Business
‘Dark Truth’ Of USAID: House Lawmakers Spotlight Biden’s Foreign Aid Abuses In Fiery Oversight Hearing

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Adam Pack
House Republicans zeroed in on the Biden administration’s use of foreign aid to bankroll left-wing causes that undermine American interests across the world in a heated oversight hearing Wednesday.
House Republicans, led by Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Subcommittee chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, sought testimony from experts to outline how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) advanced a left-wing policy agenda during the Biden administration that in turn alienated U.S. allies and made the world less safe for Americans. Democratic lawmakers struggled to defend the worst abuses of USAID funding, such as pushing far-left ideologies on countries with conservative cultures and indirectly financing terrorist groups.
House Oversight Republicans’ hearing on foreign aid comes after President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has effectively dismantled USAID and left its future in limbo. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday the Trump administration cut roughly $60 billion in USAID and State Department grants and multi-year awards that it determined did not align with American interests.
Greene also said the DOGE Subcommittee will consider recommending investigations and criminal referrals to those it believes have abused foreign aid. The subcommittee is expected to release a post-hearing review on USAID’s foreign aid abuses next week.
“USAID has been transformed into an America-last foreign aid slush fund to prop up extremist groups, implement censorship campaigns and interfere in foreign elections to force regime change around the world,” Greene said in her opening remarks. “That is the dark truth about USAID.”
“Taxpayer funds have literally been used to undermine U.S. interests and counter American foreign policy goals under the guise of foreign aid,” Greene continued. “This is unacceptable, and the American people agree.”
More than 60% of Americans believe that U.S. foreign aid is being “wasted on corruption or administration fees,” according to a survey published by the Financial Times on Feb. 17.
Democrats appeared unable to confront the worst USAID abuses that occurred under Biden, and at times, sought to deflect attention to unrelated topics.
After Greene outlined how USAID funding had been funneled to terrorist groups, Democratic New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury, the top Democratic lawmaker on the subcommittee, began her opening remarks with the statement, “Welcome to the Elon Musk chainsaw massacre.”
Stansbury then proceeded to rail against Musk for weighing into Germany’s recent parliamentary elections, Vice President J.D. Vance scolding European elites for abandoning core civil liberties and the president’s recent comments on the Russia-Ukraine War.
Democratic lawmakers’ witness Noam Unger, director of the Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, struggled to answer a question posed by Texas Republican Rep. Brandon Gill if spending more than $3 million “for being LGBTQ” in the Caribbean aligned with American values.
Stansbury and other Democratic lawmakers on the panel appeared to have learned few lessons about USAID’s abuses. Stansbury notably defended former USAID director Samantha Power’s push to turn the department into a de-facto “climate agency” and attempted to get the experts testifying to agree that USAID should continue to push LGBTQ rights on the rest of the world.
“If we want to do counter China, there’s nothing more that has alienated billions of people than pushing an ideology that they resent,” Max Primorac, who served as USAID’s acting chief operating officer, senior agency vetting official and regulatory reform officer in the first Trump administration, told Stansbury in response. “None of this is counter China. This is counter America.”
“A resounding ‘yes’ that foreign aid can be a powerful tool of diplomacy to promote freedom, prosperity and peace in accordance with our national interest and our values, but not as an instrument of progressive imperialism,” Primorac continued. “Aid officials must ensure that every single foreign aid program can pass the Middle America smell test on waste, fraud and abuse.”
Primorac previously told the Daily Caller that USAID’s left-wing agenda under former President Joe Biden weakened the United States’ influence abroad.
Experts also tore into the Biden administration’s use of foreign aid for damaging the United States’ standing in the world. Biden notably left office with an increasingly unstable world stage, with ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East.
“It [USAID] has been doing harm while spending more on aid,” Primorac told lawmakers.
“There is more world poverty and hunger today, more political instability, and developing countries are more beholden to our adversaries.”
“The fiduciary duty of our aid officials over the past four years has done tremendous damage to foreign aid’s credibility and America’s standing in the world,” Primorac continued.
Despite Trump moving to cut the vast majority of USAID contracts and shut down the agency, most lawmakers on the panel — Republican and Democrat — still believe the U.S. government should be doling out some foreign aid to counter China’s influence in developing countries and provide relief in humanitarian crises. But foreign aid practices must align with American interests as outlined in the president’s executive order on foreign aid, according to Republican lawmakers.
