US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has reaffirmed the Trump administration’s defence commitments to America’s Pacific territories of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands and that any attack on them would be an attack on the mainland.

Hegseth touched down in Guam from Hawai’i on Thursday as part of an Indo-Pacific tour, his first as Defence Secretary, in which he is seeking to shore up traditional alliances to counter China.

Geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific has seen Guam and neighboring CNMI become increasingly significant in supporting American naval and air operations, especially in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

• READ MORE: Other Micronesia defence reports

Both territories are also within range of Chinese and North Korean ballistic missiles and the US tested a defence system in Guam in December.

Any attack on Guam and the Commonwealth Northern Marianas Islands would be met with “appropriate response,” Hegseth said during his brief visit, emphasising both territories were central to the US defence posture focused on containing China.

“We’re defending our homeland,” Hegseth said. “Guam and CNMI are vital parts of America, and I want to be very clear — to everyone in this room, to the cameras — any attack against these islands is an attack against the US.”

“We’re going to continue to stay committed to our presence here,” Hegseth said. “It’s important to emphasise: we are not seeking war with Communist China. But it is our job to ensure that we are ready.”

Key US strategic asset
Located closer to Beijing than Hawai’i, Guam serves as a key US strategic asset, known as the “tip of the spear,” with 10,000 military personnel, an air base for F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers, and home port for Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

The pledge from Hegseth comes as debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified, with competing calls by some residents for full statehood and UN-mandated decolonisation, led by the Indigenous Chamorro people.

Defending Guam and CNMI, Hegseth said, aligns with President Donald Trump’s “goal to achieve peace through strength by putting America first”.

He delivered remarks at Andersen Air Force Base and took an aerial tour of the island before meeting with Lou Leon Guerrero and Arnold Palacios, governors of Guam and Northern Marianas, respectively.

Guerrero appealed to Hegseth about the “great impact” the US military buildup on Guam had had on the island’s residents.

“We welcome you, and we welcome the position and the posture that President Trump has,” Guerrero told Hegseth, during opening statements before their closed-door meeting.

“We are the centre of gravity here. We are the second island chain of defence,” she said. “We want to be a partner in the readiness effort but national security cannot happen without human health security.”

Funding for hospital
Guerrero sought funding for a new hospital, estimated to cost US$600 million.

“Our island needs a regional hospital capable of handling mass casualties — whether from conflict or natural disasters,” she told Hegseth.

“We are working very closely in partnership with the military, and one of our asks is to be a partner in the financing of that hospital.”

Afterwards Guerrero told reporters she did not have time to discuss the housing crisis caused by the US military buildup.

Earlier this month, Guerrero warned in her “state of the island” address of US neglect of Guam’s 160,000 residents, where one-in-five are estimated to live below the poverty line.

“Let us be clear about this: Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter, because housing aid to Guam is cut, or if 36,000 of our people lose access to Medicaid and Medicare coverage keeping them healthy, alive and out of poverty,” Guerrero said.

At the end of his visit to Guam, Hegseth announced in a statement he had also reached an “understanding” with President Wesley Simina of the Federated States of Micronesia to begin planning and construction of US$400 million in military infrastructure projects in the State of Yap.

Territorial background
Simina’s office would not confirm to BenarNews he had met with Hegseth in Guam, saying only he was “off island.”

As a territory, Guam residents are American citizens but they cannot vote for the US president and their lone delegate to the Congress has no voting power.

The US acquired Guam in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and CNMI from Japan in 1945 after its defeat in the Second World War. Both remain unincorporated territories to this day.

The Defence Department holds about 25 percent of Guam’s land and is preparing to spend billions to upgrade the island’s military infrastructure as another 5000 American marines relocate from Japan’s Okinawa islands.

On Tuesday, Hegseth was in Hawai’i meeting officials of the US Indo-Pacific Command. Speaking with the media in Honolulu, he said his Asia-Pacific visit was to show strength to allies and “reestablish deterrence.”

Hegseth’s week-long tour comes against a backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness. Its coast guard vessels have recently encroached into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea and around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

His visit will be closely watched in the Pacific for signs of the Trump administration’s commitment to traditional allies following a rift between Washington and Europe that has tested the transatlantic alliance.

The trip also threatens to be overshadowed by the fallout from revelations that he and other national security officials discussed attack plans against Yemen’s Houthis on the messaging app Signal with a journalist present.

Flagrant violation
Critics are calling it a flagrant violation of information security protocols.

