After a memo ordering federal agencies to suspend most federal grants was temporarily blocked by a judge, the White House sent a memo rescinding the original memo.
“OMB memorandum M-25-13 is rescinded. If you have questions about implementing the President’s executive orders, please contact your agency General Counsel,” reads the memo sent by Matthew Vaeth, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The memo was followed by a statement from WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt who was attempting to clarify the intention of the FOTUS’s orders, suggesting there is still a “concept of a plan” to freeze federal funding.
Those orders included the intention to thwart a plan in which “there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.” The White House presented no proof of the claim.
Condoms? Come again?
The Trump State Department would not repeat Leavitt’s claim, but there was a series of posts from State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, who listed specific examples of how Trump’s aid pause had prevented what Bruce called unjustified spending that wouldn’t make the country “safer, stronger, and more prosperous.”
Bruce wrote, “Example 1: Condoms. Prevented $102 million in unjustified funding to a contractor in Gaza, including money for contraception.” She did not specify how much of the $102 million in funding was intended for contraception, let alone for condoms in particular.
The intended recipient of the $102 million in question was International Medical Corps – a US-based organization that operates two field hospitals in Gaza.
In a Wednesday statement to CNN, the IMC said it has received about $68 million from the US Agency for International Development for Gaza operations since the beginning of the war in Hamas. While the IMC has publicly spoken about its reproductive and sexual health services in Gaza, among various other services from cardiology to orthopedics, the IMC said that “no US government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms.”
Watch the weirdos on Fox News making weird claims about condoms in Gaza. Safe sex? Booby traps? These wingnuts are so weird. I don’t know what else to say.
