USAID-funded Internews went from funding media organizations with George Soros to overthrow governments in Eastern Europe to calling for advertising boycotts to censor free speech online.

This is a textbook example of U.S. regime change tactics being redirected against domestic populism and American citizens.

In the 1990s, Internews partnered with the Soros Foundation to fund media organizations in post-Soviet nations, playing a pivotal role in the color revolutions of the 2000s in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine.

During Georgia’s Rose Revolution, Internews funded and trained journalists at Rustavi-2 TV, the leading channel driving the uprising.

“Media was very good at informing the public about what was going on, and it had a huge role in calling people onto the streets.” – Marc Behrendt, former Internews director for Georgia

By 2003, in Ukraine, Internews had conducted 220 media training programs, trained over 2,800 journalists, and produced more than 220 television and 1,000 radio programs. It also funded Telekritika, an online outlet that played a central role in the 2004 Orange Revolution.

After Brexit and Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Internews—now working with the USAID-funded World Economic Forum (WEF)—shifted its focus to pushing advertising boycotts to suppress online dissent.

What was once a U.S.-funded operation to overthrow foreign regimes is now being used to silence American citizens and dismantle Trump’s populist MAGA movement.

The Price Tag?

USAID has funneled over $470 million in taxpayer dollars into Internews.

USAID-Funded Internews CEO Jeanne Bourgault pushes for global advertising “exclusion list” to censor “disinformation” at the World Economic Forum.

Like what they did to 𝕏?

"Disinformation makes money. We need to follow that money. We need to work with the global advertising industry because a lot of those dollars go to pretty bad content, and so you can work really hard on exclusion lists or inclusion lists and really try to challenge the global advertising industry to focus their ad dollars towards the good news."

Notably, Bourgault’s call for global ad boycotts coincided with a widespread advertising boycott targeting Elon Musk’s 𝕏, which has been at the forefront of defending free speech online.

USAID has funneled $472 million to Internews and $68 million to the WEF, where both groups collaborate on censoring the internet.

Is this a good use of American taxpayer funds?