During his first term, Trump revived Washington’s engagements in the Pacific island region after long years of neglect paved the way for China’s initiatives.

He hosted leaders of the US freely associated states of Palau, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia at the White House in 2019.

The Biden administration followed through, doubling the engagement with an increased presence and complementing the military buildup with economic assistance that sought to outdo China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The new Trump administration, however, cut the cord, dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and along with it, the millions of dollars pledged to Pacific island nations.

The abolition of about 80 percent of USAID programmes sent mixed signals to the island nations and security experts have warned that China would fill the void it has created.

From Guam, Hegseth has travelled to Philippines and Japan, where he will participate in a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima and will later meet with Japanese leaders and US military forces.

Republished from BenarNews with permission. Stefan Armbruster in Brisbane contributed to this story.

The Trump administration might let hundreds of millions of dollars in aid pledged to Pacific island nations during former President Joe Biden’s time in office stand, says New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters.

The Biden administration pledged about $1 billion in aid to the Pacific to help counter China’s influence in the strategic region.

However, Trump last month froze all disbursements of aid by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), for 90 days pending a “review” of all aid spending under his “America First” policy.

• READ MORE: Political analyst hopes NZ, Australia will ‘step up’ over USAID cuts gap
• Other USAID reports

Peters told reporters on Monday after meetings with Trump’s USAID acting head, Peter Marocco, and his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, “more confident” about the prospects of the aid being left alone than he was before.

Peters said he had a “very frank and open discussion” with American officials about how important the aid was for the Pacific, and insisted that they “get our point of view in terms of how essential it is”.

“In our business, it’s wise to find out the results before you open your mouth, but we are looking ahead with more confidence than when we arrived,” Peters said, pushing back against claims that the Trump administration would be “pulling back” from the Pacific region.

“We don’t know that yet. Let’s find out in April, when that full review is done on USAID,” he said. “But we came away more confident than some of the alarmists might have been before we arrived.”

Frenzied diplomatic battle
The Biden administration sought to rapidly expand US engagement with the small island nations of the Pacific after the Solomon Islands signed a controversial security pact with China three years ago.

The deal by the Solomon Islands sparked a frenzied diplomatic battle between Washington and Beijing for influence in the strategic region.

Biden subsequently hosted Pacific island leaders at back-to-back summits in Washington in September 2022 and 2023, the first two of their kind. He pledged hundreds of millions of dollars at both meets, appearing to tilt the region back toward Washington.

The first summit included announcements of some $800 billion in aid for the Pacific, while the second added about $200 billion.

But the region has since been rocked by the Trump administration’s decision to freeze all aid pending its ongoing review. The concerns have not been helped by a claim from Elon Musk, who Trump tasked with cutting government waste, that USAID would be shut down.

“You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair. We’re shutting it down,” Musk said in a February 3 livestreamed video.

However, the New Zealand foreign minister, who also met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday, said he held out hope that Washington would not turn back on its fight for influence in the Pacific.

“The first Trump administration turned more powerfully towards the Pacific . . .  than any previous administration,” he said, “and now they’ve got Trump back again, and we hope for the same into the future.”

Radio Free Asia is an online news service affiliated with BenarNews. Republished from BenarNews with permission.

The Trump administration’s decision to eliminate more than 90 percent of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) funding means “nothing’s safe right now,” a regional political analyst says.

President Donald Trump’s government has said it is slashing about US$60 billion in overall US development and humanitarian assistance around the world to further its America First policy.

Last September, the former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said that Washington had “listened carefully” to Pacific Island nations and was making efforts to boost its diplomatic footprint in the region.

• READ MORE: Other USAID funding cuts reports

Campbell had announced that the US contributed US$25 million to the Pacific-owned and led Pacific Resilience Facility — a fund endorsed by leaders to make it easier for Forum members to access climate financing for adaptation, disaster preparedness and early disaster response projects.

However, Trump’s move has been said to have implications for the Pacific, which is one of the most aid-dependent regions in the world.

Research fellow at the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre Dr Terence Wood told RNZ Pacific Waves that, in the Pacific, the biggest impacts of the aid cut are likley to be felt by the three island nations in a Compact of Free Association (COFA) with the US.

He said that while the compact “is safe” for three COFA states – Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, and Palau – “these are unprecedented times”.

