OPINION:
Rep. Jim Jordan, in an exclusive interview with JNS, also known as Jewish News Syndicate, said his House Judiciary Committee has found evidence of U.S. tax dollars during the previous administration being used to fund political protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as groups with ties to terror organizations.
Yet another legacy of the Joe Biden White House.
From a May 29 committee memorandum obtained and published in part by JNS: There is “new information about the Biden-Harris administration helping to fund protests against the Netanyahu government.”
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, via its related Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and the Tides Network “provided over $5 million to groups that funded radical anti-Israel protests in the U.S. and Israel, and supported multiple terrorist-linked NGOs,” the memo stated, referring to nongovernmental organizations.
The funding came to light following queries by the State Department over U.S. Agency for International Development operations.
As Tides reports on its website, “Between October 2016 and July 2024, the Tides Center administrated $24.5 million in USAID-funded grants to strengthen and elevate civil society organizations globally.” And according to the committee’s memo, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors received millions of dollars in USAID money during the Biden-Harris years, as well as other funding from the State Department and the Defense Department. RPA, in turn, gave $557,000 to its Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the RBF, in turn, gave $190,000 to Defense for Children International Palestine, a group that Israel designates as a terrorist organization and that has ties to another organization designated as a terrorist group by the United States, called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the memo said, Cleveland Jewish News reported.
It’s like tracing a trail of smoke through the air.
“Money is fungible — it’s tough to track exactly,” Jordan, Ohio Republican, told JNS. “But it looks like some of this money was also then being run through one or two NGOs, winding up on college campuses to promote all the crazy antisemitic, anti-Israel stuff on campuses. Even worse yet, it looks like some of it maybe even funded organizations that had links to terrorism.”
Jordan also said, “You’re taking taxpayer money, you’re supposed to be doing good work — why in the heck is it going to groups that are pro-Hamas? Our government is sending American tax dollars to NGOs that are undermining our ally — our best ally — the State of Israel. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”
Using NGO funds for the furtherance of leftist ideologies and agendas overseas has come under intense congressional scrutiny since the start of President Trump’s second term.
In August of 2025, Trump signed an executive order aimed at reeling back grants to organizations, including universities and nonprofits, that can’t show good use of tax dollars and that have spent frivolously through the years.
“Federal grants have funded, for example, drag shows in Ecuador,” the White House wrote in an Aug. 7, 2025, fact sheet posted online.
“Federal grants have supported dangerous, harmful projects that undermine national security and fundamental rights [like] an unsafe lab in Wuhan, China — the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the White House wrote.
“Taxpayer-funded grants have supported free services for illegal immigrants, as well as organizations that worked against American interests abroad,” the White House wrote.
A few days later, on Aug. 29, Trump’s White House posted a briefing statement about moves to curb wasteful spending and eliminate “woke, weaponized” use of tax dollars. As part of that campaign, Trump, citing the Impoundment Control Act, canceled $5 billion in foreign aid — including $3.2 billion of USAID money.
Among the identified USAID spending: $400 million for “global climate grift projects”; $322 million in the Democracy Fund of which $2.7 million went to advance “inclusive democracy” in South Africa, in part, by publishing the likes of “The Problem with Whiteness” essays, and of which another $3.9 million went to promote “democracy” for LGBTQ populations in the Western Balkans.
That’s just a smattering of USAID and NGO woke waste.
Team Trump also found hundreds of millions of more dollars of unnecessary, frivolous, agenda-driven and even anti-American spending being outlayed in the United Nations, in Somalia, in Niger, for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic, and scores of other sources, where the goal was peacekeeping and the spread of human rights, but the reality was failure because the funds were largely diverted.
Does it ever end?
“It’s just today’s left, you see this all the time,” Jordan said to JNS.
Yes. And the only way to stop it is to stop voting for Democrats.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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