“That’s just hyperbolic nonsense that we do not recognize that there’s a role to play for the United States in the federal aid space,” Republican Texas Rep. Pat Fallon said Wednesday. “But what we want to expose is $164 million going to radical organizations — $122 million of it to organizations that have aligned, or at least tied to terrorism.”
A DCNF analysis found that more than $1.3 billion taxpayer dollars doled out by the Biden administration ended up in terrorist groups’ coffers.
The hearing was disrupted on two occasions by left-wing protestors in the crowd. An elderly woman was removed after making an “obscene gesture” to an unnamed lawmaker while South Carolina Republican Rep. William Timmons spoke. Another person attending the hearing was promptly removed by police after shouting at lawmakers to stop DOGE.
Greene told the crowd that private individuals, including those in the crowd, were free to fund far-left causes around the world, but no longer would the government be bankrolling left-wing activism on the taxpayer’s dime.
Business
Hudson’s Bay Bid Raises Red Flags Over Foreign Influence

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
A billionaire’s retail ambition might also serve Beijing’s global influence strategy. Canada must look beyond the storefront
When B.C. billionaire Weihong Liu publicly declared interest in acquiring Hudson’s Bay stores, it wasn’t just a retail story—it was a signal flare in an era where foreign investment increasingly doubles as geopolitical strategy.
The Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670, remains an enduring symbol of Canadian heritage. While its commercial relevance has waned in recent years, its brand is deeply etched into the national identity. That’s precisely why any potential acquisition, particularly by an investor with strong ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), deserves thoughtful, measured scrutiny.
Liu, a prominent figure in Vancouver’s Chinese-Canadian business community, announced her interest in acquiring several Hudson’s Bay stores on Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (RedNote), expressing a desire to “make the Bay great again.” Though revitalizing a Canadian retail icon may seem commendable, the timing and context of this bid suggest a broader strategic positioning—one that aligns with the People’s Republic of China’s increasingly nuanced approach to economic diplomacy, especially in countries like Canada that sit at the crossroads of American and Chinese spheres of influence.
This fits a familiar pattern. In recent years, we’ve seen examples of Chinese corporate involvement in Canadian cultural and commercial institutions, such as Huawei’s past sponsorship of Hockey Night in Canada. Even as national security concerns were raised by allies and intelligence agencies, Huawei’s logo remained a visible presence during one of the country’s most cherished broadcasts. These engagements, though often framed as commercially justified, serve another purpose: to normalize Chinese brand and state-linked presence within the fabric of Canadian identity and daily life.
What we may be witnessing is part of a broader PRC strategy to deepen economic and cultural ties with Canada at a time when U.S.-China relations remain strained. As American tariffs on Canadian goods—particularly in aluminum, lumber and dairy—have tested cross-border loyalties, Beijing has positioned itself as an alternative economic partner. Investments into cultural and heritage-linked assets like Hudson’s Bay could be seen as a symbolic extension of this effort to draw Canada further into its orbit of influence, subtly decoupling the country from the gravitational pull of its traditional allies.
From my perspective, as a professional with experience in threat finance, economic subversion and political leveraging, this does not necessarily imply nefarious intent in each case. However, it does demand a conscious awareness of how soft power is exercised through commercial influence, particularly by state-aligned actors. As I continue my research in international business law, I see how investment vehicles, trade deals and brand acquisitions can function as instruments of foreign policy—tools for shaping narratives, building alliances and shifting influence over time.
Canada must neither overreact nor overlook these developments. Open markets and cultural exchange are vital to our prosperity and pluralism. But so too is the responsibility to preserve our sovereignty—not only in the physical sense, but in the cultural and institutional dimensions that shape our national identity.
Strategic investment review processes, cultural asset protections and greater transparency around foreign corporate ownership can help strike this balance. We should be cautious not to allow historically Canadian institutions to become conduits, however unintentionally, for geopolitical leverage.
In a world where power is increasingly exercised through influence rather than force, safeguarding our heritage means understanding who is buying—and why.
Scott McGregor is the managing partner and CEO of Close Hold Intelligence Consulting.
Bjorn Lomborg
Net zero’s cost-benefit ratio is CRAZY high

From the Fraser Institute
The best academic estimates show that over the century, policies to achieve net zero would cost every person on Earth the equivalent of more than CAD $4,000 every year. Of course, most people in poor countries cannot afford anywhere near this. If the cost falls solely on the rich world, the price-tag adds up to almost $30,000 (CAD) per person, per year, over the century.
