Katherine Long, WSJ Reporter Who Targeted DOGE Staffer, Used to Work for USAID

Katherine Long, a Wall Street Journal reporter who apparently took down a 25-year-old member of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with an article on his offensive past comments, previously worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — which the Trump administration has slashed considerably, angering elites in Washington, D.C.

“The USAID got hit hard and fast, and now their proxies are striking back at the Trump White House,” a source familiar with DOGE told Breitbart News. “It’s time to cut the head off the snake. We need separation of media and state.”

Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the controversy Friday morning, suggesting “stupid social media activity” should not “ruin a kid’s life.”

“The WSJ Editorial Board gets everything wrong about Trump,” a person close to the Trump transition, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retribution, told Breitbart News. “Now, the WSJ is employing FEDS who worked for USAID to report on USAID. Conflict much?”

“We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back,” Vance wrote on X. “If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.”

President Donald Trump agreed with Vance’s assessment when asked several hours later. “I’m with the Vice President,” he told Fox’s Peter Doocy.

DOGE is currently purging USAID for waste, fraud, and abuse –freezing foreign aid and reportedly slashing its staff from over 10,000 employees to under 300. Its financial audit found the agency spent millions of taxpayer funds on frivolous and fringe projects, including $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities,”$2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam, $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala, and $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt.

Long, who displays “she/her” pronouns on a LinkedIn profile, targeted DOGE after it began the audit of USAID. According to that LinkedIn profile, she previously worked for USAID as an intern in 2016 after a similar stint at the State Department. In a recent interview with the PR firm Fearey, Long said her job at USAID was “managing USAID projects in Central Asia.”

“I came to the Seattle Times straight out of Columbia Journalism School’s investigative reporting master’s program,” she said. “Before matriculating at Columbia, I’d been working for the federal government, managing USAID projects in Central Asia.”

In Afghanistan, USAID spent hundreds of millions of dollars to fund “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” benefiting the Taliban, Breitbart News previously reported.

DOGE has been successful in defunding taxpayer-funded media throughout the globe by freezing USAID’s foreign aid. Trump put a 90-day hold and subsequently cut $268 million from media outlets in more than 30 countries, according to a Reporters Without Borders review of the agency’s 2025 foreign aid budget.

USAID’s 2023 fact sheet, taken offline due to the hold, boasted that the agency supported 6,200 journalists, 707 news outlets, and 279 media-sector civil society organizations, the Columbia Journalism Review reported.

“USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT,”  President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Friday. “THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE. THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!”

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.