“It would be unprecedented if the US just tore them up. But then again, the United States is showing very little regard for agreements that it has entered into in the past, so I would say that nothing’s safe right now.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Dr Terence Wood speaking to RNZ Pacific Waves.   Video: RNZ Pacific

Much has been and much more will be written about the looming abolition of USAID.

It’s “the removal of a huge and important tool of American global statecraft” (Konyndyk), or the wood-chipping of a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” (Musk) or, more reasonably, the unwarranted cancellation of an organisation that should have been reviewed and reformed.

Commentators will have a lot to say, some of it exaggerated, about the varieties of harm caused by this decision, and about its legality.

• READ MORE: Trump’s foreign aid freeze throws independent journalism into chaos
• What will US aid cuts mean for the Pacific?
• Donald Trump’s foreign aid freeze leaves organisations in the Asia-Pacific region scrambling
• Other Pacific media freedom reports

Some will welcome it from a conservative perspective, believing that USAID was either not aligned with or acting against the interests of the United States, or was proselytising wokeness, or was a criminal organisation.

Some, often more quietly, will welcome it from an anti-imperialist or “Southern” perspective, believing that the agency was at worst a blunt instrument of US hegemony or at least a bastion of Western saviourism.

I want to come at this topic from a different angle, by providing a brief personal perspective on USAID as an organisation, based on several decades of occasional interaction with it during my time as an Australian aid official.

Essentially, I view USAID as a harried, hamstrung and traumatised organisation, not as a rogue agency or finely-tuned vehicle of US statecraft.

Peer country representative
My own experience with USAID began when I participated as a peer country representative in an OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) peer review of the US’s foreign assistance programme in the early 1990s, which included visits to US assistance programmes in Bangladesh and the Philippines, as well as to USAID headquarters in Washington DC.

I later dealt with the agency in many other roles, including during postings to the OECD and Indonesia and through my work on global and regional climate change and health programmes, up to and including the pandemic years.

An image is firmly lodged in my mind from that DAC peer review visit to Washington. We had had days of back-to-back meetings in USAID headquarters with a series of exhausted-looking, distracted and sometimes grumpy executives who didn’t have much reason to care what the OECD thought about the US aid effort.

It was a muggy summer day. At one point a particularly grumpy meeting chair, who now rather reminds of me of Gary Oldman’s character in Slow Horses, mopped the sweat from his forehead with his necktie without appearing to be aware of what he was doing. Since then, that man has been my mental model of a USAID official.

But why so exhausted, distracted and grumpy?

Precisely because USAID is about the least freewheeling workplace one could construct. Certainly it is administratively independent, in the sense that it was created by an act of Congress, but it also receives its budget from the President and Congress — and that budget comes with so many strings attached, in the form of country- or issue-related “earmarks” or other directives that it might be logically impossible to allocate the funds as instructed.

Some of these earmarks are broad and unsurprising (for example, specific allocations for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment under the Bush-era PEPFAR program) while others represent niche interests (Senator John McCain once ridiculed earmarks pertaining to “peanuts, orangutans, gorillas, neotropical raptors, tropical fish and exotic plants”) — but none originates within USAID.

Informal earmarks calculation
I recall seeing an informal calculation showing that one could only satisfy all the percentage-based earmarks by giving most of the dollars several quite different jobs to do. A 2002 DAC peer review noted with disapproval some 270 earmarks or other directive provisions in aid legislation; by the time of the most recent peer review in 2022, this number was more like 700.

Related in part to this congressional micro-management of its budget — along with the usual distrust of organisations that “send” money overseas — USAID labours under particularly gruelling accountability and reporting requirements.

Andew Natsios — a former USAID Administrator and lifelong Republican who has recently come to USAID’s defence (albeit with arguments that not everybody would deem helpful) — wrote about this in 2010. In terms reminiscent of current events, he described the reign of terror of Lieutenant-General Herbert Beckington, a former Marine Corps officer who led USAID‘s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) from 1977 to 1994.

He was a powerful iconic figure in Washington, and his influence over the structure of the foreign aid programME remains with USAID today. … Known as “The General” at USAID, Beckington was both feared and despised by career officers. Once referred to by USAID employees as “the agency’s J. Edgar Hoover — suspicious, vindictive, eager to think the worst” …

At one point, he told the Washington Post that USAID’s white-collar crime rate was “higher than that of downtown Detroit.” … In a seminal moment in this clash between OIG and USAID, photographs were published of two senior officers who had been accused of some transgression being taken away in handcuffs by the IG investigators for prosecution, a scene that sent a broad chill through the career staff and, more than any other single event, forced a redirection of aid practice toward compliance.

