false claim that they can somehow change a child’s sex,” the White House said. “Hospitals around the country are taking action to downsize or eliminate their so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ programs.” Trump’s order threatens to withhold federal funding from any hospital that continues to conduct gender procedures on children. According to The New York Times, NYU Langone, one of the top hospitals in NYC, canceled appointments for transgender procedures on minors within days of Trump’s order. Reports of the cancellations led to a protest — attended by hundreds of people — outside of NYU Langone on Monday evening. Some of the protesters waved transgender pride flags and carried signs that called on the hospital to continue the irreversible procedures on children. “This is the last thing that we need to be worried about, a political system attacking our family,” said one father at the demonstration. The man told the Times that his 12-year-old child identifies as “gender-fluid,” and they were seeking doctors’ opinions on whether to have the child undergo hormone therapy. Dozens of states have taken action to protect children from gender procedures, and more federal action could be on the horizon with a Republican-controlled House and Senate. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Daily Wire last week that the president would also support Congressional action to shield gender-confused minors from transgender surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormone therapy. “As for congressional legislation to support the president’s agenda in this space, and certainly ending the mutilation of young children, the chemical castration of young children, which is a barbaric practice that the vast majority of Americans do not support, for young, minor children, certainly, the president would support Congress’ efforts, as he has already made that very clear this week,” Leavitt said.

White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks joined key Republican lawmakers in pledging to pass major cryptocurrency bills within President Donald Trump’s first 100 days while hinting at the possibility of a federal Bitcoin reserve. At a press conference Tuesday, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) said he expects both major stablecoin and markets structure bills to pass by the end of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days, putting the deadline less than three months away, according to a report by Decrypt. Republican chairs of the House Financial Services Committee, Senate Banking Committee, House Agriculture Committee, and Senate Agriculture Committee unveiled plans for a bicameral working group to coordinate with Sacks. One of the many crypto bills on the docket, according to the lawmakers, is the GENIUS Act, introduced by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), which would require monthly audits of stablecoin issuers’ fiat reserves and impose criminal penalties for false reporting. Stablecoins now represent a substantial share of the daily volume in digital asset exchanges. Because these tokens are commonly pegged to the U.S. dollar or other stable assets, reliable regulatory structures are seen by many as crucial to ensuring market stability. Crypto has long been shunned by traditional financial institutions due to its unregulated nature, forcing many crypto companies to incorporate internationally in countries with a much clearer framework for operation. Industry advocates have shown optimism that a clear legal framework might accelerate institutional partnerships between stablecoin providers and traditional financial institutions. Sacks addressed this, saying, “Financial assets are destined to become digital … and we want that value creation to happen in the United States.” Sacks also addressed rumors of a Bitcoin strategic reserve, given President Trump’s Monday executive order establishing a U.S. sovereign wealth fund, which often features Bitcoin in other countries. Sacks deferred this question to the newly-announced bicameral crypto committee, saying that the sovereign wealth fund was “a little separate” from any consideration of a Bitcoin reserve, but left open the possibility of further White House action on the matter.

