The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have identified a planned $50 million allocation by the previous Biden administration intended for condom distribution in Gaza.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized this expenditure as a “preposterous waste of taxpayer money.”
“DOGE and OMB have actually found that there was $37 million that was about to go out the door to the World Health Organization, which is an organization, as you all know, that President Trump, with the swipe of his pen in that executive order, no longer wants the United States to be a part of. So that wouldn’t be in line with the President’s agenda,” Leavitt said during her first press conference.
“DOGE and OMB also found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza. That is a preposterous way taxpayer money. So that’s what this pause is focused on, being good stewards of tax dollars,” she added.
This comes after the Trump administration stated that a new memo from the Office of Management and Budget will temporarily halt grants and loans while reviewing whether the funding aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive orders.
These orders include ending initiatives related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the Green New Deal, and financing for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) “that undermine the national interest.”
However, Judge Loren AliKhan, a Biden appointee, granted a temporary stay on Trump’s plan to freeze federal funding.
AliKhan’s order is set to expire on February 3 at 5 p.m.
WATCH:
BREAKING: DOGE and OMB (Office of Management and Budget) found that the Biden admin was about to send $37M to the World Health Organization and $50M to fund condoms for Gaza. pic.twitter.com/u0gtiLQbwX
— Autism Capital (@AutismCapital) January 28, 2025
Fox News reported:
The Jerusalem Post reported in 2020 that scores of condoms were being used to create IED-carrying balloons that winds would carry into southern Israel, raising alarm on schoolyards, farmlands and highways.
At the time, the Post reported that the improvised explosive devices – floated into Israel via inflated contraceptives – burned thousands of hectares of land and caused “millions of shekels of damage.” It’s not clear if the practice continues.
Just two days after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, which involved Hamas terrorists brutally raping some of the approximately 1,200 people killed in southern Israel and hundreds of others brought back into Gaza as hostages, a global NGO known as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) released a statement regarding the resulting war and escalating violence.
The NGO claimed that any blockade of aid shipments into Gaza would infringe on their “enormous gains made in life-saving sexual and reproductive healthcare in this region.”
“Palestinians are systematically denied sexual and reproductive healthcare and rights,” the executive director of a corresponding NGO, the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association (PFPPA), said at the time. “Our health system has been repeatedly targeted and depleted by the Israeli occupation, and the more it disintegrates, the more it will hinder the full realization of these rights for women and girls.”
Andrew Miller, formerly the deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs under Joe Biden, describes the claim as “outlandish.”
“It’s possible that $50 million is put aside for sexual health or something of that nature, which would include gynecology and many other services, but definitely not condoms alone,” he told The Times of Israel.
