Business
90% of Ukraine news outlets get funding from USAID: new report

From LifeSiteNews
By Matt Lamb
USAID, targeted by Elon Musk and Donald Trump for cuts, is a heavy funder of news outlets in Ukraine, according to a new report. The agency has come under scrutiny for wasteful and ideological projects.
The United States Aid for International Development (USAID) provides funds to 90 percent of Ukrainian news outlets, according to a new report from the Columbia Journalism Review and Reporters Without Borders.
While much focus has been on USAID and other federal entities subscribing to news outlets such as Politico, a broader issue may be taxpayers paying for news coverage in foreign countries.
Working off data from Reporters Without Borders, the Columbia Journalism Review reported that “USAID had boasted of supporting more than six thousand journalists, around seven hundred independent newsrooms, and nearly three hundred media-focused civil society groups in thirty or so countries.”
The Trump administration reportedly froze $268 million for these endeavors.
“RSF also noted the harsh effect on journalism in Ukraine, where 90 percent of news organizations rely on USAID funding, some very heavily,” the Journalism Review reported.
The United States has spent nearly $66 billion on direct military assistance to Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia. Taxpayers have sent another $120 billion or so to the country in other foreign aid, according to an inspector general report current as of September 30, 2024.
The journalism groups released the reports ostensibly to defend U.S. funding of outlets.
On a related issue, the Trump administration is also cutting off taxpayer-funded subscriptions that government employees set up with news outlets.
“I can confirm that the more than $8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers’ dime will no longer be happening,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference yesterday.
Politico itself had not received $8 million in subscriptions, but the press secretary, who said she learned of the issue right before the briefing, was referring to outlets in general.
“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,” she said.
She stated further:
Again, this is a whole-of-government effort to ensure that we are going line by line when it comes to the federal government’s books. And this president and his team are making decisions across the board on ‘Do these receipts serve the interests of the American people? Is this a good use of the American taxpayers’ money? If it is not, that funding will no longer be sent abroad and American taxpayers will be seeing significant savings because of that effort.
Conservatives celebrated the news.
“The Federal Government is not a good steward of your tax dollars,” Josh Tanner, an Idaho state representative, wrote on X. “They spent $8 Million on propaganda media. This is even more of a reason for Idaho tax dollars to be accounted for, applied appropriately, and reduced where necessary. The Fed has failed, our state must succeed.”
“Even if the govt money to Politico wasn’t an outright grant, providing $8 Million in taxpayers funds for ‘subscriptions’ to a super Lefty publication is just absurd and abusive to hard-working Americans!” conservative commentator Steve Cortes wrote.
A payroll issue with Politico‘s payroll was initially blamed on the funding freeze, though the company said it was a “technical error” that created the problem.
USAID under scrutiny, uses tax dollars to promote DEI around the world
The Trump administration has closed, at least temporarily, USAID. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now the administrator of the agency, which has funded a variety of ideological projects across the globe.
“USAID has a history of ignoring [the national interest of the United States] and deciding that they’re a global charity. These are not donor dollars, these are taxpayer dollars,” Secretary Rubio said recently.
Leavitt highlighted some of the ideological and wasteful projects funded through this agency, including “$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workforce.”
The agency has also been used to pressure conservative, poorer countries into adopting pro-abortion policies, as LifeSiteNews previously reported.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce highlighted other wasteful projects in a post on X.
She listed projects the freeze had stopped, including “$16 million in unjustified funding for institutional contractors in the gender development offices,” “$4 million to unjustified funding for the Center for Climate-Positive Development,” and “$600,000 to fund technical assistance for family planning in Latin America.”
Automotive
Dark Web Tesla Doxxers Used Widely-Popular Parking App Data To Find Targets, Analysis Shows

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Thomas English
A dark web doxxing website targeting Tesla owners and allies of Elon Musk appears to be compiled from hacked data originally stolen from a massive ParkMobile app breach in 2021, according to records obtained by a data privacy group.
The site, known as DogeQuest, first appeared in March and publishes names, home addresses, contact details and other personal information tied to Tesla drivers and DOGE staff. Marketed as a hub for anti-Musk “creative expressions of protest,” the platform has been linked to real-world vandalism and remains live on the dark web. Federal investigations into DogeQuest are already underway, the New York Post first reported.
“If you’re on the hunt for a Tesla to unleash your artistic flair with a spray can, just step outside — no map needed! At DOGEQUEST, we believe in empowering creative expressions of protest that you can execute from the comfort of your own home,” the surface-web DogeQuest site reads. “DOGEQUEST neither endorses nor condemns any actions.”

A screenshot of the DogeQuest surface website captured on April 3, 2025. (Captured by Thomas English/Daily Caller News Foundation)
ObscureIQ, a data privacy group, compiled a breakdown of the data — obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation — and determined 98.2% of records used to populate the site matched individuals affected by the 2021 ParkMobile breach.
Encouraging destruction of Teslas throughout the country is extreme domestic terrorism!! https://t.co/8TCNIbrQxA
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2025
DogeQuest originally appeared as a surface web doxxing hub, encouraging vandalism of Teslas and displaying names, addresses, contact details and, in some cases, employment information for roughly 1,700 individuals. The site used stolen ParkMobile records along with data purchased from brokers, flagging anyone who had a Tesla listed in their vehicle registration profile, according to ObscureIQ’s analysis.
The platform — now operating as “DogeQuest Unleashed” via a .onion dark web address — has also published personal details of high-value targets including senior military officials, federal employees and private sector executives in Silicon Valley. A spreadsheet reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation indicates several individuals targeted work areas like cybersecurity, defense contracting, public health and diplomatic policy. DOGE staff and their families appear prominently throughout the data.

