WASHINGTON: A US-funded transgender clinic in Hyderabad is among the thousands of programs fed into the “woodchipper” as Donald Trump’s MAGA minions led by Elon Musk gutted USAID, the US government’s main foreign aid agency, summarily firing most of 10,000 plus work force in the US and overseas. Long festering resentment in MAGA circles at “liberal” Washington establishments wasting billions of dollars in US tax-payer money on “woke” programs across the world, some of which they say are anathema to even host countries, resulted in the new Trump dispensation torching the Kennedy-established USAID on Thursday.
More than 6000 USAID personnel in missions across the world, in addition to 4000 based in the US, were abruptly sacked amid much handwringing that good programs — many relating to diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, nutrition for children, and food and medicine to the most vulnerable — was being buried with the questionable and dodgy.
MAGA activists cited dozens of programs, from a $20 million aid to produce a new Sesame Street (children’s) show in Iraq to $4.5 million to “combat misinformation in Kazakhstan,” to $1.5 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica, to vent their ire at the more than $ 40 billion that USAID was disbursing annually.
Among the programs they cited was one where USAID partnered with Johns Hopkins University under the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), to launch India’s first comprehensive health clinic for the transgender community in Hyderabad named the Mitr Clinic in January 2021.
Additionally, two more clinics were established in Maharashtra in July 2021 to provide comprehensive health care services, including general health services, guidance on hormone therapy, gender affirmation procedures, mental health counseling, and HIV/STI treatment, all in a “stigma-free environment.” The initiative is said to be part of USAID’s broader efforts to support health outcomes and inclusivity for the transgender community in India, where the agency has a relatively modest $ 150 million program overall. India has long weaned itself out of US munificence, preferring trade to aid, and the $ 150 million USAID program in the country accounts for less than 0.25 per cent of US foreign aid scattered around the world. USAID websites and social media handles, including its India handles, disappeared overnight as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) riffled through itemized US government’s spending list to highlight what MAGA rank and file see as wasteful spending at the expense of American tax payers, even as tens of thousands of US government employees across agencies are being sacked or urged to quit.
Some of the action on Thursday bordered on the comical as pro-Musk MAGA warriors and so-called “woke” activists doxxed (publicly named and shamed) personnel on both sides. Musk ridiculed reports that a 19-year-old DOGE staffer whose online name is “Big Balls” had overnight become a government expert, even as Marko Elez, another DOGE nerd deployed by Musk, was reported to have resigned after anti-Musk activists unearthed some of his racist social media posts seeking, among other things, to “Normalize Indian hate.”
Other posts cited included “I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth” and “99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they’re going back don’t worry guys.”
Amid a growing social media conflagration, Musk and his supporters warned activists doxing his so-called “Nerd Force” that they would face prosecution, including a Boston University staffer who shared a “wanted for treason — dead or alive” poster claiming Musk and his minions were carrying out a coup in Washington.
As if all this was not bizarre enough, Trump on Friday morning announced that he would be signing an Executive Order next week “ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!”
“Greatest President ever!” Musk responded to the post. A few minutes later, he added, “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man.”
