How USAID Funded Ukraine’s Propaganda Machine. Plus. . .

It’s Wednesday, February 19. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: Muslim groups defend Australian nurses who say they’ll kill Israelis. Trump makes IVF more accessible. The National Endowment for Democracy—scrap it or save it? An incredible letter from the New England Patriots owner. And more.

But first: USAID funded the vast majority of “independent” media in Ukraine—and spent our tax dollars to suppress the truth.

For the past few weeks the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk’s DOGE boys, has been hard at work dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The process has been chaotic, to say the least. One notable rumor, promoted earlier this month by both President Trump and Elon Musk, claimed that USAID had spent $50 million on condoms for Gaza. That was proven untrue: No money had been spent on condoms anywhere in the Middle East, and Elon later admitted he’d made a mistake. Around the same time, online sleuths accused Politico, the D.C. news site, of being secretly bankrolled by USAID. But that wasn’t true either. In reality, a few hundred government employees had simply bought a niche service called Politico Pro and invoiced the purchase to their respective agencies, as Isaac Saul pointed out last week in The Free Press.

The chaos has made it very difficult to know what USAID was and wasn’t actually funding. Any juicy stories about the agency’s spending habits you see on social media should be taken with a grain of salt.

But today in The Free Press, Tanya Lukyanova has a doozy. And every bit of it is true.

Tanya explains how numerous USAID-funded media outlets in Ukraine refused to cover the growing scandal of forced conscriptions in the country, which has included kidnapping men from the street and, in some documented cases, torturing or killing them. These same media outlets—which again, are largely funded by the American taxpayer—then launched a coordinated smear campaign against several independent journalists who dared to expose the story, tarring them as traitors.

Do American taxpayers realize that their money went to squelching freedom of the press—and suppressing the truth?

Read Tanya’s report on “How the U.S. Government Controls the Ukrainian Media.”

It Ends with Lawsuits

As you may have heard—or read, preferably, in Kat Rosenfield’s great essay—for the past few months, actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni have been engaged in a legal beef for the entertainment history books, assuming such things are published. After the two starred in a movie together called It Ends with Us, Lively filed a lawsuit against Baldoni and numerous PR agents alleging the actor—who had previously portrayed himself as a feminist ally—sexually harassed her, then conspired with a cabal of publicists to plant negative stories about her in the press. Classic #MeToo story, right?

Not so quick.

The plot has thickened, and Batya Ungar-Sargon is here with the details. Is it possible Baldoni, the man, was actually the victim here of the same sort of smear campaign Lively said he’d deployed against her? What does this say about #MeToo? And just as importantly, what does it say about Baldoni’s particular brand of male feminism?

Batya will let you know: “Justin Baldoni and the Death of Man-Bun Feminism.”

Australian Nurses Brag About Killing Jews

Things keep getting worse for Australian Jews. In January, we published an essay by Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, detailing the numerous cases of antisemitic vandalism and arson that have plagued the Jewish community down under. Today, Brendan O’Neill brings us another sordid tale.

A week ago in Sydney, two Muslim nurses were caught on camera saying that they wouldn’t treat Israeli patients and would instead “kill them.” These are the sorts of comments no prominent organization in a liberal, Western country like Australia could defend, right?

Right?

Wrong. Read Brendan’s article, “ ‘I Won’t Treat Them. I’ll Kill Them.’ ”

National Endowment for Democracy: Good or Nefarious? And a Word from Robert Kraft.

Last week, our Free Press colleague Eli Lake wrote a piece reporting that an order from DOGE had blocked a disbursement of funds to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). “For the right to turn against civil society groups that stand up to pro-Moscow authoritarians, formerly a proud conservative cause, is stunning,” Eli wrote.

In our newest “Letters to the Editor” series, Eli debates Spectator World editor-at-large Ben Domenech, who says NED is a nefarious CIA front group that doesn’t deserve a penny of taxpayer money.

Plus, New England Patriots CEO Robert Kraft responds to Joe Nocera’s essay “How to Be Hated: A Patriots Fan’s Advice to Chiefs Nation.”

