Who Is Eli Crane?

Representative Eli Crane (R-Arizona) is my VIP for this week because he  tried to defund USAID last Congress, long before DOGE came along. Bradley Devlin reported the following:

Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., is a fighter. The week after 9/11, he dropped out of the University of Arizona to join the Navy and accomplished his goal of becoming a Navy SEAL. In 2023, he brought that fighting spirit to Congress, where he’s been proven prescient on major issues such as America’s actual role in the Ukraine war and the need to rein in out-of-control government spending from agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development….

The Arizona congressman was onto the U.S. Agency for International Development before the Department of Government Efficiency drew attention to it this year.

“I tried to defund USAID last Congress by 50%,” Crane told “The Signal Sitdown.” After Crane co-sponsored a piece of legislation from former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz in August 2023 to abolish USAID, he brought an amendment to the House floor to slash USAID funding in half.

“Democrats stopped it and Republicans stopped it,” Crane recalled. The amendment failed, with 102 in favor to 326 opposed. A majority of House Republicans – 114 of them to be exact – voted against Crane’s amendment.

“I only knew the tip of the iceberg of what was going on at USAID,” Crane said. “Now that Elon [Musk] has come in and been able to look behind the scenes and bring his computers and his team in there to actually evaluate what’s going on there, … we’ve learned more and more and more.”

“It’s kind of like Ukraine,” Crane said of the GOP shift against USAID. “Republicans are starting, I think, to wake up a little bit to the situation.”

With Donald Trump out of office, Republicans in Washington reverted to the status quo. Despite protestation from conservatives, Congress kept sending American tax payer dollars overseas to foreign countries like Ukraine.

“When I look at this whole situation as  former warfighter myself, I’ve just been concerned about it the entire time,” Crane said of America’s involvement in foreign conflicts. “It seems like we just go from never-ending war to never-ending war, and after five, 10, 20 years … we have to ask ourselves a couple hard questions. Was this worth the blood and treasure that we spent?”

“When you’re up here [in Washington, D.C.,] you realize how many people who have never been to war, never buried a buddy, never had to go console a Gold Star Mother,” nonetheless make military decisions, Crane said. It’s no surprise, then, that these members of Congress keep voting for war. “It’s almost as if they’ve never seen a war that they didn’t want us to be involved in.”

Trump’s return has caused Republicans to come back to their senses, especially on matters of U.S. foreign policy, he argued….