How Democrats used NGOs to end-run voters: A ‘parallel government.’
I’m often darkly amused by common examples of inherently false nomenclature: “Jumbo shrimp.” “Government ethics.” “Unbiased news media.”
And one of our society’s biggest falsehoods-in-a-name: “Non-governmental organizations.”
Until recently these groups have been widely seen as international, idealized versions of domestic non-profits.
We thought of them as do-good organizations set up by people who really care — about the environment, or poor people, or children, or freedom.
We imagined they raise money, help the downtrodden, send out press releases and engage in other private activities to promote the causes they favor.
Trump is deworming Washington — now to keep the parasites out for good
They’re not government entities, we thought — the very name says that — but a species of private charity whose good intentions deserve the benefit of any doubt.
Perhaps some NGOs do operate in that way.
But as we’ve learned recently, partly as the result of Department of Government Efficiency digging, many “non-governmental” entities are really just fronts for government activities that Americans would never stand for if Washington attempted them directly.
For example, America’s border crisis was funded in large part by Joe Biden’s government, which sent large sums of money in the form of grants to various NGOs that helped train migrants on how to get to the United States — and how to claim asylum when they arrived.
NGOs helped the illegal immigrants with expenses on their way, and then provided legal resources and more than $22 billion worth of assistance for them — including cash for cars, home loans and business start-ups — once they got in.
This was US taxpayer money, laundered through “independent” organizations that served to promote goals contrary to US law, but consistent with the policy preferences of the Biden administration.
Under President Donald Trump, this funding halted — and, unsurprisingly, the flow of illegal immigrants did, too.
Likewise, the weird wave of sudden global enthusiasm for “trans rights” and novel ideas about gender turns out to have been largely funded by the US government through USAID grants.
Federally funded NGOs spent millions on everything from a transgender opera in Colombia, to a campaign promoting “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean,” to an LGBTQ community center in Bratislava, Slovakia.
As data expert Jennica Pounds (“DataRepublican” on X) put it, “Over the last few months, we’ve come to a realization that should have landed much harder: NGOs weren’t just adjacent to government.”
They were tools of government, “the parallel government,” Pounds wrote, specifically doing things that Washington bureaucrats knew full well they couldn’t easily do themselves.
The big surprise is that we’re so surprised this has been going on.
The lack of accountability also made NGOs a perfect conduit for funneling money to Washington insiders.
It’s been a profitable cycle: Politicians fund agencies; agencies make grants to NGOs; NGOs hire politicians’ wives and offspring — and sometimes the politicians themselves, once they’ve left office.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), for example, voted to award $14.2 million to Ocean Conservancy since 2008, Fox News reported — and the NGO, in turn, paid his wife Sandra Whitehouse and her firm $2.7 million for consulting work.
No wonder the Washington establishment went crazy when Trump and DOGE started cutting off such funds.
Continue reading “”