Canada has made a legal commitment to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. Back in 2015, then-Prime Minister Trudeau promised that climate action will “create jobs and economic growth” and the federal government insists it will create a “strong economy.” The truth is that the net zero policy generates vast costs and very little benefit—and Canada would be better off changing direction.
Achieving net zero carbon emissions is far more daunting than politicians have ever admitted. Canada is nowhere near on track. Annual Canadian CO₂ emissions have increased 20 per cent since 1990. In the time that Trudeau was prime minister, fossil fuel energy supply actually increased over 11 per cent. Similarly, the share of fossil fuels in Canada’s total energy supply (not just electricity) increased from 75 per cent in 2015 to 77 per cent in 2023.
Over the same period, the switch from coal to gas, and a tiny 0.4 percentage point increase in the energy from solar and wind, has reduced annual CO₂ emissions by less than three per cent. On that trend, getting to zero won’t take 25 years as the Liberal government promised, but more than 160 years. One study shows that the government’s current plan which won’t even reach net-zero will cost Canada a quarter of a million jobs, seven per cent lower GDP and wages on average $8,000 lower.
Globally, achieving net-zero will be even harder. Remember, Canada makes up about 1.5 per cent of global CO₂ emissions, and while Canada is already rich with plenty of energy, the world’s poor want much more energy.
In order to achieve global net-zero by 2050, by 2030 we would already need to achieve the equivalent of removing the combined emissions of China and the United States — every year. This is in the realm of science fiction.
The painful Covid lockdowns of 2020 only reduced global emissions by about six per cent. To achieve net zero, the UN points out that we would need to have doubled those reductions in 2021, tripled them in 2022, quadrupled them in 2023, and so on. This year they would need to be sextupled, and by 2030 increased 11-fold. So far, the world hasn’t even managed to start reducing global carbon emissions, which last year hit a new record.
Data from both the International Energy Agency and the US Energy Information Administration give added cause for skepticism. Both organizations foresee the world getting more energy from renewables: an increase from today’s 16 per cent to between one-quarter to one-third of all primary energy by 2050. But that is far from a transition. On an optimistically linear trend, this means we’re a century or two away from achieving 100 percent renewables.
Politicians like to blithely suggest the shift away from fossil fuels isn’t unprecedented, because in the past we transitioned from wood to coal, from coal to oil, and from oil to gas. The truth is, humanity hasn’t made a real energy transition even once. Coal didn’t replace wood but mostly added to global energy, just like oil and gas have added further additional energy. As in the past, solar and wind are now mostly adding to our global energy output, rather than replacing fossil fuels.
Indeed, it’s worth remembering that even after two centuries, humanity’s transition away from wood is not over. More than two billion mostly poor people still depend on wood for cooking and heating, and it still provides about 5 per cent of global energy.
Like Canada, the world remains fossil fuel-based, as it delivers more than four-fifths of energy. Over the last half century, our dependence has declined only slightly from 87 per cent to 82 per cent, but in absolute terms we have increased our fossil fuel use by more than 150 per cent. On the trajectory since 1971, we will reach zero fossil fuel use some nine centuries from now, and even the fastest period of recent decline from 2014 would see us taking over three centuries.
Global warming will create more problems than benefits, so achieving net-zero would see real benefits. Over the century, the average person would experience benefits worth $700 (CAD) each year.
But net zero policies will be much more expensive. The best academic estimates show that over the century, policies to achieve net zero would cost every person on Earth the equivalent of more than CAD $4,000 every year. Of course, most people in poor countries cannot afford anywhere near this. If the cost falls solely on the rich world, the price-tag adds up to almost $30,000 (CAD) per person, per year, over the century.
Every year over the 21st century, costs would vastly outweigh benefits, and global costs would exceed benefits by over CAD 32 trillion each year.
We would see much higher transport costs, higher electricity costs, higher heating and cooling costs and — as businesses would also have to pay for all this — drastic increases in the price of food and all other necessities. Just one example: net-zero targets would likely increase gas costs some two-to-four times even by 2030, costing consumers up to $US52.6 trillion. All that makes it a policy that just doesn’t make sense—for Canada and for the world.
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