White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said to reporters Tuesday that USAID had spent “$1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces; 70,000 for the production of a DEI musical in Ireland; 47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, 32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru.” Those claims were picked up and spread widely on social media throughout the week.
It went to BBC Media Action, an international charity that is “part of the BBC family,” but editorially and financially separate from BBC News, the charity said in a statement.
Asked about the Trump administration's portrayal of USAID funding, including Leavitt's statement earlier this week, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said, “This waste of taxpayer dollars underscores why the president paused foreign aid on day one to ensure it aligns with American interests.” She did not address the misrepresented grants cited above.
Posts shared widely across social media also falsely claimed that Politico received at least $8 million from USAID in 2024, with some posts putting that number as high as $34.3 million.
In 2022, it granted $70,884 to an Irish company for “a live musical event to promote the U.S. and Irish shared values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.” A grant for $25,000 was awarded in 2021 to a university in Colombia “to raise awareness and increase the transgender representation” through the production of an opera, with an additional $22,020 coming from non-federal funding.
