July 9, 2025
Defunded by Trump, a Sri Lankan Project Confronts the Problem It Tried to Solve
By Nic Wong
Staff at Media Empowerment for a Democratic Sri Lanka never expected their small initiative to become the target of the kind of fake news it had actively worked to fight against.
On February 5, Elon Musk took to X to criticize the US Agency for International Development. The Trump administration had already paused funding to 90 percent of the agency’s projects around the world. But Musk continued to denigrate the agency as a “radical-left political psy op” to his 221 million followers for weeks after President Trump suspended the majority of its operations. On this particular day, he retweeted a list of “ridiculous projects” flagged by Rapid Response 47, a White House–affiliated account. “7.9 million [went] to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid ‘binary-gendered language,’” the post claimed. Musk lambasted the initiatives as a “crazy waste of your tax money!” His followers responded with conspiracy theories and calls for USAID staff to receive jail time.
In Sri Lanka, staff at Media Empowerment for a Democratic Sri Lanka, the program allegedly funding pronoun training, were shocked by the attention. They had not spent any funds on the kind of work Musk described. The $7.9 million MEND had received went to countering disinformation in Sri Lanka by equipping students, teachers, civil servants, and journalists with educational resources. It hosted training sessions teaching individuals to spot misinformation, develop their reporting skills, and engage in mobile journalism.
