Elon Musk called it the “biggest theft of taxpayer money ever.”
George Soros’ hands are all over it.
And this is how taxpayer-funded NGOs are ripping off American taxpayers.
Americans shook their heads in disbelief on Tuesday when Donald Trump listed off some of the wasteful spending uncovered by Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The money from a $44 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund operated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
$8 million to push the LGBT agenda on a small country in Africa, $10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique, $20 million for Arab Sesame Street in the Middle East, and $8 million to make mice transgendered were just a few of the wasteful spending Donald Trump highlighted.
Donald Trump revealed that a newly-created “decarbonization of homes committee” received a whopping $1.9 BILLION in taxpayer dollars.
The committee is headed up by failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate and ballot-harvesting chief Stacey Abrams.
John Kennedy created the USAID in 1961 to serve as a vehicle for efficiently distributing foreign aid around the world.
But as DOGE’s audit showed, the USAID became a vehicle for funneling billions of dollars into the coffers of organizations and groups that promote the Left’s woke agenda overseas.
Bigtime.
The Democrat government-funded NGO scam might be the biggest theft of taxpayer money ever. https://t.co/JXLVeQojwn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2025
Donald Trump shut down USAID and transferred the necessary components into the State Department for Marco Rubio to oversee.
However, there’s much more to the USAID scandal than just billions of dollars in wasteful spending overseas.
Taxpayer-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
During a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Elon Musk blew the lid on how “government-funded NGOs are a way to do things that would be illegal if they were the government, but are somehow made legal if the money is sent to a so-called nonprofit.”
When Elon Musk called it the “biggest scam ever,” Joe Rogan wanted to know how many NGOs there are in the world.
“I think the total number of NGOs is probably in the millions, but in terms of large NGOs, tens of thousands,” Musk replied.
Musk explained how there are “really no requirements at all” for these NGOs to receive the taxpayer cash.
Rogan questioned how any member of the press could attack DOGE given how Musk estimated that the program could save taxpayers an estimated $100 billion per year.
“If you pay taxes and you don’t like that you have to pay so much in taxes, and then you find out that there’s significant fraud and waste that’s been exposed, you should be celebrating it,” Rogan said.
How NGOs exploit taxpayer dollars
There are a number of ways that NGOs have been ripping off American taxpayers.
NGOs used billions of taxpayer dollars to help Joe Biden usher millions of illegal aliens into the United States.
With taxpayer dollars, NGOs shelter and feed illegal aliens, as well as provide them with plane and bus tickets to towns and cities all across the United States.
For example, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and Catholic Charities raked in hundreds of millions of dollars to provide shelter and other services to illegal aliens.
A report from Open the Books showed that Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services “spent $20 billion on cars, home loans, and other services for migrants.”
In 2024, the Center for Immigration Studies released a report that showed more than 200 nonprofits and NGOs had received billions of dollars to facilitate illegal immigration into the United States.
But that’s just one way NGOs waste your taxpayer dollars.
Under the guise of “charity,” NGOs spend billions of taxpayer dollars promoting the Left’s woke agenda.
That’s why Musk called it “a giant propaganda machine, a giant regime-change machine.”
NGOs that receive billions of dollars in government funding turn around and use the money to push climate alarmism and offer the Green New Deal as the solution.
According to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a coalition of more than 100 NGOs called InterAction received piles of taxpayer dollars to push the woke LGBT agenda, which is a violation of its tax-exempt status.
In April of 2024, the Biden administration gave The Climate United Fund $7 billion in taxpayer dollars.
After the Climate United Fund burned through its $7 billion within a few months, Biden sent another $2 billion over for solar projects.
“Allowing government-funded non-governmental organizations, which is obviously a contradiction in terms, is a crazy flaw in the system enabling massive fraud that is extremely hard to trace!” Musk wrote on X.
