DOGE Playbook Exposes Corporate Activism Destroying America

It has become clear that Hillary Clinton’s infamous pejorative, her “basket of deplorables,” was merely a first-rate projection. The real deplorables have all along been sheltered by her ilk, the Deep State, and its corporate partners; and the Trump Administration is only just starting to shine a light on their malfeasance.

For the past few weeks, the nascent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has begun to uncover how the Left has transformed federal agencies and institutions into tools for political patronage. Elon Musk and his team’s most prominent discovery so far, at least in the public imagination, is the odious behavior of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an agency that exists ostensibly to project “soft power” abroad but that, in actuality, spends billions of taxpayer dollars each year to sustain a large network of subversive, left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

This NGO Archipelago serves, among other things, to advance the Left’s ideological agenda extra-legislatively and to afford its constituents stable employment and a degree of material comfort, neither of which they would in a well-ordered society be likely to obtain.

Government agencies like USAID are not the only benefactors of the NGO Archipelago. Indeed, it is possible that they are not even its most prominent benefactors. Both private and corporate philanthropy are essential to its functioning, and it is with an eye toward the latter that we must next turn our attention.

Some organizations have already begun to do the legwork. The Claremont Institute’s BLM Funding Database details nearly $100 billion of the more than $300 billion corporations pledged to the Black Lives Matter movement. And, more recently, the Project to Expose Corporate Activism (PECA) published a database that describes with granularity the LGBT giving and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives of nearly 1,600 companies, including all Fortune 500s and many federal contractors.

Significantly, PECA’s database elucidates the colossal scale of the LGBT activist network, which is just one facet of the Archipelago. The network is comprised of more than 2,500 individual causes, and according to one PECA researcher, the combined assets and revenues of the fifty wealthiest LGBT causes rival those of conservative causes across all issues.

DOGE generated headlines when it uncovered shocking examples of grift, such as spending on sex changes in Guatemala and DEI in Serbia. Just as USAID spends taxpayer money to advance the pet projects of the international Left, corporate America diverts shareholder wealth to advance equally if not more radical causes. (While many of the causes in the LGBT database appear relatively benign at first glance, closer examination reveals that the vast majority support “transing” minors and normalizing unhealthy behavior, among other things.)

It is difficult to reduce PECA’s database to a shortlist of worst offenders. However, the following examples provide a representative sampling of what’s contained within:

Boeing has at least two LGBT employee resource groups (ERGs), including a “safe space for parents and partners of transgender people to learn, grow, support and celebrate one another.” The aerospace company sponsors a variety of LGBT events and groups such as a Transgender & Allies Summit and The Trevor Project, a “gender-affirming” youth organization.

Cargill, the agricultural giant that controls much of America’s food supply, has an LGBT resource group and subjects employees to “education and training about the trans community covering everything from pronouns to names to sensitive questions.” The company opposes legislation banning child sex change procedures and funds several transgender and “gender-expansive” youth organizations like the Transformation Project, Transforming Families, Oneiowa, and RECLAIM, with a special focus on youth in the Midwest and Great Plains.

Gilead Sciences, which develops and produces antiviral drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C, has given more than $257M to LGBT causes, including youth organizations like The GenderCool Project, the Brave Space Alliance, and The Trevor Project. The company, which opposes legislation prohibiting child sex changes, is a major funder of the far-left Human Rights Campaign and is the number one funder of organizations that provide support for “sex workers” and transgender communities.

Hasbro, among other things, has sponsored the Get REAL Trans 101 Workshop and sells a line of Pride apparel featuring its GI Joe, Power Rangers, My Little Pony, Transformers, D&D, and Magic: The Gathering brands, with proceeds benefitting LGBT youth organizations like The Trevor Project and Youth Pride RI.

Pure Romance, a mother-and-son-owned sex toy company, has donated $2M to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to support its gender transition clinic. The company has also sponsored Cincinnati Pride and Living with Change, a transgender youth organization founded by its owners.

Similarly to how companies’ funding of BLM sowed division and destruction in 2020, the above actions destroy families, divide communities, and result in physical and spiritual harm. Action must be taken to put a decisive end to this corporate wrongdoing and the radicals corporations support.

Therefore, to target only one of the pillars supporting the NGO Archipelago would be a mistake. In addition to DOGE’s important efforts, the Right must take significant action against corporations, including their DEI outfits and identity-based resource groups. Furthermore, the SEC should revoke all rules pertaining to the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement. Though unfettered capitalism is not the be-all and end-all for human flourishing, at this moment, social and environmental regulations serve radical left-wing interests rather than the common good.

Lastly, greater scrutiny should be paid when determining which NGOs are granted official recognition, including tax exemptions and other benefits. Much of what constitutes philanthropy today little resembles philanthropy of the past or charity as understood by the public. The time is ripe for reform; those interested should take advantage of DOGE’s findings and PECA’s data to make their case.

Jack Weir is the pseudonym of a writer and researcher in Washington, D.C.