By MELISSA GOLDIN
During a signing ceremony Wednesday for the Laken Riley Act, President Donald Trump claimed that his administration had “identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, made a similiar claim on Tuesday during her debut press briefing, stating that the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Management and Budget “found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.” She called the alleged aid “a preposterous waste of taxpayer money.”
But there’s no credible evidence to support these claims. Here’s a closer look at the facts:
CLAIM: The Trump administration stopped $50 million from being sent to the Gaza Strip to buy condoms for Hamas.
THE FACTS: Trump and his spokesperson appeared to be referring to a grant or grants that USAID awarded to a group called the International Medical Corps worth $102.2 million to provide medical and trauma services in Gaza. The State Department earlier Wednesday described this as an example of “egregious funding” not aligned with American interests or the president’s policies.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce similarly wrote Tuesday on X that the agency had “prevented $102 million in unjustified funding to a contractor in Gaza, including money for contraception” thanks to a pause in foreign assistance.
However, the vast majority of that money was to fund mobile emergency hospitals and trauma centers and to send doctors, surgeons and other medical and mental health professionals to assist with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, according to IMC. This included water, sanitation and hygiene services and prenatal and postnatal care.
If condoms were part of the hygiene component, they would not have accounted for nearly half of the grant money.
Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw USAID’s COVID-19 assistance portfolio for the Biden administration, refuted Trump and Leavitt’s claims Wednesday on X.
“USAID procures condoms for around $0.05 apiece,” he wrote. “$50m would be ONE BILLION condoms. What’s going on here is NOT a billion condoms for Gaza. What’s going on is that the bros at DOGE apparently can’t read govt spreadsheets.”
USAID’s financial year 2023 report on contraceptive and condom shipments, the most recent data available, notes that only one Middle Eastern country — Jordan — received a small shipment of injectables and oral contraceptives valued at $45,680 for government programs only. This was USAID’s first shipment to the Middle East since financial year 2019.
USAID reports from the first three-quarters of 2024 show the only family planning programs funded by the agency in the Middle East were in Jordan and Yemen.
Associated Press writers Ellen Knickmeyer and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
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Originally Published:
Source: Paradise Post
