The United States Department of State has provided funding to organizations that support free speech, human rights, and persecuted minority in poor and totalitarian nations for years.
To decide what to account, staffers with strong skills usually pored over reams of information on abuses under the most repressive regimes and held an open opposition to fund groups to work in those countries.
State Department employees were given their own list of companies that should be funded this year by the Trump administration. To the surprise of several staffers and lawmakers, they proposed at least a hundred grants that would bypass the normal open buying process. According to discussions and documents that ProPublica reviewed, they also sought to give tax dollars to organizations that support liberal and anti-immigration movements in Europe as well as white South Africans.
Among the organizations appointees have considered funding in recent months are a British free-speech firm that has fought against bans on “gay change therapy” and an African group run by a controversial figure who has called for self-governance of the white racial minority within South Africa.
More than a few former State Department workers claim that this kind of help would be a significant departure from the standard aid that tortured sufferers and documented rapes, political violence, and other abuses in some of the world’s most tyrannical nations. One new programme with$ 4.9 million of competitive financing available to groups to grow” civilizational self-confidence in Europe” is slated for “research, conferences, cultural engagements, and support for civil society” in rich democracies. Although the call for proposals urges recipients to” not attempt to reform the legislative processes,” experts and lawmakers have expressed concern that the United States is attempting to influence politics in allies.
That emphasis on Western nations was evident in a grant the State Department has been working on for months to a fledgling British American think tank dedicated to “renewing our Judeo-Christian culture and civilisational mission”. The State Department abandoned those plans in recent days after receiving resistance from Congress.
” I’ve never before seen U. S. government funding for such groups”, said William Allchorn, a senior research fellow at Anglia Ruskin University and an expert on radical-right extremism in the United Kingdom. It’s” crossing the Rubicon, isn’t it”?
A review of proposed grants shows several are being directed to more traditional human rights purposes, but even some of those have raised concerns in and outside the State Department.
Strict agency regulations have long mandated that whenever possible, there is an open bidding process to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. Generally, the State Department is allowed to offer awards directly to a single entity or to a small group of potential grantees in rare instances, such as when only one organization is capable of the work or an emergency necessitates providing money so quickly that open competition is impossible. In highly sensitive nations where actively working on human rights can be dangerous, it has also used” sole-source” and “limited-source” awards, which are not publicly announced.
None of those justifications appear to apply here, according to contracting experts and former staffers consulted by ProPublica. They claim that the situation is even more concerning because Trump officials chose the potential recipients after making selection decisions based on the organizations ‘ experience and qualifications.
” It’s not good governance to have political appointees give grants to individuals for unknown reasons”, one former bureau staffer said.
Giving awards to organizations in high-income nations further complicates the funding. The practice is so unusual that an internal waiver justifying the choice is typically required.
When questioned about its request for waivers for grants to high-income nations, the State Department did not respond.
During private briefings this month, members of Congress expressed concern over both the list of potential recipients and the plan to award no-bid or limited-bid grants, according to officials familiar with the closed-door meetings who weren’t authorized to publicly discuss them.
The State Department responded to a brief written response to a list of questions about this story, noting that “any organization that does not meet all requirements and standards for federal grants is not guaranteed the receipt of a grant.” A State Department official who declined to be named stressed that the process for awarding grants was ongoing and that multiple offices provide input. They added that the administration needs to address its grave concerns about South Africa’s human rights situation.
Asked about the potential grants, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire and the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said Congress expects the State Department” to invest resources to advance human rights, democratic institutions, civil society, freedom of expression and worker rights” and that the proposals are” an appalling departure from that practice and an affront to our democratic allies”.
These awards indicate that the Department will choose recipients of federal funding based on their political ideology, Shaheen said,” not in the interests of American taxpayers or national security.”
Internal records and interviews show one of the key figures involved in the grants is Samuel Samson, a 27-year-old deputy assistant secretary of state who previously worked as a fundraiser for a group that aims to bring people with an” America first” worldview into government.
Samson began his position as a senior adviser to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, also known as DRL, the State Department unit that selects and distributes the human rights grants the day before President Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
Over the past 18 months, he has courted far-right leaders in Europe, an area with which he believes the U. S. shares a” common civilizational struggle“. Samson has spoken with lawmakers privately about the agency’s grantmaking strategies in recent weeks.
One group expected to receive a no-bid grant is the Free Speech Union, a British organization founded in 2020 to counter” cancel culture”. The organization frequently takes legal action to defend those who are accused of being transphobic, and it has created a petition opposing the U.K.’s proposed ban on discredited therapy that attempts to convert gay people to heterosexuality. It’s unclear if the grant would go to the British-based organization or its international offshoot. According to a document reviewed by ProPublica, the$ 5 million grant will be used to combat “digital overregulation,” provide assistance for those facing “deplatforming,” and support “restrictive online safety and hate speech laws. Trump officials met with the group during a European tour late last year, according to Politico.
According to scholars, the U.S. government’s support for these groups could give them a layer of legitimacy they might not otherwise have.
” We see them as intellectualizing or sanitizing radical-right ideas that are then taken up by the parties in power”, said Allchorn, the U. K. extremism expert.
According to the Free Speech Union’s website, it uses government funds and is nonpartisan. In response to questions from ProPublica about the potential grant, the organization’s founder, Toby Young, said,” We have neither applied for nor been awarded a grant from the US State Department or any other branch of the US Government”. He refused to address criticisms of the award or his organization.
The largest award the bureau has put forward this year,$ 40 million, is for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which was created by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The foundation’s objectives are to honor those killed by communist regimes and advance freedom for those who are still living under totalitarian rule.