President Trump is moving faster than any president of my lifetime to get things done. It is astonishing. Astonishing. I’ve never seen an administration move this quickly to do as many different things as the Trump administration is doing right now. Whether you’re talking about walking back support for the UNRWA, ending support nationwide for transitioning children, ending DEI initiatives all over the country, reconstituting the Defense Department (by the way, recruitment immediately skyrocketed since the appointment of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense), or getting wins at the Panama Canal (where the Panamanian government has now announced it is not going to participate in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative anymore), this administration is pushing so hard, so fast on so many fronts, that it’s exceptionally difficult for any opposition to truly form around any one issue.  The best the Democrats have done so far is mobilize around the end of USAID. USAID is an agency that was originally brought into being by foreign aid initiatives of Congress and then put into power by an executive order by JFK all the way back during the middle of the Cold War. USAID essentially was designed as a way of spreading America’s foreign policy tentacles all over the world. That was the explicit purpose. It wasn’t just to do nice things; it was to do nice things and also to support institutions in various countries that were going to be a bulwark against communism. Since the end of the Cold War, USAID has been transformed into supporting trans pride flags in Africa or boondoggle projects that are designed to pay millions or billions of dollars to Left-wing NGOs, both in the United States and outside the United States, and keep up an entire employment line for people who are out of power. While Republicans are in power, USAID is still paying many blue organizations to keep trains running on time and to make sure money continues to flow to various organizations abroad that are willing to spread social leftism. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show The idea of USAID is not wrong. The idea that you want to find non-governmental organizations in countries that are teetering between China and the United States and support them to make that country more pro-America is not a bad idea. The problem is that the USAID infrastructure has been hijacked by the radical Left. What the Left has done with so many institutions — and USAID is only one of them — is to take the original purpose of the institution, gut it, and then wear the face around like Hannibal Lecter. That is exactly what the Left has done with the university systems in the United States. They did it with the mainstream press in the United States, and they did it with USAID. USAID has been participating in tremendous waste and fraud for a long time. As Daniel Greenfield of the David Horowitz Freedom Center points out, USAID has sent $9.3 billion to Islamic terrorist states collectively responsible for killing over 3,000 American soldiers. There are an enormous number of terrible organizations supported by USAID. A wing of the Republican Party wishes to use the fact that these institutions have been so thoroughly corrupted to go totally isolationist, which is a mistake. Two things can be true at the same time: USAID has become a totally corrupted institution, but that doesn’t mean that the best strategy for the United States is to retreat from the world entirely and simply grant that vacuum to the Chinese, the Russians, or the Iranians. Elon Musk said that there basically is nothing left at USAID that’s worth saving. The budget of USAID is somewhere between $40 and $50 billion. It is an extremely large governmental program. So when people say things like, “It’s only 1% of the American budget,” that’s true. But that’s just because our budget is far too large. That doesn’t mean we should be wasting tons of money on interests that are antithetical to American interests abroad. The spread of social leftism in Zimbabwe should not be the goal of American foreign policy. Flying “Pride Progress” flags outside the Vatican should not be a goal of American foreign policy, and neither should supporting Left-wing NGOs that are also supported by people like George Soros. President Trump deployed Elon Musk and the Department of Governmental Efficiency to go into USAID’s headquarters, dig through the personnel files, and try to figure out where all the money is going. The acting heads of USAID tried to resist. So President Trump fired them. Many people on the Left got very upset about all of this for a couple of reasons. First, they actually like the “Pride Progress” flag being flown in far-flung African nations with American taxpayer dollars. They want America to fund abortion abroad. They support precisely the things the American taxpayers don’t want to do. But there’s something else going on, too, which is that USAID, like so many other federal government programs, is an absolute gravy train for Democratic allies. It is a bunch of money that is being spent on various constituencies that Democrats cultivate and use as the incoming State Department officials if Democrats win office. It is not a coincidence that so many Democrats, both elected and non-elected, worked at places like or funded by USAID. It’s a giant grab bag of cash which has essentially become a handout mechanism for the Left-wing. The administration’s strategy seems to be to move fast and break things, to make all of these cuts, to bring a chainsaw to the party. The way an executive branch agency works is that everyone serves at the pleasure of the president of the United States. If you don’t like that, there is a way this could have been avoided: not having created a massive administrative bureaucracy. But since the beginning of the 20th century, the Democrats centralized extraordinary power in the executive branch. And now they’re furious that the person in charge of the executive branch is using that power to carve away all of their permanent substructures. What we are watching is a sea change in the way that government is done, not because Trump is “dictatorial” or “authoritarian,” but because he is using precisely the same power every Democrat has used so that he can carve away the permanent root of the Democratic Party. President Trump is seeking victories and attempting to minimize defeat. The caterwauling from the Left is about the fact that the plaything of the permanent Democratic Party, the administrative bureaucracy they built and have lavished with trillions of dollars over the course of decades, is now being redone by the Trump administration, and they are freaking out about it. And when the Left freaks out about a thing, I tend to like the thing. Very much.

'The coddling is for the white boys'

'Assume greater responsibility'