Was he nice about it? Find out here: “Letters to the Editor: Is the National Endowment for Democracy Worth Saving?”

In Case You Missed It

A few years ago, Chris Arnade saw a group of dudes trying to break down a door in an Ohio dive bar. It inspired a phenomenal essay we published last Friday about the masculine urge to be a hero. In it, Chris argues that a society should never dismiss the appeal of the hero archetype, however at odds with the modern liberal project it might be. “[Men] get their sense of worth from rescuing, protecting, building, and solving,” he writes. “All men need to feel like the hero—if not over the course of their lifetime, then at least every now and then.”

Learn why here: “All Men Want to Be Heroes.”

Speaking of heroes, kind of messed up how those corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams just disappeared into the night like Batman, right? Chris Christie thinks so. Yesterday, The Free Press published an article by the former New Jersey governor explaining why the Trump administration’s decision to drop corruption charges against Eric Adams “threatens our system.” Anyone can say that, of course—but only a former U.S. attorney whose office had 130 political corruption prosecutions under its belt can tell you why, translating the—er—novel legalese that let Adams off the hook into plain, troubling English.

Read “Chris Christie: Eric Adams and Equality Under the Law.”

President Donald Trump leaves after holding a press conference and signing an executive order expanding access to IVF at his Mar-a-Lago resort. (Joe Raedle via Getty Images)

• On Tuesday, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis, who was admitted for the fourth time during his pontificate to Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on Friday with a fever and bronchitis symptoms, has since developed pneumonia in both lungs. Politico reports that sources familiar with the matter have said the 88-year-old pontiff has “privately expressed certainty he won’t make it this time.”

• Move over, Gracie Abrams, there’s a new nepo baby in town! This week, the BBC broadcast a documentary about life in war-torn Gaza through the eyes of three Palestinian children without disclosing that one of the lead characters, 14-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri, is allegedly the son of Ayman Alyazouri, a senior figure in Hamas’s government. “This appears to be another appalling example of journalistic failure and anti-Israel bias,” Danny Cohen, the former director of BBC Television, told The Telegraph. Not mentioning the kid’s top-brass Hamas father is crazy. It’s like if they cast Barron Trump on Big Brother and just pretended he was some random kid from NYU—the key difference being that the only jihad Trump is waging is against. . . infertility? (See next item!)

• Yes, that’s right—on Tuesday, President Trump signed an executive order expanding access to in vitro fertilization. “The Order directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X. For more on how Republicans are evolving on social issues, read Charles Lehman’s piece “Elon Musk, Ashley St. Clair, and the New Moral Majority.”

• Steve Bannon, former senior adviser to President Trump, accused the president’s new right-hand man, Elon Musk, of being a “parasitic illegal immigrant” who “wants to impose his freak experiments and playact as God without any respect for the country’s history, values, or traditions.” Ouch! But also, as a catty little shit-starter myself, I must say: What a read. The colorful language, the overly personal nature of the attack, the histrionically heightened stakes. Yet another Azealia Banks–tier put-down from Steve Bannon, our #1 MAGA mean girl and one of the best ever to do it.

• It’s official: One month into the Trump administration, and Russia and the U.S. have become pals. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov met in Saudi Arabia to discuss shared goals in ending the war in Ukraine and improving economic and diplomatic relations going forward. Rubio said ending the war in Ukraine could “unlock the door” for “incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians, geopolitically on issues of common interest and frankly, economically on issues that hopefully will be good for the world and also improve our relations in the long term.” Lavrov told journalists that “the conversation was very useful.”

In other news: A USAID worker deployed overseas says his pregnant wife was unable to access a medically necessary evacuation because of the DOGE-directed funding freeze. New data from Customs and Border Protection says southwestern border apprehensions dropped by a third in January, with a marked decrease after Trump’s inauguration on January 20. The White House says Elon isn’t technically in charge of DOGE as lawsuits loom. And finally, police have arrested the apparent leader plus two members of the Zizians, a murderous internet cult.