Allowing government-funded non-governmental organizations, which is obviously a contradiction in terms, is a crazy flaw in the system enabling massive fraud that is extremely hard to trace! https://t.co/yzbRJLBfw9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2025
Another way NGOs steal taxpayer dollars is by using the funds to pay themselves exorbitant fees and salaries.
A 2023 Government Accountability Office report found that some federally funded nonprofits spend up to 40% of grants on overhead – salaries, travel, and marketing.
“These nonprofits are used by people to cash out,” Musk told Rogan. “They become very wealthy through nonprofits, they pay themselves enormous sums through these nonprofits.”
Musk added that “it’s a gigantic scam – one of the biggest, maybe the biggest scam ever.”
He revealed how billionaire George Soros was the master at this.
“He figured out that you could leverage a small amount of money to create a nonprofit, then lobby politicians to send a ton of money to that nonprofit,” Musk said. “So you can take what might be a $10 million donation to create a nonprofit and leverage that into a billion-dollar NGO.”
NGOs are a system ripe for exploitation at the expense of American taxpayers.
“For decades, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight,” the White House wrote in a release.
But this form of taxpayer abuse is over now that Trump is President.
“Under President Trump, the waste, fraud, and abuse ENDS NOW,” the White House added.
24/7 Focus Group Members react
Given the recent reports about how taxpayer-funded NGOs are ripping off taxpayers, we asked Focus Group members to express their concerns about how the transparency, accountability, and management of taxpayer-funded NGOs creates a system ripe for abuse.
Robert H. wrote, “1) The money is supposed to aid [people] in dire need of assistance, food, clothing, shelter, etc. That’s not what happens. A lot of the time, terrorists get ahold of the supplies, money, etc., to gain access to weapons, etc., to complete their objectives of overturning governments. 2) They get tax write-offs while soliciting the abortion industries like Planned Parenthood, who are renowned for butchering newborns to sell their body parts on the open market. 3) They also make arrangements to oversee the sex hormone injections in youths in foreign countries, as well as operations to alter their genetic structure, and many a time, they are just children being mutilated to fulfill some sadism.”
Gloria V. added that the “Biden administration has shown just how much they despise this country! The Democrat Party has abused the law-abiding citizens of this country. They used our taxpayer’s money to fund illegal aliens with helping them settle into our towns under the guise of NGOs.”
Wayne L. argued, “I believe that the only way to make a difference is by taking back all the funds from the NGOs. They are doing something illegal and breaking the law, so they also need to be charged as accessories to that crime.”
“As someone who worked briefly at a large NGO, I was shocked by the waste I saw. Fancy offices, excessive ‘administrative costs,’ and very little measurement of actual impact. The public has no idea how their money is being spent,” Focus Group member Michelle T. wrote.
Unlike in the corporate world, success for many NGOs doesn’t have to be measured in anything concrete.
“These organizations claim to be doing good work, but when you ask for specific metrics or outcomes, you get vague feel-good stories instead of hard data. Try asking how much of your tax dollars actually go toward helping the people they claim to help. The numbers would horrify you,” Robert S. said.
As DOGE is learning, Sarah M. wrote, “What bothers me most is that these NGOs seem untouchable. They operate with this moral authority that shields them from criticism. Question their effectiveness and suddenly you’re ‘against helping people’ instead of just wanting proper accountability.”
And Focus Group member Jennifer P. raised the interesting point that “there’s this revolving door between government and these big NGOs that nobody talks about. Former politicians end up on NGO boards with cushy compensation packages, then use their connections to secure more funding. It’s all very cozy and completely lacking transparency.”
Editor’s Note: We appreciate hearing from all the 24/7 Focus Group Members who participated in choosing this week’s Feature Story and submitted their thoughts on it!
Would you like to be a part of 24/7’s “Choose the News” Focus Group? Just take a moment to fill out the form below and you can have a say in choosing next week’s Featured Story and “Sound Off” about it when it’s chosen. You may even find your response included in our next story!
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