No more blank checks for woke foreign aid

OPINION:

On Thursday, Congress had the chance to do something rare in Washington: stop sending taxpayer dollars to programs that undermine American values.

Enter PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Once hailed as a humanitarian effort to fight AIDS in Africa, PEPFAR has morphed into a $100-billion-plus foreign aid colossus that funnels U.S. tax dollars to radical LGBTQ and sex worker advocacy abroad.

America First members of the House of Representative voted to rescind it. Now, it’s up to the Senate to send the bill to the president’s desk.

Let’s be clear: The original intent behind PEPFAR, launched by President George W. Bush in 2003, was to combat the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa and the Caribbean. More than 20 years later, however, the mission has drifted. Today, PEPFAR is less about public health and more about woke social engineering, exported at scale with your money.

In 2022 alone, PEPFAR spent $223 million on services for “key populations,” a term that now includes gay men, transgender individuals, sex workers and people in prisons. Of that amount, $19 million went to gay men and men who have sex with men, and another $1.1 million went to transgender individuals. That’s $20 million in one year for foreign programming based on sexual identity.

It’s not just about treatment. PEPFAR openly funds LGBTQ advocacy organizations and supports Pride Month campaigns and groups pushing for transgender health care and activism in Kenya, Nigeria and Congo.

Take LVCT Health in Kenya, a PEPFAR grantee receiving more than $28 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars. LVCT partners with the Bar Hostess Empowerment and Support Program, which describes itself as “an organization for and by all women working in bars and sex workers in Kenya.” These are the kinds of groups U.S. taxpayers are funding while we face homelessness, a border crisis and out-of-control inflation at home. Many of these recipients aren’t just treating patients; they are actively advancing gender ideology, transgender-inclusive health protocols and sex work normalization as “equity priorities.”

PEPFAR has long had bipartisan protection, especially from Republicans eager to preserve Mr. Bush’s foreign policy legacy. However, clinging to the past shouldn’t blind us to the present reality: PEPFAR is no longer a neutral health initiative. It’s a tool for the international left.

In 2024, at the start of Pride Month, PEPFAR celebrated its alignment with LGBTQ causes. In its own words: “PEPFAR is deepening KP support by accelerating differentiated HIV services and bolstering KP-led orgs for effective HIV responses.” Translation? American tax dollars are being used to empower foreign LGBTQ organizations to shape HIV policy in their countries with U.S. diplomatic and financial backing.

For too long, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department have used this approach to promote their agendas under the banner of “health equity,” supporting groups that blur the line between public health and political advocacy.

The average American doesn’t want their hard-earned income funding sex worker advocacy in Nairobi or trans-inclusive clinics in Kampala. At some point, we must ask: Whom is our government serving? Are the families in Ohio and Oklahoma struggling with the cost of groceries, or are international nongovernmental organizations throwing Pride parades with U.S. aid money?

Rescinding PEPFAR funding isn’t about cruelty or turning our backs on global health. It’s about restoring sanity, sovereignty and stewardship over our tax dollars.

If Congress can’t bring itself to stop funding transgender clinics in foreign prisons, what can it do?

It’s time for the Senate to reject the tired, emotional blackmail from the global health lobby and stand firm: No more blank checks for woke foreign aid. Rescind PEPFAR. Put America first.

• Ashley Hayek is the president of America First Works.