Joni Ernst

🧵From funneling tax dollars to risky research in Wuhan to sending Ukrainians to Paris Fashion Week, USAID is one of the worst offenders of waste in Washington… all around the world. 🌎

This is why @POTUS, @DOGE, and @elonmusk are ending the nonsense. 👇

Despite the fact that Moroccans have been making pottery for thousands of years, USAID spent more than $2 million for Moroccan pottery classes and promotion.

The idea clearly wasn't fully formed, because the translator they hired didn't even speak English.

USAID spends money like it’s going out of fashion, literally. 

Trade assistance to Ukraine paid for models and designers to take trips to New York City, London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, and South by Southwest in Austin.

Vacations were top of mind clearly for USAID.

The agency spent $2 million promoting tourism to Lebanon, a nation the State Department warns against traveling to “due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, unexploded landmines, and the risk of armed conflict.”

If you think that is bad, it gets much worse.

USAID funneled nearly $1 million into batty research on coronaviruses at China’s infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology, which the CIA admits was the likely source of COVID-19.

During the height of the war in Afghanistan, USAID spent millions of dollars to help Afghans grow crops instead of opium.

The results: opium poppy cultivation across the country nearly doubled, according to the UN.

USAID asked, “Can you tell me how to get how to get to Sesame Street?” and ended up in Iraq.

USAID authorized a whopping $20 million to create a Sesame Street in Iraq.

USAID has long been a reckless, out-of-control, unaccountable rogue agency.

More than $9 million of USAID’s “humanitarian aid” intended to feed civilians in Syria ended up in the hands of violent terrorists, including an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

USAID has failed to put the American people first and routinely tried to cloak its actions in secrecy.

Those days are over.

@DOGE is making the agency accountable to taxpayers for every cent of tax dollars being sent overseas to stop the wasteful and dangerous spending.