As soon as US President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, his administration pulled the plug on over $268m of funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Besides immediately cutting off aid to mostly all US foreign assistance, including gutting $1.4bn in assistance to its biggest recipient Ukraine and leaving a vacuum in global health, food security, and disaster relief efforts in the Global South, the shuttering of USAID sent shockwaves through US imperialist-funded media outlets worldwide.
USAID’s purpose has always been to extend the reach of US imperialism. Created by President John F Kennedy’s administration in 1961, it began as a Cold War ‘soft’ weapon aimed at suppressing the spread of communism. Since then, it has continued to suppress radical movements and manufacture consent for imperialism under the pretext of spreading democracy.
For decades, USAID has funded a sprawling global network of pro-imperialist media under the guise of supporting ‘independent media and the free flow of information’. In 2023 alone, it backed 6,200 journalists, 707 media outlets, and 279 NGOs. These media arms function as the ideological wing of US imperialism abroad, manufacturing consent through local voices and destabilising governments that defy Washington. The reaction to the funding freeze unmasked the truth: these outlets are not independent, they are state-funded proxies serving US interests.
Nowhere is this more blatant than in Ukraine, the top recipient of USAID media funding. Almost 90% of Ukrainian media relies on this funding, according to Oksana Romanyuk of the Institute for Mass Information. Outlets like The Kyiv Independent and Hromadske are scrambling to stay afloat. The Kyiv Independent claimed the freeze was a bigger threat to journalism than Covid-19 or even the Russian invasion. They have since launched crowdfunding campaigns to stay afloat, asking readers to keep essentially pro-US media alive. According to an ‘Eastern European media professional’ quoted in Euractiv: ‘Much of the work of these media directly benefited US national security.’ In other words, ‘independent media’ funded by USAID works at the behest of Washington.
Relics of Cold War propaganda like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA) have also been affected by the cuts, as well as Alhurra, the US sponsored Arabic language network, whose head, Jeffrey Gedmin, has said that the decision would ‘silence America’s voice in the Middle East’.
Latin America, which the US ruling class regards as its ‘backyard’, has long been a target and recipient of USAID. Between 1946 and 2002, the US poured $104bn into the region. The Biden administration continued these efforts, requesting $2bn on aid expenditure for Latin America in 2025. Since the 1990s, USAID has spearheaded interventions, a reality acknowledged by leaders like Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who stated in response to the USAID freeze that US funding is ‘poison’. In Venezuela, after the failed 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez, USAID ramped up operations. By 2007, it was funding over 360 anti-Chavista groups. The freeze of USAID has also uncovered that vast numbers of journalists and media organisations linked to coup leader Juan Guaidó, had received funding of over $700m in order to destabilise the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
According to Tracey Eaton, founder of the Cuba Money Project, USAID has spent over $300m since 1990, to undermine the Cuban revolution. It funded dissident bloggers, covert journalism projects, and even created ‘ZunZuneo’ – a fake social media network designed to spread counter-revolutionary propaganda while collecting user data. That project fell apart when funding dried up, but other outlets like Miami-based CubaNet and Spain’s Diario de Cuba continued receiving USAID money until recently. In 2024 alone, USAID spent $2.3m on reporting on Cuba. As Alain Rafael Dueñas Estévez, a photographer from Cuba working in Argentina, explained to The Guardian, ‘Many working in Cuban independent media rely on scholarships and financing, and they have lost their jobs overnight.’ Cuban Vice Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío underscored the point, stating that these so-called ‘independent journalists’ are ‘dependent on their master.’ While the freeze briefly disrupted operations, Washington has already begun restoring funds to key counter-revolutionary outlets like CubaNet, ensuring the propaganda machine continues to churn.
Bourgeois media outlets like The Guardian and Euractiv have condemned Trump’s move as a catastrophic threat to democracy. Both of these outlets warn that countries like China and Russia may see this as an opportunity to step in and fill the gaps, spreading their own state propaganda. In their view, only US-funded media is credible and legitimate.
Bourgeois journalism postures as objective, neutral, and apolitical but all media exists within a class context. In every class society, the dominant ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. When the US funds journalism abroad, it is exporting its imperialist interests disguised as truth. The only genuinely independent journalism is that which rejects imperialist funding and aligns itself with the struggles of the working class and oppressed peoples.
We must fight for a press that serves the people, not imperialism!
Ameera Mahmoud
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 306 June/July 2025