Labyrinthine accountability systems
On top of the burdens of logically impossible programming and labyrinthine accountability systems is the burden of projecting American generosity. As far as humanly possible, and perhaps a little further, ways must be found of ensuring that American aid is sourced from American institutions, farms or factories and, if it is in the form of commodities, that it is transported on American vessels.

Failing that, there must be American flags. I remember a USAID officer stationed in Banda Aceh after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami spending a non-trivial amount of his time seeking to attach sizeable flags to the front of trucks transporting US (but also non-US) emergency supplies around the province of Aceh.

President Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller has somehow determined to his own satisfaction that the great majority (in fact 98 percent) of USAID personnel are donors to the Democratic Party. Whether or not that is true, let alone relevant, Democrat administrations have arguably been no kinder to USAID than Republican ones over the years.

Natsios, in the piece cited above, notes that The General was installed under Carter, who ran on anti-Washington ticket, and that there were savage cuts — over 400 positions — to USAID senior career service staffing under Clinton. USAID gets battered no matter which way the wind blows.

Which brings me back to necktie guy. It has always seemed to me that the platonic form of a USAID officer, while perhaps more likely than not to vote Democrat, is a tired and dispirited person, weary of politicians of all stripes, bowed under his or her burdens, bound to a desk and straitjacketed by accountability requirements, regularly buffeted by new priorities and abrupt restructures, and put upon by the ignorant and suspicious.

Radical-left Marxists and vipers probably wouldn’t tolerate such an existence for long. Who would? I guess it’s either thieves and money-launderers or battle-scarred professionals intent on doing a decent job against tall odds.

Robin Davies is an honorary professor at the Australian National University’s (ANU) Crawford School of Public Policy and managing editor of the Devpolicy Blog. He previously held senior positions at Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and AusAID. This article was first published by Devpolicy Blog.

Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson says US President Donald Trump’s decision on aid “is an opening for anybody else who wants to fill the gap” in the Pacific.

Trump froze all USAID for 90 days on his first day in office and is now looking to significantly reduce the size of the multi-billion dollar agency.

The Pacific is the world’s most aid dependent region, and Terence Wood from the Australian National University Development Policy Centre told RNZ Pacific this move would hit hard.

• READ MORE: Trump’s foreign aid freeze throws independent journalism into chaos
• ‘Journalism has become a blood sport. It is harder and harder to tell the truth’
• Other Pacific media freedom reports

“The US is the Pacific’s largest aid donor and what is happening there is completely unprecedented . . .  there’s also a cruel irony that Elon Musk is the world’s wealthiest man and right now he seems to be calling the shots with decisions that are literally going to be life or death for the world’s poorest people . . .  it’s hard to wrap one’s head around,” he said.

Marshall Islands Journal owner and editor Giff Johnson on the USAID crisis. Video: RNZ Pacific

Wood was concerned about how the dismantling of USAID would impact the Pacific.

“It’s not a good time to be in the world’s most aid dependent region . . .  indeed Sāmoa PM Fiame Naomi Mata’afa has already expressed concern about what might happen to funding for organisations like the World Health Organisation . . .  so everyone is watching this with considerable alarm”.

‘It’s hard to believe that Trump has changed his sense’
Editor Johnson said said in an interview with RNZ Pacific last week that Trump’s shutdown of USAID was at odds with the increased engagement in the Pacific.

He said the move did not line up with the President’s rhetoric on China, and the fact the new US compact agreements were instigated by his administration the last time he was in power.

“So it’s hard to believe that Trump has changed his sense and I mean, he’s putting tariffs in on China, right? . . .  So that’s still very much in play,” Johnson said.

“It’s just like amazing to me that that they’re willing to undermine relationships in the Pacific that they claim to be a very important region for them.

“And you know, this is, I mean, certainly it’s an opening for anybody else who wants to fill the gap, I suppose, until Washington decides what it is doing.”

USAID shutdown bug thing for Pacific
Meanwhile, in the Cook Islands, the vice-chairperson of the Pacific energy regulators Alliance said Trump’s shutdown of USAID was a big deal for the region.

Dean Yarrall said his organisation was planning a multi-day training course on best practices in electricity regulation, funded by the US, which had now been called off.

He said the cancelling of the training course caught his organisation off guard.

