Humanitarians or funders of woke terrorists? DOGE subpanel clashes over USAID

Jim Saksa, CQ-Roll Call on Feb 26, 2025

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At the House Oversight Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee hearing on foreign aid Wednesday, Republicans claimed that the U.S. Agency for International Development had funded “bad actors,” while Democrats begged their colleagues to stop letting starving children die.

In Ethiopia and Sudan, USAID-funded efforts to stem starvation have been thwarted, Texas Democratic Rep. Greg Casar said, despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s waiver for emergency food assistance.

“To my Republican colleagues, DOGE is not going to listen to me, but you can fix this,” Casar pleaded, referring to the White House Department of Government Efficiency that, in the words of Elon Musk, has been feeding USAID “into the wood chipper.”

“Pick up the phone, make a phone call. Y’all can save lives today. Send an email. Please put politics aside. Get the food out of the warehouse. Save these kids’ lives. You can save these kids’ lives,” Casar added.

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., struck a similar note, pointing to “the Trump administration’s attack on AIDS treatment programs.”

Meanwhile, witnesses called by Republicans attacked the embattled agency, suggesting that its funds often wound up in the wrong hands, while DOGE Subcommittee Chair Marjorie Taylor Greene alleged USAID actively worked against American interests.

“Money intended to support democracy is being used as a slush fund for liberal propaganda; supporting terrorists; gender ideology; diversity, equity and inclusion; climate activism; censorship; and regime change,” said Greene, R-Ga.

“If USAID funded terrorism that resulted in the death of Americans, then this committee will be making criminal referrals,” she later added.

The two sides of the DOGE subcommittee spoke past one another at its second hearing, with Republicans on the panel arguing for USAID’s complete dismantling while Democrats alternated between defending its long-standing efforts to exert soft foreign power and deriding Musk, the billionaire government contractor and White House adviser.

“Welcome to the Elon Musk chainsaw massacre,” ranking member Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico said in her opening remarks, holding up a photo of Musk swinging around a chainsaw at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

On social media and in interviews, Musk has presented himself as the head of DOGE, even as the Department of Justice has said he has no formal authority in legal cases challenging its actions.

In her opening remarks, Greene claimed that USAID, long supported by Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the White House, was little more than a front for Democratic Party “globalists” who used it as an “America-last foreign aid slush fund.”

The subcommittee, which Republicans created this Congress with the goal of delivering on the bureaucracy-slashing agenda outlined by Musk, is quickly becoming the site of a larger proxy war as Democrats search for ways to respond to the early weeks of the Trump administration. While some on the left have criticized party leaders for being too restrained, Democrats on the DOGE subcommittee are taking a more combative approach in their rhetoric, seeking to match the confrontational style that Greene is known for.

While USAID was the immediate topic of the hearing, lawmakers painted President Donald Trump’s handling of the agency as emblematic of his broader agenda. Stansbury leveled a series of accusations at the GOP in closing. “They know they’re violating appropriations law, they know that they’re violating federal employment laws, and they know that they are reversing American foreign policy in a way that we have never seen before,” she said. “Donald Trump and his allies are trying to redefine the Constitution by tweet.”

The hearing was interrupted twice by crowd disruptions. Greene directed Capitol Police to remove an elderly woman who apparently made an “obscene gesture” while South Carolina Republican Rep. William R. Timmons IV spoke. The woman left with a smile on her face and without further incident. Shortly after the hearing finished, another person in the crowd yelled an unintelligible question at the panel before being quickly escorted out by Capitol Police officers.

Republicans repeatedly complained that Democratic rhetoric was going too far, alleging they were promoting threats of violence against them. After the first hearing earlier this month, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced a censure resolution against Garcia for telling CNN that Democrats should “bring actual weapons to this bar fight.” The interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, later sent Garcia a letter saying the statement “sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk.”

Later, Stansbury referred to Trump calling himself “king” on Truth Social. “Let me say this to you, Mr. Trump: 250 years ago, the people of this great nation rejected a reckless, abusive king, and we won’t go back,” she said.

Greene responded to that in her closing remarks. “Threats against the president of the United States will not be tolerated by anyone,” she said.

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