On Monday, The Daily Caller posted an article about a very interesting coincidence involving the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) spending cuts (the elimination of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The article reports:
Following the Trump administration’s aggressive restructuring of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a striking pattern emerged across Latin America. Left-wing governments, long dominant in several countries, suddenly stopped winning national elections.
Center-right and conservative presidential candidates have swept to victory in Bolivia, Chile, Honduras, Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia since Trump ordered the cancellation of the bulk of USAID’s programs. While it’s normal to see some political pendulum swinging, the speed and uniformity of the recent shift, coinciding with President Donald Trump neutering USAID’s democracy and governance funding apparatus, raise uncomfortable questions.
The article notes:
A substantial portion of these now-canceled contracts fell under the Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) portfolio. These initiatives funded election support, legislative strengthening, local governance reforms, anti-corruption efforts, independent media, civil society capacity-building, and human rights advocacy. In short, this funding often helps prop up left-leaning social agendas in foreign countries.
Daily Signal’s Tyler O’Neil testified during the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in February 2025 that USAID had “troubling ties to the Left’s dark money network.”
“USAID spent millions propping up the Marxist ideology of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion;’ the unfair and divisive transgender orthodoxy; and the climate alarmist movement,” O’Neil said, adding that “Some of these grants arguably undermine America’s standing in the world.”
We were supplying people with the rope to hang us!
The article concludes:
Traditionally conservative countries don’t typically elect far-left ideological candidates on their own. The U.S. saw the same thing happen here. In just two generations, the U.S. went from an overwhelmingly conservative nation to throwing PRIDE festivals with stripper poles for kids.
This wasn’t an organic shift in culture. It took the full weight of the major institutions (education, government, entertainment, etc.) to make this even somewhat socially acceptable. Thankfully, the pendulum is swinging back to reality. Americans are less tolerant of these behaviors than they were over the last decade, when support for them peaked.
Something structural shifted in Latin America when the Trump administration neutered USAID, and it can’t be ignored. As in the U.S., voter discontent with left-leaning governance found its voice again when it didn’t have to battle upstream against American funding. As a result, right-leaning and populist governments will have a chance to correct some of the damage that has been done.
Ironically, ending USAID payments may be part of the solution to the large numbers of people trying to sneak into America illegally.