“We’re seeing a lot of competition between parties, the Chinese are looking to increase the influence Australia as well and the US through USAID are big supporters of the Pacific so seeing USA sort of drop away, I think that will be a big thing,” Yarrall said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

President Donald Trump has frozen billions of dollars around the world in aid projects, including more than $268 million allocated by Congress to support independent media and the free flow of information.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has denounced this decision, which has plunged NGOs, media outlets, and journalists doing vital work into chaotic uncertainty — including in the Pacific.

In a statement published on its website, RSF has called for international public and private support to commit to the “sustainability of independent media”.

• READ MORE: What will US aid cuts mean for the Pacific?
• Donald Trump’s foreign aid freeze leaves organisations in the Asia-Pacific region scrambling
• Other Pacific media freedom reports

Since the new American president announced the freeze of US foreign aid on January 20, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has been in turmoil — its website is inaccessible, its X account has been suspended, the agency’s headquarters was closed and employees told to stay home.

South African-born American billionaire Elon Musk, an unelected official, whom Trump chose to lead the quasi-official Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has called USAID a “criminal organisation” and declared: “We’re shutting [it] down.”

Later that day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he was named acting director of the agency, suggesting its operations were being moved to the State Department.

Almost immediately after the freeze went into effect, journalistic organisations around the world — including media groups in the Pacific — that receive American aid funding started reaching out to RSF expressing confusion, chaos, and uncertainty.

Large and smaller media NGOs affected
The affected organisations include large international NGOs that support independent media like the International Fund for Public Interest Media and smaller, individual media outlets serving audiences living under repressive conditions in countries like Iran and Russia.

“The American aid funding freeze is sowing chaos around the world, including in journalism. The programmes that have been frozen provide vital support to projects that strengthen media, transparency, and democracy,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF USA.

“President Trump justified this order by charging — without evidence — that a so-called ‘foreign aid industry’ is not aligned with US interests.

“The tragic irony is that this measure will create a vacuum that plays into the hands of propagandists and authoritarian states. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appealing to the international public and private funders to commit to the sustainability of independent media.”

USAID programmes support independent media in more than 30 countries, but it is difficult to assess the full extent of the harm done to the global media.

Many organisations are hesitant to draw attention for fear of risking long-term funding or coming under political attacks.

According to a USAID fact sheet which has since been taken offline, in 2023 the agency funded training and support for 6200 journalists, assisted 707 non-state news outlets, and supported 279 media-sector civil society organisations dedicated to strengthening independent media.

Activities halted overnight
The 2025 foreign aid budget included $268,376,000 allocated by Congress to support “independent media and the free flow of information”.

All over the world, media outlets and organisations have had to halt some of their activities overnight.

“We have articles scheduled until the end of January, but after that, if we haven’t found solutions, we won’t be able to publish anymore,” explains a journalist from a Belarusian exiled media outlet who wished to remain anonymous.

In Cameroon, the funding freeze forced DataCameroon, a public interest media outlet based in the economic capital Douala, to put several projects on hold, including one focused on journalist safety and another covering the upcoming presidential election.

An exiled Iranian media outlet that preferred to remain anonymous was forced to suspend collaboration with its staff for three months and slash salaries to a bare minimum to survive.

An exiled Iranian journalist interviewed by RSF warns that the impact of the funding freeze could silence some of the last remaining free voices, creating a vacuum that Iranian state propaganda would inevitably fill.

“Shutting us off will mean that they’ll have more power,” she says.

USAID: the main donor for Ukrainian media
In Ukraine, where 9 out of 10 outlets rely on subsidies and USAID is the primary donor, several local media have already announced the suspension of their activities and are searching for alternative solutions.

“At Slidstvo.Info, 80 percent of our budget is affected,” said Anna Babinets, CEO and co-founder of this independent investigative media outlet based in Kyiv.

The risk of this suspension is that it could open the door to other sources of funding that may seek to alter the editorial line and independence of these media.

“Some media might be shut down or bought by businessmen or oligarchs. I think Russian money will enter the market. And government propaganda will, of course, intensify,” Babinets said.

RSF has already witnessed the direct effects of such propaganda — a fabricated video, falsely branded with the organisation’s logo, claimed that RSF welcomed the suspension of USAID funding for Ukrainian media — a stance RSF has never endorsed.

This is not the first instance of such disinformation.

Finding alternatives quickly
This situation highlights the financial fragility of the sector.

According to Oleh Dereniuha, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian local media outlet NikVesti, based in Mykolaiv, a city in southeast Ukraine, “The suspension of US funding is just the tip of the iceberg — a key case that illustrates the severity of the situation.”

