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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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There is no actual need for the people in charge of distributing food to the Ivory Coast to be provided with super-secret-squirrel information about "the actual situation on the ground", given that they are supposed to be directed by the State Department under the leadership of the President. If secret information indicates that they should do things in a specific way, they can be directed to do things in that specific way with no explanation as to why.

This is just kicking the can down the road.

At some point, a civil servant learns about the secret information and directs USAID to distribute aid things in a particular way or avoid particular things. That person is (a fortiori, since he is directing them!) in charge of distributing food to the Ivory Coast.

At most, you're saying that the administrative or personnel boundary between USAID and State should have put more analysis and decision making on State and less on USAID such that the guy in charge of distributing food that also has secret information happens to be on the State side and not on the USAID side. That's fine, but that really doesn't change much except shuffle roles around an organizational divide.