WASHINGTON — “My uncle started USAID in 1961, for humanitarian purposes, to put our country on the side of the poor,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pronounced Thursday at the White House as he was sworn in as Health Secretary.

“It has been captured by the military-industrial complex. It has become a sinister propagator of totalitarianism” across the globe, the former Democrat added. “And very few people understand how sinister this agency really is. President Trump saw that.”
The issue of government agencies that have veered from their core mission, specifically the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was put under a Trump-imposed 90-day stop-work order, isn’t going away. (RELATED: Foreign Aid Reform: USAID Has a History of Funding Terrorists and Anti-American Organizations)
Earlier in the day, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing entitled “The USAID Betrayal” that waded through the muck of “woke” activist message spending — money that would have been better spent on food, housing, and other direct humanitarian assistance. (RELATED: Trump Should Shutter USAID — Development Economics Is a Hotbed for Corruption)
On committee Chairman Brian Mast’s list of programs that should be cut:

$22 million to increase tourism in Tunisia and Egypt, that’s not lifesaving.
$520 million to pay consultants to teach people in Africa about climate change, that’s not medicine.
$4.5 million to teach people in Kazakhstan how to fight back against internet trolls, that’s not lifesaving.
$20,000 to help LGBT individuals vote in the Honduran elections, that’s not medicine.

D.C. insiders have been aghast at Trump’s willingness to take on USAID, but agency boosters have to do a better job overcoming skepticism from the right about left-wing activists hijacking the humanitarian program to promote magical thinking. (RELATED: USAID Needs Adult Supervision, not Extinction)
And they have to contend with Elon Musk, the richest man in the world who now serves as the head of DOGE, ...