State Dept pulls millions in funding for ‘condoms in Gaza,’ as Trump admin looks to trim spending
Secretary of State Marco Rubio's decision to freeze foreign aid over the weekend included pulling millions of dollars-worth of U.S. funding for "condoms in Gaza," a White House official told Fox News Digital.The revelation came as the official explained that a separate memo from the Office of Management and Budget will temporarily pause grants, loans and federal assistance programs pending a review into whether the funding coincides with President Donald Trump's executive orders, such as those related to ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), the Green New Deal, and funding nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) "that undermine the national interest."
"If the activity is not in conflict with the President’s priorities, it will continue with no issues," the White House official told Fox News Digital. "This is similar to how HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] stopped the flow of grant money to the WHO [World Health Organization] after President Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the organization. Or how the State Department halted several million dollars going to condoms in Gaza this past weekend."
Palestinians attach an incendiary device to inflated plastic bags and condoms to be directed and flown towards Israel, near Rafah along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel on Aug. 21, 2020. (SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images)
Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department on Tuesday seeking additional information.
In her first-ever briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the OBM 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 waste of taxpayer money. So that's what this pause is focused on, being good stewards of tax dollars," Leavitt told reporters. She said DOGE and OBM also found $37 million was about to be sent to the WHO before Trump's executive order breaking ties with the global health body.
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."
On Sunday, Rubio paused all U.S. foreign assistance funded by or through the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for review. ....
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Trump is missing an opportunity. He should send 12 inch condoms and label them extra small. That will crush them.
