“THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE,” Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in February 2025. He was not referring to his own administration, but to the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “CLOSE IT DOWN!” the president added.

Just a few hours later USAID was in effect closed down, with most of the staff placed on indefinite administration leave. This was framed as part of Trump’s “America first” agenda. USAID, the Trump administration and his sycophants in the rightwing media had argued, was wasting taxpayers’ hard-earned money on ridiculous projects abroad instead of improving life at home. In the lead-up to the shuttering of USAID, for example, one of the most shameless lies about the agency, repeated without any evidence by the likes of Fox News, was that it was spending millions on condoms for Gaza.

Now that humanitarian aid has been slashed in the name of putting America first, is taxpayer money staying in the country? Not quite. A lot is still going abroad. But instead of being used to help the world’s most impoverished people, that money is going to thinktanks across Europe set up by multimillionaires who want to take Trumpism global.

Last month the Guardian reported that the US state department intends to grant $12m to conservative organisations in the UK; a move described by many critics as an attempt to influence foreign politics. Of that, $7m is going to a group called 878, co-founded by the former Conservative minister, now TV host Jacob Rees-Mogg (whose net worth is estimated at more than £100m) that appears to have been incorporated in the UK in March. The website describes it as a “leading British and American thinktank, dedicated to strengthening the civilisational partnership between the United Kingdom and the United States”. If millions in funding going to a new organisation with........

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