It’s impossible to overstate the impact Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency are having on American government – and the public’s knowledge about what’s really being done with our money.

Nowhere is that more evident than the erupting scandal involving the United States Agency for International Development, which Musk and DOGE have exposed as little more than a front for funneling billions of American taxpayer dollars to absurd projects favored by Democrats and other leftists. The revelations of USAID’s profligacy and lack of accountability are coming so fast and furious, it’s hard to keep up with them, but conservative and alternative media are publishing the information as fast as it comes out.

For example, earlier this week, Townhall’s Mia Cathell published a brief list of some the most ridiculous USAID-funded projects, including millions of dollars given to support LGBTQ+ organizations in Serbia, Africa and the Caribbean; a transgender opera in Colombia; a program to help disabled Tajikistani become climate change activists; and shipping condoms and other contraceptives to Africa and the Middle East. President Donald Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt took Democrats to task at a press conference for their feigned “outrage” at the administration’s cancellation of the “long list of crap” USAID was funding, including a $20 million Sesame Street-type show in Iraq and millions for “sex changes in Guatemala.”

The USAID disclosures have also revealed the incestuous relationships between nongovernmental organizations receiving monies from the U.S. government and then funding each other, as well as the practice of American politicians and other prominent people being highly compensated for founding or sitting on the boards of those NGOs.

To make matters worse, some media – left-leaning, of course – are also being funded by USAID. Stephen Green at PJ Media wrote earlier this week about the $8 million that we now know Politico received from USAID, and that Thomson-Reuters received $9 million to advance a government initiative called “Active Social Engineering Defense Large Scale Social Deception.” According to a diligent researcher who posts on X under the moniker @DataRepublican.

No wonder the panic is palpable. As bad as all of this is – and it is bad, indeed – there are consequences that are worse, most notably the negative impact that even the best-run and most well-intentioned aid organizations have on the very countries and economies they say they are trying to help.

If you want to understand the nature and extent of the damage that international aid has on the economies of underdeveloped nations, I cannot recommend a better documentary than “Poverty, Inc.,” a compelling 91-minute film written by Michael Matheson Miller and Jonathan Witt.

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To find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.