Trump Appoints Democracy Denouncing Homophobe
By: James Finn
Tags: Politics, LGBTQ, Feminism, Equality, Religious Freedom

USAID appointments stun Washington

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the largest international aid agency most people have never heard of. Staffed by political appointees, civil servants, foreign service officers and contractors, the agency boasts an annual budget of over $27 billion. In absolute dollar terms, USAID is the largest aid agency in the world, spending more than half of all US foreign assistance funds.

Traditionally apolitical, the agency is engulfed in conflict this week as staffers protest three recent Trump appointments who, to put it mildly, espouse radical right-wing views.

New USAID White House liaison calls US a “homo empire” and says women should stay home and raise children

Merritt Corrigan is President Trump’s newly appointed USAID White House liaison. She has a long history of online posts denouncing liberal democracy and feminism, tweeting that the US is in the clutches of a “homo-empire” pushing a “tyrannical LGBT agenda.”

She has since deleted most of her tweets and made her account private.

Corrigan puts her money where her mouth is, having worked for a time at the Hungarian embassy in Washington DC. She called Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban “the shining champion of Western civilization.”

Orban is an autocrat whose actions recently led NGO Freedom House to declare Hungary “no longer a democracy.”

He recently quashed transgender rights in Hungary, pushing a law that ends legal recognition of trans people. Transgender Hungarians may no longer legally change their gender identification or their name.

LGBTQ advocates in Hungary say rights for same-sex couple are also under attack, with Orban’s political party and senior deputies equating same-sex couples adopting children to “pedophilia.” Advocates claim Hungarian police are no longer responding to attacks against LGBTQ people.

Corrigan asserts extreme views about feminism, having written that women “rightfully” belong in the home raising children, as “the sacred possession of husbands who could protect and serve us.” She claims “Feminism has reduced women to cheap imitations of men, a role we will only ever fill poorly.”

She does not explain how her own extensive employment history meshes with her beliefs.

Corrigan’s ideas about democracy, feminism, and LGBTQ rights put her directly at odds with the stated goals of the USAID. The agency uses a “liberal democracy index” to measure whether a country is self-reliant. It has an entire office that promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment. The agency tells the public it is working to bring about a world in which LGBTQ people are “respected and able to live with dignity, free from discrimination, persecution, and violence.”

New USAID deputy chief of staff discourages UN reproductive health care and calls transgender people sexual abusers

Bethany Kozma is President Trump’s newly appointed USAID deputy chief of staff. She has a long history as an anti-transgender activist, having written in 2016 that transgender girls are gender-confused boys.

In closed-door meetings at the annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, she shocked commissioners by claiming the US is a “pro-life nation” that globally discourages contraception and encourages abstinence-only programs for family planning.

She has testified to her local school board that there is a direct link between sexual predators and trans access to facilities.

She has called a gender services clinic in Seattle, “Horrible — a place where our children will be sterilized.”

She has partnered with anti-LGBTQ hate groups like Family Research Council to work to overturn Department of Education guidance for transgender students.

New USAID religious freedom advisor has an extensive anti-Islam track record

Mark Kevin Lloyd is President Trump’s newly appointed religious freedom advisor for USAID. The Washington Post reported last month that Lloyd is a Tea Party activist with a history of making and sharing anti-Islamic comments on his personal social media profiles.

Lloyd has stated publicly that Muslims are followers of a “barbaric cult.” He has publicly endorsed the Chinese government’s crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority, a crackdown that includes brutal relocation campaigns, separating parents from children, and placing children and young adults in “re-education” camps that independent observers characterize as slave-labor concentration camps.

Days after a mass shooting in Orlando by a Muslim pledging allegiance to ISIS, Lloyd shared a meme saying people should be forced to eat bacon before they can buy firearms.

Wa’el Alzayat, CEO of Emgage Action, a Muslim American advocacy organization, reacted with shock to Lloyd’s appointment, saying in a statement, “How could one properly serve as USAID’s Religious Freedom Adviser while espousing a horrifyingly Islamophobic track record?”

Internal turmoil roils USAID

Politico reports that USAID staff are up in arms about these appointments and their apparent meaning for the agency. Trump’s appointees’ histories of making anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim and anti-democracy statements directly contradict the established ethos of the agency, its legally mandated mission, and its internal policies.

Staff are reportedly urging USAID’s new acting administrator, John Barsa, to take strong measures to assure them and overseas partners that the agency will not support discrimination based on religion, gender, sexual orientation, or race. Barsa has insisted he won’t tolerate discrimination but defends the bizarre appointments, condemning criticism of his three new aides as “unwarranted and malicious attacks.”

He made clear responsibility lies with the president:

Political appointees are appointed at the discretion of the White House to carry out the President’s foreign policy agenda at USAID. USAID is honored to have Bethany Kozma, Merritt Corrigan, and Mark Lloyd serve at the agency. They are committed to enacting the policies of President Donald J. Trump.

USAID staff demand action

Politico reports USAID staff are circulating a letter asking Barsa to issue a public statement “affirming that Black Lives Matter” and to meet with the secretaries of State and Defense to discuss ways to end structural racism within the U.S. national security apparatus.

They are also circulating a petition demanding the removal of Corrigan, Kozma, and Lloyd, who they say undermine the integrity of the agency at home and abroad.

You don’t get much more blatantly fascist than this

The appointment that has USAID staff and Washington insiders the most alarmed is Corrigan’s. You don’t get much more openly fascist than opposing liberal democracy and praising a Hungarian strongman who destroyed democracy in his own nation.

The fact that she’s also anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ is just icing on the cake.

What’s scary is that Trump feels perfectly free to appoint her and almost certainly won’t dismiss her unless she fails to carry out his policies. The president is firmly in control of the US federal government, including the leadership of the civil and foreign services, and isn’t about to listen to criticism or protest.

His appointments subvert the leading US agency that promotes democracy and equality abroad. He’s subverting the fundamental if unrealized ideals of the United States.

Nobody’s pretending anymore that we stand for freedom. Nobody’s pretending that Muslims count when it comes to freedom of religion. Nobody’s pretending that LGBTQ people deserve equality or that women deserve equal opportunity.

The writers at the Guardian and Maclean’s have the right of it. President Trump is aspiring to fascism, and he’s achieving it one step at a time, one appointment at a time.

And this is just one agency.

This is how it happens. This is how true representative democracy dies. This is how a strongman leverages fear of the Other to prop himself up in power. Trump won’t care if every career staffer at USAID resigns. He’ll be happy to fill the agency with his own loyalists who will further his own anti-democratic agenda abroad.

We Americans have one chance to stop fascism from overtaking us, and that’s at the polls in November. If we don’t stop Trump then, his next four years of appointments will likely ruin us forever.