9. Agency for International Development (USAID)

Stop the Coup Commentary:

1. General
   • Restructure with Schedule F, task a possible unvetted, unelected team of Christian conservatives at USAID with possibly limited government experience to advance their extremist Christian pro-life foreign policy and foreign aid agenda, aided by private sector and aligned faith groups they fund.
   • Cutting USAID’s global footprint to its pre-Covid 2019 budget level
   • “Deradicalize” agency programs and structures (DEI, gender reforms), and realign to reflect conservative Christian values and ideology.
   •  In foreign policy, make China a USAID priority focus, highlight US free market system
2. Climate proposals
   • Sharply reverse Biden policy: rescind all climate policies from US foreign aid programs, specifically Climate Strategy 2022-2030
   • Shut down USAID’s offices, programs, and directives designed to advance the Paris Climate Agreement
   • Narrowly limit funding to traditional climate mitigation efforts.
     • USAID resources are best deployed to strengthen the resilience of countries that are most vulnerable to climatic shifts, Primorac argues.
     • USAID should stop collaborating with, and funding, progressive foundations,corporations, international institutions, and NGOs that advocate “climate fanaticism”
3. Eliminate funding for DEI policies
   • Eliminate the Chief Diversity Officer position and DEI advisers and committees
   • Cancel the DEI scorecard and dashboard; remove DEI requirements from contract and grant tenders and awards
   • Issue an agency directive to cease promotion of the DEI agenda, including “the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda”
   • Provide staff a confidential medium through which to adjudicate cases of political retaliation that agency or implementing staff suffered during the Biden Administration
   • Eliminate funding for partners that promote DEI practices and consider debarment in egregious cases
   • Return the authority over all civil rights issues at USAID to the agency’s Office of Civil Rights
4. Anti-gender reforms
   • Rename the USAID Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) as the USAID Office of Women, Children, and Families and refocus and realign resources to that office
   • Re-designate the Senior Gender Coordinator to be “an unapologetically pro-life politically appointed” Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families
   • Eliminate over 180 gender advisors and USAID points of contact embedded in Missions and Operating Units throughout the Agency
   • Rescind President Biden’s 2022 Gender Policy and refocus it on Women, Children, and Families
   • Revise the agency’s regulation on “Integrating Gender Equality and Female Empowerment in USAID’s Program Cycle” to remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, in agency publications and policies, and in all agency contracts and grants that include the following terms: “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,” “gender aware,” “gender sensitive,” etc. o also remove references to “abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “sexual and reproductive rights” and controversial sexual education materials
   • The Office of Women, Children, and Families should implement the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Women’s Health and Protection of the Family and prioritize partnerships with local organizations, including faith-based organizations (FBOs)
5. Pro-life [Forced-birth] proposals
   • Reinstate the “Mexico City Policy” (“Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance”) (PLGHA) that denies pro-abortion policies as a condition of receiving US assistance, that Biden had revoked.
     • remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, publications, policies, contracts, and grants that include the terms: “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,” “gender aware,” “gender sensitive,” etc.
     • remove references to “abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “sexual and reproductive rights” and “controversial sexual education materials”
   • Train all USAID staff on the connection between religious freedom and development
   • Integrate religious training into all the agency’s programs, including the five-year Country Development and Coordination Strategies due for updates in 2025
   • Strengthen USAID relationships with local faith-based leaders and build on local programs that serve the poor
   • Congress should appropriate funding to USAID to support persecuted religious minorities in line with Executive Order 13926
   • Appoint a political appointee to be USAID’s Senior Procurement Executive and Director of its Office of Assistance and Acquisition (OAA) in the Bureau of Management (M) – M/OAA – a critical position — to oversee procurement, contracts, and USAID grants for adherence to language and terms of the Policy on Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance
6. PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) should be beefed up AND align with presidential agenda values, which may not be the most effective to education or support key population, including LGBTQ+ individuals, sex workers, women and families, those living in poverty, including displaced, unhoused, and refugee
   • Beefing up the Global Health Bureau’s portfolio
   • Increasing grants to faith-based institutions, among local partners
     • Work to expand networks of private and faith-based health organizations. Aggressively cut back on partnerships with “wasteful, costly, and politicized UN agencies, international NGOs, and Beltway contractors” – those deemed not aligned with a conservative religious values mission
7. WHO, UN: Appointee to coordinate cross-agency efforts accountable financially, and aligned with removing all references to abortions.
   • Resize and repurpose USAID’s humanitarian aid portfolio to “restore its original purpose of providing emergency short-term relief, prepare vulnerable communities for transition, and do no harm….” To do this:
     • Require USAID and the State Department to devise country-based exit strategies that term-limit the duration of humanitarian responses and transition funding from emergency to development projects
     • Transfer away from large awards to large, “corrupt” UN agencies, global NGOs, and contractors to local, especially faith-based, entities operating on the ground
   • Move away from a foreign aid model to one that promotes private-sector solutions to development problems and ends the need for future foreign aid
   • Project 2025’s legal teams should prepare to help faith-based groups access the existing USAID pie. To do this:
     • Appoint a “commanding team of Schedule C attorneys in the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) to issue clear guidance on the eligibility of faith- based organizations for USAID funding within weeks of the inauguration
8. Other proposals:
   • On ‘Day One,’ USAID should halt all agency-wide training and put in place modules reflecting the new Administration’s policies
   • On Schedule F with the Excepted Service: Make USAID “one of the agencies to pilot-test a reinstated Executive Order 13957,16 which created a Schedule F within the Excepted Service:
     • This would allow USAID to “aggressively recruit and place candidates into term-limited positions under Schedule A of the Excepted Service (especially veterans)”
     • To execute this reform, the White House Office of Presidential Personnel would allow the USAID Administrator to explore (with the Office of Personnel Management), if USAID could hire personnel under both the Administratively Determined authority and Schedule C of the Excepted Service
   • Assure political appointees in the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs (combined with hires under Schedule A) review and edit USAID’s public-facing web pages and social media accounts to eliminate material not conforming to Administration’s policies
   • Shift USAID policy-making authority from the Bureau for Policy, Planning to the Office of Budget and Resource Management (BRM), located in the Office of the Administrator, and staffed by political appointees
     • A renamed Office of Budget, Policy, and Resource Management (BPRM) would then oversee USAID’s policy system, the Automated Directives System (ADS), including policy amendments and reviews to reflect Administration’s viewpoint
   • Make rapid staffing of key positions at the Bureau for Democracy, Development, and Innovation (DDI) a high priority. The DDI oversees USAID’s non-health, non-humanitarian funding
     • Carry out a rapid revision of policies under DDI responsibility and direct new funds to ethnic and religious minorities and faith-based organizations