This is arguably the single most important aspect of Trump's funding freeze.
The immigration crisis isn't an accident. It's a well-oiled system, facilitated by powerful NGOs—and funded by your tax dollars.
By defunding the NGOs, Trump is crippling the entire system. 🧵
Here's what just happened: Last week, President Trump signed an executive order suspending refugee admissions into the U.S.
Then, the State Department went a step further—they issued a "stop-work" order to their NGO "partners," suspending all funding for refugee resettlement.
The NGOs were beside themselves. And for good reason—very few of these groups are self-sufficient. Most of them are sustained by the federal tax-dollar gravy train. The immigration crisis is being financed by your government—with your money.
Hence, their outraged statements:
To be clear, these NGOs exist to subvert U.S. immigration law at every step of the process—actively transporting migrants into the country, fighting enforcement efforts at the border, resettling migrants in American towns and cities, and lobbying for open border policies in D.C.
And again, they've been doing it on your dime. For the past four years, The Biden State Department has been mainlining taxpayer funds to groups that run an end-to-end mass migration network, beginning deep in South America and finishing with resettlement in American communities.
They provide "humanitarian transportation" to ferry immigrants up to our border, waypoints with shelter and medical services along the way, Spanish-language maps showing the best route to the U.S., and legal services for immigrants to beat our immigration laws once they get here.
Oh, and money. They just give them cash cards, vouchers, and often even just stacks of cash in envelopes.
Tough to think of a more direct 1:1 redistribution: You pay your taxes. Your government sends that money to the NGOs. The NGOs hand it to immigrants. You work, they benefit.
Ten of these major immigration NGOs—known as VOLAGS ("Voluntary Agencies")—have contracts with the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), which provides them with the funding to resettle migrants in the U.S.
These are the ten VOLAGS in question:
Most of these groups are only able to operate because of the federal government.
Take the USCCB: In 2023, they received $129.6M in federal grants for migration services. They spent $130.5M on migration services.
Their immigration activities are almost 100% taxpayer-funded.
Or take the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. (Which, unlike the USCCB as an overall organization, is exclusively focused on immigration).
In FY 2023, 96.65% of their revenue came from federal grants and contracts, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Or take the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society—a group that we made an entire video about last year. (See below).
Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas served on their board until taking a job in the Biden admin. Surprise, surprise—after he took office, their funding skyrocketed.
If you're looking for the villain at the center of the immigration crisis, it's these guys. The refugee NGOs are a fifth column in American politics. And they've essentially been acting as an extension of the federal government.
But not anymore. This is a big, big win.
You can check out my deep-dive thread on mass deportations from earlier this month here:
Also, bizarre to say “it’s legal!” when I never said this was just about “illegal” immigration. It very much includes the gigantic swathe of migrants that have been brought in “legally” by powerful NGOs committed to subverting and twisting our immigration laws beyond recognition.
These are Trump's best approval numbers ever. But look at the generational breakdown.
Boomers are 50/50. Millennials are +4.
Gen Z is +10.
I'll keep saying it: Zoomers are going to be the most right-wing generation in recent memory.
In some ways, this is the U.S. catching up with something that's happening across the West. One of the fascinating things about right-wing nationalism in Europe is that it's often more popular with young voters. It wasn't 60-something pensioners who were singing "Auslander Raus."
It's true. Gen X was a remarkably healthy, patriotic generation, wedged between two highly dysfunctional ones. In 1984, Reagan overperformed with 18-24 year olds—the first batch of Gen X voters.
The last time the GOP carried that age demo was 1988.
It's not even particularly clandestine or secretive—a lot of these groups are openly boasting about it.
The USCCB, for example, regularly touts their efforts on their website:
Same thing with HIAS—one of the groups whose funding skyrocketed under Biden. (And is actively involved in transporting migrants up from South America into the U.S.)
These guys are in DC, actively advocating for expanding asylum, more refugees, etc:
For years, we were told that "the internet isn't real life." But in this election, it was. Online influencers, issues and ideas played a major role in the 2024 election—especially on the right.
Today's right is more "online" than the left—and that's part of why it's winning. 🧵
Conservative politics used to take place on the airwaves of Fox and talk radio, in established journals and magazines, think tanks and direct-mail campaigns, etc. Now almost all of that is downstream of the internet. In 2024, the right-wing "lifeworld" is shaped online.
It's a trickle-down information economy: Not every Republican voter is active on here. But the people that *they* get their news from are. The talk-show pundits, Fox News scriptwriters, journalists, etc are almost all "very online." This is where the influencers are influenced.
In his farewell speech, Joe Biden raged against the "tech-industrial complex."
That "complex" is real. But it's extremely left-wing.
There's a revolving door between Big Tech and the Democratic Party.
They're not just allies—they're often literally run by the same people. 🧵
There are a number of high-profile renegade tech titans (i.e., Elon Musk) who are "on the right." Obviously, that's who Biden was talking about in his speech.
But they're exceptions to the rule. Writ large, the tech industry is an extension of the institutional Left.
In the 2020 campaign, for example, employees of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook were "the five largest sources of money for Mr. Biden’s campaign and joint fundraising committees among those identifying corporate employers," according to the Wall Street Journal: