Time was, conservatives could look to the Brookings Institution for sober, nonpartisan analysis. Considered to be the centrist think tank in Washington, Brookings was one of very few bright spots inside the Beltway for those on the right looking for anything other than lockstep legacy media takes.
Indeed, the published works of the institution are cited by conservatives as often as liberals!
Today, however, Brookings released a fusillade of objections to the Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) probing the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In their "Brookings Brief" email update, the ivory tower institute belched out 12 "expert" opinions on Musk & Co. uncovering fraud and waste in the monolithic, unaccountable agency.
All of the opinions were negative, without so much as a scrap of dissent, almost as if each writer had been tasked last night by the Brookings president with producing a paragraph on "How DOGE Investigating USAID Harms My Area Of Expertise".
The Brookings president, Cecilia Rouse, is the "first Black American" to chair the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), and served on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. Of course her two degrees are from Harvard, she has worked extensively at Princeton, and with the CEA, she served under three presidents: Clinton, Obama, and Biden.
In other words, she epitomizes the deep state. The cherry on top: she's married to the son of poetess and strident anti-patriarchy writer Toni Morrison.
Therefore it should come as no surprise that Brookings has recently partnered with Tsinghua University, in an arrangement known as "Brookings-Tsinghua China". Nor should it shock anyone that the Brookings website has a DEI drop-down menu under "About Us".
The experts who weighed in on the various harms caused by DOGE to their continuing varied missions:
Scott R. Anderson, Vanda Felbab-Brown, Jeffrey Feltman, Caren Grown, Michael Hansen, George Ingram, Thomas Pepinsky, Anthony F. Pipa, Ghulam Omar Qargha, Molly E. Reynolds, Sweta Shah, and Landry Signé.
We encourage you to read their comments in full here, but here are some excerpts to consider:
After claiming USAID counters Chinese and Russian influence internationally, Brookings expert Vanda Felbab-Brown weighs in with this magical perspective:
USAID’s efforts also prevent the spread of deadly terrorism that still boils across Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia and affects Americans and U.S. assets too. Programs that lift people out of poverty, foster economic development, encourage access to justice, and promote better governance address the root causes on which terrorism thrives.
And efforts that prevent life-ending or debilitating illness and protect healthy ecosystems support sustainable economic growth, and prevent the global spread of infectious diseases that hurt U.S. citizens and the United States as well. All these USAID efforts help prevent the migration flows the Trump administration is so strongly determined to stop.
To summarize: USAID stops Russia, China, terrorism, "migration", and infectious disease, while providing money, justice, and democracy. Sounds awfully powerful, almost too powerful. Shouldn't someone check in on this supernatural force of international order?
Expert Jeffrey Feltman, a neo-con, argues that we had better stay involved in the triangular war among Israel, Lebanon, and Hezbollah, or else they'll have to figure it out on their own. Feltman's claim:
Cutting U.S. support for Lebanon (which goes beyond LAF support) just at the moment when Lebanese politicians are finally willing to try to break Hezbollah’s stranglehold pulls the political rug out from under these courageous leaders.
Yes, those foreign leaders fighting for democracy are always "courageous", just like Vlodomyr Zelensky. And they require a lot of money with no clear end to the war in sight, don't they, Mr. Feltman?
Expert Caren Grown, who served as "global director for gender at the World Bank Group" and senior gender advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development" (USAID)[!!!], "led the development of the agency’s gender equality policy". She was also "senior scholar and co-director of the Gender Equality and the Economy program at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College; and director of the poverty reduction and economic governance team at the International Center for Research on Women."
Grown’s books include “Taxation and Gender Equity,” “The Feminist Economics of Trade,” “Trading Women’s Health and Rights: The Role of Trade Liberalization and Development,” “Taking Action: Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering Women”, and “Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s Perspectives”.
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Hmm, none of that sounds very centrist. But there's more:
"Throughout her career, [Grown] developed and co-led several large research projects, including the UNU-WIDER program on aid effectiveness and gender equality, the three-country Gender Asset Gap Project (based at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India), and the seven-country Taxation and Gender Equality Project (based at American University and University of KwaZulu Natal)."
Grown's take on investigating her old employer, the USAID?
The USAID shutdown stalls progress toward economic prosperity and stability. It stops support for cash transfers that reach the poorest households, halts financing for women farmers who produce food and other staples, stops lifesaving health services, and disrupts public-private partnerships to help women compete in the digital economy, to name just a few core programs [emphasis ours].
Why stop at "just a few core programs"? Are the other programs less defensible, despite broad, vague claims?
Expert Michael Hansen argues that DOGE had better not shut down the flailing and long-failing Dept. of Education, because it's still recovering from...*checks notes* the pandemic.
Yesterday, media reports surfaced of Trump’s imminent plans for a similar hollowing out of ED that includes placing many staff on administrative leave, shutting down some ED functions, and spinning off others. If this comes to pass, students in all American schools will feel the reverberations of these actions—potentially impacting funding for low-income or disabled students, education research functions, and the protections of students’ civil rights. This is the wrong curriculum for the nation’s ailing students and institutions still reeling from the pandemic [emphasis ours].
Won't someone think of the low-income and disabled students? Like the DOE has done so successfully to date, with dismal math and science scores and barrel-bottom literacy scores in inner cities?
And on and on they go, the dirty dozen tasked with producing reasons to keep the funds flowing at the "centrist" think tank. Clearly, the intentions of the vaunted Brookings Institution is to work with the deep state to promote regime change and spread DEI, feminism, and other cultural exports around the globe.