A screenshot of DogeQuest’s surface website, captured on April 3, 2025. (Captured by Thomas English/Daily Caller News Foundation)
No other reporting has yet tied DogeQuest directly to the ParkMobile breach, which impacted over 21 million users in 2021. The company, which facilitates cashless parking across the U.S., quietly disclosed the breach in April of that year, admitting that “basic user information” had been accessed. ObscureIQ’s research shows that exposed data included email addresses, license plate numbers and phone numbers — enough to triangulate identity when paired with commercial data brokers.
The company agreed to a $32 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit stemming from the data breach. The lawsuit alleged that ParkMobile failed to secure its Amazon Web Services cloud storage, allowing access to the data. Although payment data were reportedly not compromised, plaintiffs argued the exposed information still posed serious privacy risks — a claim now reinforced by its use in the DogeQuest doxxing campaign.
Despite federal attention, the site has proven difficult to keep offline, as the dark web mirror incorporates anonymized hosting methods, frustrating law enforcement takedown efforts.
The Department of Justice charged three suspects last week linked to physical attacks on Tesla vehicles, charging stations and dealerships across multiple states, though it has not publicly confirmed any link between those suspects and DogeQuest. Meanwhile, the FBI has acknowledged it is “actively working” on both the doxxing campaign and a parallel rise in swatting incidents affecting DOGE affiliates.
Business
Will Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs End In Disaster Or Prosperity?

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By J.D. Foster
“Liberation Day” has come. So what does it mean? Beats the hell out of me.
What we know is that President Trump’s avalanche of tariffs was to hit a peak on April 2; not end, mind you; not necessarily “the” peak, as more could be on the way; but a peak.
No Trump policy more completely breaks with America’s past than his “beautiful” tariffs on just about everything coming into the United States from just about anywhere.
Will this new policy liberate American manufacturing from foreign shackles? Will it usher in a new era of prosperity, keeping in mind the United States had for many years the consistently best-performing economy in the industrialized world, even overcoming the many inane obstacles erected by the Biden-Harris Administration?
Or will it leave the United States isolated, friendless, and weakened?
The correct answer at this point is no one knows, not even the bloviating talking heads on TV confidently predicting demise or Shangri-la.
Think of it this way. Suppose you’re a restaurant chef and a woman hands you a new recipe. Her father turns 75 soon and they want to have a party at the restaurant. The recipe is for the father’s favorite dish, one her mother made for years.
The recipe looks old, with odd ingredients and processes you’ve not seen before. Now judge it as a chef.
You can’t. Even as you start chopping and dicing, mixing ingredients as instructed, you’re not too sure how this is going to turn out. You have to wait until the dish is on the plate and taste it.
That’s the case with Trump’s tariffs. How will this all turn out? It’s too soon to tell.
The stock market sure doesn’t like it, but why should it? The investor class doesn’t understand this any better than you do. What they do understand is this new policy has upended assumptions and created enormous new uncertainties. We know that dish as those ingredients are always good for a big pullback.
Much of the confusion arises because we don’t know the underlying policy and likely this uncertainty is intentional. Trump likes keeping his counterparts, in this case our trading partners, guessing. If it means Americans are confused for a bit, Trump’s cool with that. Breaking eggs to make an omelette. It will pass and America will be great again afterward. Bon appetite.
If the core policy is to erect massive and mostly permanent tariff walls behind which American firms can hide, then we know how this will turn out: America, meet the dustbin of history.
If the core policy is to force our trading partners to deal with America fairly by reducing their trade barriers after which Trump will remove his tariffs, then this could turn out very well. Tariffs (and non-tariff barriers) in the U.S. and those of our trading partners would fall, reinvigorating the free trade that has energized prosperity for decades.
Which is it? Walls and doom or freedom and prosperity? Again, too early to tell.
Whatever else Trump does in his second term, these tariffs will define his presidency, akin in consequence to Ronald Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts and Joe Biden’s inflation.
Trump in his second term clearly lives by the saying, “go bold or go home.” He’s got “bold” down pat. We will see over the next year or so whether he and the Republicans go home. Has he liberated Democrats from any fear of Republicans in the mid-terms or in 2028, or he’s liberated America from any fear of Democratic socialism and wokism returning in our lifetimes. The chips are all-in. Soon we will see the cards. Uncertainty, indeed.
JD Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.
-
Automotive1 day ago
Auto giant shuts down foreign plants as Trump moves to protect U.S. industry
-
Energy22 hours ago
Trump Takes More Action To Get Government Out Of LNG’s Way
-
2025 Federal Election15 hours ago
Mainstream Media Election Coverage: If the Election Was a NHL Game, the Ice Would be Constantly Tilted Up and to the Left
-
COVID-192 days ago
Trump’s new NIH head fires top Fauci allies and COVID shot promoters, including Fauci’s wife
-
Courageous Discourse2 days ago
Europe Had 127,350 Cases of Measles in 2024
-
Health21 hours ago
Selective reporting on measles outbreaks is a globalist smear campaign against Trump administration.
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Highly touted policies the Liberal government didn’t actually implement
-
Crime2 days ago
Europol takes out one of the largest pedophile networks in the world with almost 2 million users