(LifeSiteNews) — The Trump administration is reportedly considering using cryptocurrency to track foreign aid payments, according to an internal document obtained by Politico.
Furthermore, the administration is considering renaming the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and calling it the United States Agency for International Humanitarian Assistance (USAIHA).
Trump also proposes streamlining operations and ensuring tax dollars benefit America and move countries off dependence on U.S. tax dollars.
One section states:
The fundamental goal of U.S. international assistance should be to deliver tangible value – quantifiable returns – to the American taxpayer, and advance self-reliance among our allies and partners worldwide, ultimately to end the need for assistance altogether. A coherent portfolio of investments should advance economic opportunities for American companies, enhance our national security, and strengthen U.S. influence on the global stage.
Aid should also be used as “geopolitical leverage,” the memo states.
The proposal comes as the Trump administration plans to severely reduce USAID, which critics contend operates as a slush fund for left-wing goals. The plans have faced mixed success. Liberal activist judges have tried to stop Trump’s cuts to USAID. The Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze payments for “work already completed.” On the other hand, a federal judge has declined to “immediately” block Trump’s firing of contractors, as reported by The Hill.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who now oversees USAID, said a review of the agency’s programs identified only 17 percent were worth keeping, according to the Associated Press.
A funding pause highlighted the questionable use of American tax dollars. For example, three “transgender” facilities in India had to close due to the freeze. Furthermore, an LGBT nonprofit in England also laid off half its staff, reportedly due to the cuts. A sympathetic CNN recently chronicled the plight of an Amazon Prime “culinary docuseries” that has yet to received promised USAID funds.
The “independent” agency funneled more than half a billion dollars to pro-abortion groups in 2022 alone, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews. USAID also funds Ukrainian news outlets – 90 percent of them receive funding from the agency, according to the Columbia Journalism Review.
Working off data from Reporters Without Borders, the Columbia Journalism Review reported that “USAID had boasted of supporting more than six thousand journalists, around seven hundred independent newsrooms, and nearly three hundred media-focused civil society groups in thirty or so countries.”
The Trump administration reportedly froze $268 million for these endeavors.
Foreign policy experts have criticized USAID.
Max Primorac, who used to work for the agency, called it a “troubling tale of a government agency going off the rails ideologically and losing both bipartisan political support in Congress and the trust of the American people.”
“Institutionally, its political culture would eventually skew far left, purged of conservatives and independents,” the Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow wrote in February for Fox News. “USAID no longer represented America nor its values, becoming a taxpayer-funded haven for radicals controlled by an industry of global elites composed of former aid officers and officials from past Democratic Party administrations.”