The proposed sum is staggering to people familiar with the State Department’s allocation practices and would dwarf the organization’s budget. In the past, victims of Communism have been awarded a few government grants, but for much smaller sums. Its most recent publicly available tax forms, from 2024, show its total assets come to about$ 12 million. Four people with knowledge of the foundation’s previous U.S. funding work questioned its ability to handle such a sizable award.
Samson has a personal connection to the organization. According to his LinkedIn profile, which is no longer publicly accessible, Samson was a visiting fellow at the graduate school branch of Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C. Spalding’s husband, Matthew, is that graduate school’s dean, and Samson has taken classes with one or both of them, according to a State Department official.
Samson’s relationship with the Spaldings had nothing to do with the grant, according to the State Department official who declined to be identified.
The foundation’s proposed award is to “amplify the voices of dissidents and political prisoners while educating global audiences about the dangers of communist and authoritarian regimes”, according to a document reviewed by ProPublica.
The foundation said it was unaware of the proposed funding, but that “if true, the 100 million victims of communism in the past, and another 1.5 billion men, women, and children still enduring communism will rejoice.” In response to questions from ProPublica about the award and concerns about its ability to manage it.
The State Department declined to comment on awards in process but noted that Victims of Communism has long worked with the State Department. The organization stated in a statement that” America will not allow radical extremists to undermine our sovereignty and national security,” as President Trump has stated that communism is a serious threat to American liberty. ” Our foreign assistance programming is aligned to support our strategic priorities”.
Additionally, Trump administration officials intend to finance at least one organization to investigate crimes and atrocities committed against minorities in South Africa. This spring, DRL staff were initially told to begin the process of awarding funds to Lex Libertas, a South African organization founded by a prominent member of the nation’s white Afrikaner movement. In a show of respect for South African farmers who have been targeted for racial discrimination and violence, the organization is raising money to install 3, 000 white crosses on the National Mall in memory of the attacks that have occurred.
The proposed award to fund the South African crime research was later widened to allow other invited groups to apply for a$ 1 million grant, according to people with knowledge of the process. The grant is still being considered, so the State Department opted not to disclose whether Lex Libertas will be chosen to compete.
Extensive research shows white South African farmers are not victims of crime at higher rates than other groups. Trump, however, has argued that there is a genocide against white South Africans and is using claims that white people are subject to excessive violence to justify cutting off South Africa’s funding for HIV research and treatment.
Former diplomats told ProPublica that it makes little sense to focus on the victimization of white South Africans given the enormous suffering elsewhere in the region. One former agency official told ProPublica,” It’s ridiculous to suggest that white people on the African continent are the main source of human rights concern.”
Lex Libertas did not respond to questions.
The State Department official informed ProPublica that one of the most contentious grants that officials had recently dropped. The decision came after Democratic lawmakers raised objections during briefings last week about the months-old organization and its agenda. According to its website, the grant was to 878, a British American think tank established this year, with a focus on “existential threats to Britain, America, and our shared Judeo-Christian civilisation.” The sole-source$ 7 million grant aimed to advance” Anglo-American values” in the U. K., Europe and “allied partner countries”, according to a document ProPublica reviewed.
878 did not respond to inquiries.
Since creating a bureau to focus on human rights in 1977, the State Department has championed human rights and democracy in more than 100 countries. Its awards have been used to promote research into preventing torture in Tunisia, rehabilitating torture survivors in Syria, and combating widespread sexual violence in Mauritania.
Since at least 2011, as anti-LGBTQ+ laws and violence spread globally, the bureau added a specific focus on people persecuted for their sexual orientation or gender identity.
DRL has had bipartisan support for the majority of its existence. Democrats applauded its championing of international labor standards and marginalized communities, while Republicans favored its defense of democratic freedoms in China, North Korea, Cuba and other communist countries. As a senator, Marco Rubio was a vocal supporter of the bureau and human rights in general. He once argued from the Senate floor that protecting the rights of gay men who were imprisoned in Chechnya and all people was in the country’s best interests. In 2018, he urged the president to appoint an assistant secretary to oversee DRL, a post Trump had left vacant for over a year.
However, the fate of DRL dramatically changed after Rubio was elected secretary of state in January 2025. Trump suspended all foreign aid in his first week in office. Within a few months, the bureau was devastated by cuts by Trump’s newly installed Department of Government Efficiency, and Rubio had to close most of its locations. In April 2025, Rubio published a Substack post smearing the bureau he once championed as” a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against’ anti-woke’ leaders”.
Samson also emitted shock waves through the bureau. In March, he traveled to the U. K., meeting an anti-abortion protester and the anti-immigration politician Nigel Farage. Samson lashed out at Germany for calling its hard-right Alternative for Germany party “extremist,” and the United Kingdom for arresting anti-abortion protesters in his own essay on the State Department’s Substack.
Meanwhile, DRL’s remaining skeleton crew was tasked with removing trigger words from documents. One former bureau employee, who pleaded anonymity for fear of retribution, said,” We would try to talk about human rights defenders in talking points, only to have them struck.”
” We went from having a real, dynamic appreciation for individuals and their human rights and fundamental freedoms to erasing that, especially if individuals were part of an underrepresented group or marginalized community”, the former employee said.
The bureau’s budget is severely underfunded, with about$ 190 million being spent on the bureau as opposed to$ 500 million in 2024. Now the administration is preparing to put money behind its new priorities.
The State Department official told ProPublica,” We’re just putting the president’s agenda into practice as we’ve been directed through the White House and the national security strategy.”
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