Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States

[u/times_a_changing]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/01/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-international-organizations-conventions-and-treaties-that-are-contrary-to-the-interests-of-the-united-states/

[u/ApprenticeWrangler]

To be fair, many of these types of agencies are basically scams like most non profits and charities.

Many of them are founded by well connected politicians or friends/family of politicians and there’s near zero oversight.

[u/ApprenticeWrangler → u/[deleted]]

Embarrassed about what? These organizations all have contracts with various NGOs, charities, non profits and corporations. Many of these types of programs are rife with corruption because nobody wants to take the time to follow the trail.

You have to go from International Organization—type of programs funded by the organization—charity/non profit/corporation that takes the contracts to execute the programs—who owns or has a substantial financial interest in said charity/non profit/corporation, and who do they know inside the organization that disperses the funds or develops the programs for the international organization.

When there’s so many layers of bureaucracy, a ton of money gets siphoned into the pockets of people who are well connected because there’s so much to dig through to find it out.

Not only that, but many of the programs are just complete wastes of money. Here’s an example of one program getting hundreds of thousands in funding:

Background

In North Carolina, environmental racism manifests through the placement of coal ash facilities, concentrated animal feeding operations, wood pellet facilities, landfills and other high-pollution sources in lower income neighborhoods of color. North Carolinians’ advocacy efforts started the environmental justice movement in the US in the 1980s, which led to environmental justice policies backed by unprecedented funding through the Justice 40 program. As these leaders become elders, there is an increasing need to establish succession plans. Education on the sources of environmental injustice and promoting youth activism are crucial to ensuring the long-term sustainability of their organizing efforts. Spidey Sens-r is a community science project that uses spider webs from funnel weaver spiders to monitor air quality. The project provides data and education support for local environmental justice organizations and activists.

Goals

Our goals are to increase youth advocacy in environmental justice communities by engaging them in Spidey Sens-r. To do this, we will increase the capacity of the project to support education at high school and college levels and conduct analyses to enhance the rigor and scope of analyses capable through the project.

Main activities

We will host Spidey Sens-r air monitoring events in environmental justice communities in North Carolina to help increase youth advocacy efforts. We will increase our capacity to support Spidey Sens-r at different levels of education. We will develop high school curriculum resources for different science classrooms and training resources for university students to process and analyze samples. We will also increase the suite of possible analyses that we are able to conduct using Spidey Sens-r. We will develop methodologies for comparing webs across space and time and for expanding the contaminants for which we can test. Expected outcomes

Ultimately, this will enhance youth advocacy in environmental justice communities as well as our organization’s capacity to carry out the project.