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USAID gave college scholarship to Islamic terror mastermind

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by Frank Holmes, reporter

Democrats and Deep State analysts never get tired of stirring up blood libels against President Donald Trump. But a renowned investigative journalist just exposed how their policies literally fueled the rage and ideological fervor that continues to kill thousands of Americans around the world.

The latest assault on the president claims his decision to defund USAID “killed people” and will soon kill millions of people, including several million newborns. But the facts show, pulling the plug on the Left’s global slush fund probably saved lives—because the program illegally paid the college tuition of a now-dead al-Qaeda mastermind.

The Democrats are going out of their way to dodge responsibility for funding the deadliest terror group in U.S. history, so they’re pointing the finger at President Trump and Elon Musk.

“U.S.A.I.D. Cuts Killed People. That’s the Truth,” claimed New York Times opinion writer Nicholas Kristoff on Wednesday.

After exposing its series of wasteful and radical left-wing grants, President Donald Trump abolished the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for good last July, rolling some of its programs into the State Department.

Democrats have reacted like President Trump dropped a nuclear bomb on Uganda, producing highly questionable statistics to pin millions of deaths on his decision to drain the Swamp.

“Some 600,000 people have died in the past year after being cut off of lifesaving health and food aid provided by USAID – about two thirds of them children,” claimed a press release from Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., in January.

That wasn’t far enough for New York Democrat Gregory Meeks. “Millions of preventable deaths will have occurred as a direct result of Trump’s evisceration of USAID,” alleged Meeks in the same press release. A study in The Lancet claims 14 million people by 2030, including 4.5 million among children under five.

Democrats even insinuated that cutting USAID puts blood on every American’s hands.

“Presidents can save lives…Donald Trump, aided by a band of loyalists and ideologues, has chosen instead to inflict death and disease and starvation on the world’s most vulnerable,” said Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, on the Senate floor last July.

Thanks to President Trump, Schatz said, all Americans “are causing death now. We are spreading disease now. We are deepening starvation now.”

Conservatives took a chainsaw to the Left’s baseless allegations.

“If there were mass deaths due to USAID, when are they? I would like to call the bereaved parents!” said Elon Musk, whose leadership in DOGE helped defund USAID. “Nobody died is the truth, but a lot of fraud, funding bioweapons and foreign government interference was stopped,” and any funding that showed “some chance of doing good remain in place and were transferred to the State Department.”

Preliminary statistics show no spike in African mortality after the USAID defunding in 2025, compared to 2024. AIDS-related deaths actually fell 30,000, according to the numbers provided. But experts say there’s another reason fewer poor people in the Third World are dying.

“Deaths in Africa DECREASED after USAID funding was cut, because they’re no longer able to push for violent revolution to install leftist regimes!” wrote Musk on Monday.

But there’s a much more significant reason deaths may fall: USAID actually funded a top al-Qaeda terrorist.

USAID paid the college tuition for al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki (sometimes spelled Aulaqi). Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge uncovered documents showing al-Awlaki lied and claimed  he was born in Yemen so that USAID would make him a J-1 scholar.

Al-Awlaki was actually a U.S. citizen from Las Cruces, New Mexico. But his deception plus Democrat-backed policies meant that taxpayers furnished al-Awlaki “full funding” to get his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Colorado State University in the 1990s.

Once authorities caught on, they issued an arrest warrant for fraud in 2002. Al-Awlaki even admitted to “deliberate falsehood”…but prosecutors decided to let his case slide.

What’s the worst that could happen?

“Aulaqi would later develop close ties with several 9/11 hijackers and attain leadership status in AQ’s Yemen affiliate,” wrote Catherine Herridge. “Aulaqi was the godfather of the digital jihad that leveraged his writings and the web to radicalize Americans to AQ’s cause.”

After Democrats forced Americans to pay for al-Awlaki’s college education, President Barack Obama ordered a drone strike to kill the U.S. citizen in 2011.

First, Americans had to fund a terrorist mastermind’s academic pursuits. Then, Americans had to pay to kill the man who was so dangerous that he could not be taken back to the U.S. and given a trial, according to Obama.

Herridge, a well-connected reporter with sources throughout the government, had already exposed the U.S. government for letting al-Awlawki threaten Americans’ safety at home and abroad.

The Horn told you last June that Herridge complained of the Deep State covering its tracks by abusing the term “prohibited access.” Officials would embed code into D.C.’s computer files falsely claiming no records exist for certain topics they don’t want reporters prying into through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. “Over a decade ago, our FOIAs about the American cleric Anwar Awlaki, an overlooked key player in 9/11 who had multiple, confirmed contacts with the FBI went nowhere,” revealed Herridge at the time.

The latest revelations add fuel to claims that the CIA used USAID to promote left-wing political causes around the world.

The Horn told you last February that USAID grants were ideologically motivated, extremist, or just wasteful, including such grants as:

  • $43 million on a gas station in Afghanistan that had no customers
  • $1.5 million to promote LGBT Jamaicans
  • $4 million for trans Serbians
  • $5.5 million for gay rights in Uganda
  • $17 million for Vietnam “inclusion”
  • $25 million to promote “green transportation” in Georgia
  • $1 million for Arab and Jewish photographers
  • $8 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid “binary-gendered language”
  • $122 million that ended up in the hands of terrorists.

But the craziness isn’t all overseas. Quite a bit of USAID funding impacts U.S. politics.

The influential Fake News website Politico got caught red-handed taking $24,000 from USAID.

USAID funded the Municipal Energy Reform Program shortly after MERP cut a business deal with Burisma Holdings Ltd., the Ukrainian firm that employed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

The Democrats’ first impeachment of President Donald Trump relied on reporting from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, funded with your tax dollars by USAID.

“The least surprising thing ever is watching Democrats defend the CIA front known as USAID, deceitfully depicting it as just some nice organization that wants to help,” said Glenn Greenwald.

But the greatest act of chutzpah may be accusing your opponents of taking lives while supporting a program that stirs up violent revolutions and funds terrorists.

From defunding programs that aid terrorists, to closing the border to human smugglers, to deporting every last illegal alien trafficked into the country by narcoterrorists and criminal syndicates, an untold number of lives would be saved if Americans ignore the Democrats’ whining and focus on putting America First this Fourth of July.

About the Author

Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”