Not Just USAID: Media Research Center Exposes State Department Funded Soros Venture

The long history between George and Alex Soros’ Open Society Foundations and USAID came under the spotlight to a national audience after Elon Musk targeted the agency for destruction.

USAID was exposed funding projects that looked like they were conjured up through a game of Liberal Mad Libs; From funding teaching of Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid “binary gendered language” to sex changes in Guatemala, to LGBT activism in Armenia, Jamaica, Latin America, Uganda - to funding Sesame Street in Iraq, drag show workshops for Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador, boosting tourism in Tunisia and Egypt, teaching Africans about climate change, and teaching the people of Kazakhstan about how to fight back against internet trolls.

The Open Society Foundations has long worked in conjunction with USAID funded projects, which it used to amplify their own agenda, even when they weren’t receiving the funding directly. 

In mid-February, as criticism of USAID was reaching its zenith, the OSF put out a statement on supposed “false claims” about their involvement with USAID. “The claims that the Open Society Foundations receive funding from USAID or direct the funding of a multibillion-dollar U.S. government agency are manifestly false. These allegations are part of a broader effort to undermine international development work and delegitimize the independent funding of civil society organizations worldwide.”

Anytime the OSF puts out a statement to “debunk” claims against them they read like they’re deliberately written to insult our intelligence, as they don’t even try to try to cover up the evidence against them.

Only a few months earlier, the OSF put out a press release boasting about one of their projects that was still taking USAID money - Central European University, a school founded by George. 

As always, the left lies about everything.

Some new sleuthing from Media Research Center/NewsBusters’ Joe Vazquez revealed that it wasn’t just USAID funding Soros projects.

Government funding was earmarked for the OSF to administer a foreign policy program for the State Department. 

MRC discovered that the State Department and USAID committed $11,091,856 collectively in grant money split from 2007-2014 between the Open Society Institute and the Alliance for Open Society International (AOSI), the “legal operating name” for Open Society Institute-Baltimore, which was later announced to be shuttering in 2023. Over $8 million of that figure was from the State Department to OSI for the purpose of administering the Edmund S. Muskie/FREEDOM Support Act Graduate Fellowship Program on behalf of the agency. “MUSKIE GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM GRANT TO THE OPEN SOCIETY INST,” the grant’s description stated.

Vazquez noted that an archived version of the state department’s website had the specifics of the relationship:

The Muskie/FSA Program, administered on behalf of ECA by the American Councils for International Education and the Open Society Institute, is part of the Department of State's public diplomacy effort to foster mutual understanding between the United States and other countries through educational and training programs.

The rest of the funding is allocated to AOSI, which sued USAID in 2013 for attempting to require federally funded NGOs to oppose prostitution under the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act

USAID specifically gave at least $1,959,606 to AOSI for the period 2007-2008, while the State Department gave at least $641,050.