Defunding USAID defunded the Democrats — USAID funded the ngos, and the ngos funded Democratic party candidates
So, USAID cannot legally fund any politicians or political campaigns, regardless of what country it’s for. That includes the US. If they were doing this, they would have lost their funding long ago.
They were targeted for shut down by Musk because they were investigating Starlink’s implementation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Supposedly those terminals were supposed to be there to support Ukraine but a large number of them ended up being sent to Russian occupied areas.
Pride went broke. Suddenly no one shows up
Pride has never been funded by USAID. Its funding comes from a variety of sources, including corporations and grants from international LGBTQIAA2S+ support organizations, but it has not ever come from USAID.
Rap leaves the top 40. Country and Western replacing it. Maybe this is a spontaneous change in public taste, but if so, it is a change that just happened to happen at the same time as USAID stopped pushing rap down the throats of the public.
Rap being funded and ‘pushed down our throats’ by USAID is a right wing conspiracy theory that’s been going viral recently. People like Joe Rogan and Tim Pool have been pushing it on their shows. Second of all, many of the same artists who are associated with rap have recently started experimenting with country because that’s what good musicians sometimes do - once they get bored of a certain genre or they feel like they’ve done all they can with it right now they try other genres they are less experienced in. Part of the reason that country is becoming more popular right now is because people like Beyoncé and Post Malone have recently done country songs.
And rap has not left the top 40. Currently there are 15 rap songs and 19 country songs on the top 40. So right now country is slightly more popular. It’s happened before - remember that awful ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ song that took over radio in the early 90s? And sometime, maybe sooner, maybe later, other genres will become more popular than country again. That’s the history of popular music.
@Zinnia #262827
I haven’t heard anything even vaguely along these lines, so I suspect he made this up. Googling “Pablo Sanfras” only gets you Jim’s blog and an unrelated Instagram which uses “Pablo” and “Sanfras” separately. It’s not out of the question that the last name might be spelled wrong, but again, probably just made up.
I agree, I think he made this up as well, I also looked it up and only got stuff about Pablo Sanfrancisco and Pablo Francisco. Both of them are actors and have nothing to do with USAID or the migrant caravans the right are so afraid of. I am not at all surprised because people like Jim will do anything to make their god-king’s administration look reasonable, but I am still disgusted. Shit like this leads to right wing vigilantism, and they are much less likely to look into things to find out if they’re true before they act.
Pride attendance has been on a slight downward trend since its peak, seemingly because a bit fewer people feel the need for it and it’s become overly commercialized, but it’s still going quite strong, and there hasn’t been an abnormal drop following the USAID cuts.
There is also a not-unreasonable fear that Pride events will be targets of mass shootings or other terrorist acts, especially since the Pulse nightclub shooting and the heightened level of threats toward LGBTQIAA2S+ people due to the rise of fascism.