Since 2024, independent Ukrainian media outlets have found securing financial sustainability nearly impossible due to the decline in donors.

As a result, even minor budget cuts could put these media outlets in a precarious position.

A recent RSF report stressed the need to focus on the economic recovery of the independent Ukrainian media landscape, weakened by the large-scale Russian invasion of February 24, 2022, which RSF’s study estimated to be at least $96 million over three years.

Moreover, beyond the decline in donor support in Ukraine, media outlets are also facing growing threats to their funding and economic models in other countries.

Georgia’s Transparency of Foreign Influence Law — modelled after Russia’s legislation — has put numerous media organisations at risk. The Georgian Prime Minister welcomed the US president’s decision with approval.

This suspension is officially expected to last only 90 days, according to the US government.

However, some, like Katerina Abramova, communications director for leading exiled Russian media outlet Meduza, fear that the reviews of funding contracts could take much longer.

Abramova is anticipating the risk that these funds may be permanently cut off.

“Exiled media are even in a more fragile position than others, as we can’t monetise our audience and the crowdfunding has its limits — especially when donating to Meduza is a crime in Russia,” Abramova stressed.

By abruptly suspending American aid, the United States has made many media outlets and journalists vulnerable, dealing a significant blow to press freedom.

For all the media outlets interviewed by RSF, the priority is to recover and urgently find alternative funding.

Fiji, Pacific media, aid groups reel shocked by cuts
In Suva, Fiji, as Pacific media groups have been reeling from the shock of the aid cuts, Fijivillage News reports that hundreds of local jobs and assistance to marginalised communities are being impacted because Fiji is an AUSAID hub.

According to an USAID staff member speaking on the condition of anonymity, Trump’s decision has affected hundreds of Fijian jobs due to USAID believing in building local capacity.

The staff member said millions of dollars in grants for strengthening climate resilience, the healthcare system, economic growth, and digital connectivity in rural communities were now on hold.

The staff member also said civil society organisations, especially grantees in rural areas that rely on their aid, were at risk.

Pacific Media Watch and Asia Pacific Report collaborate with Reporters Without Borders.

EDITORIAL: By the OCCRP editors

“OCCRP is a deep state operation.
“OCCRP is connected to the CIA.
“OCCRP was tasked by USAID to overthrow President Donald Trump.”

How did we end up getting this kind of attention? Old fashioned investigative journalism.

We wrote a simple story in 2019 about how Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine for some opposition research and ended up working with people connected to organised crime who misled him.

Unbeknown to us, a whistleblower found the story online and added it to a complaint that was the basis of President Trump’s first impeachment. We also wrote a story about Hunter Biden‘s business partners and their ties to organised crime but that hasn’t received the same attention.

• READ MORE: Trump’s foreign aid freeze throws independent journalism into chaos
• Other Pacific media freedom reports

Journalism has become a blood sport. It’s harder and harder to tell the truth without someone’s interests getting stepped on.

OCCRP prides itself on being independent and nonpartisan. No donor has any say in our reporting, but we often find ourselves under attack for our funding.

It’s not just political interests but organised crime, businesses, enablers, and other journalists who regularly attack us. What’s common in all of these attacks is that the truth doesn’t matter and it will not protect you.

Few attack the facts in our reporting. Instead we’re left perplexed by how to respond to wild conspiracy theories, outright disinformation, and hyperbolic hatred.

At the same time, we’ve lost 29 percent of our funding because of the US foreign aid freeze. This includes 82 percent of the money we give to newsrooms in our network, many of which operate in places [Pacific Media Watch: Such as in the Pacific] where no one else will support them.

This money did not only fund groundbreaking, prize-winning collaborative journalism but it also trained young investigative reporters to expose wrongdoing. It’s money that kept journalists safe from physical and digital attacks and supported those in exile who continued to report on crooks and dictators back in their home countries.

OCCRP now has 43 less journalists and staff to do our work.

No attack or funding freeze will stop us from trying to fulfill our mission. Just in the past week, OCCRP and its partners revealed how Russia’s shadow fleet sources its ships, how taxes haven’t been paid on Roman Abramovich’s yachts, and how Syrian intelligence spied on journalists.

Next week, we’ll take on another set of powerful actors to defend the public interest. And another set the week after that.

We are determined to stay in the fight and keep reporting on organised crime and the corrupt who enable and benefit from it. But it’s getting harder and we need help.

• How to donate to the OCCRP project.