[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

In May 2024, the Biden administration announced that it was providing $220 million in aid to Yemen which the United States had been at war with since the start of that year.

Even while the US Navy was engaged in what the Associated Press would describe next month as the “most intense combat since World War II” with Yemen’s Houthi Jihadists, the U.S. Mission to Yemen boasted of having provided “nearly $5.9 billion” in aid beginning with the Obama administration, of being “the largest donor of humanitarian assistance” and urged that “other donors must join us in stepping up” to fund an Iranian-backed terror group at war with us.

A terror group whose motto, like its Iranian patrons, is “Death to America.”

One arm of the United States government, the Pentagon, was fighting the Houthis, while another arm, the State Department and USAID, were funding them. While Navy personnel on board US Navy vessels had seconds to prepare and counter Houthi strikes, State Department and USAID personnel worked to keep the Houthi’s Hodeidah port open so more “aid” could pass through it. The US Navy was not allowed to strike Hodeidah even though it was the Houthi lifeline for the weapons that the Houthis were using to attack American and other vessels.

The Biden administration had ended President Trump’s support for Saudi action against the Houthis and lavished a fortune on the terrorist areas because terrorist supporters and international groups had falsely claimed that Yemen was suffering from a deadly famine.

Before Islamic terrorist supporters, their leftist allies and international aid groups faked a famine in Gaza to save Hamas, #YemenFamine was trending on social media along with photos of wounded and starving children. Much as in Gaza, there was no famine. Rather the Houthis were seizing international aid which they then resold to create food shortages. The more aid came in, the more the Houthis seized. The fake famine was used to mount an international pressure campaign to end the attacks on the Houthis and send billions of dollars in relief to Yemen.

Massive shipments of urea, a fertilizer also used in explosives, were allowed into Yemen to help grow crops and stop the mythical famine. Even though urea was proscribed, the shipments were not interfered with in the name of ending the famine that wasn’t happening. Along with the urea came ammonium perchlorate which is used in rocket fuel. The rockets being fired at US Navy vessels were fueled by the famine lie. False claims of a famine were a tool of war.

By 2018, over $4 billion in humanitarian aid had poured into Yemen. The UN’s World Food Program, which would later invent and become the loudest voice promoting the Gaza famine hoax, operated 5,000 distribution sites to supposedly aid 10 million people whom it claimed were facing emergency conditions, but could only track 1 in 5 of its food basket allotments.

In 2017, two-thirds of those who were supposed to be receiving food had not gotten anything.

In one Houthi province, the UN sent twice as much food as the people needed, and came away claiming that the majority of the population was still in desperate need of food.

The WFP, and even the AP eventually admitted that the Houthis were taking much of the food. The Houthis created fake lists of starving people who needed food. International aid groups resorted to sending money so that Yemenis could buy the food aid that was being resold.

Even though all of this was well known, the Biden administration kept on sending more aid five years later. The money didn’t go to the people: it went to the Houthis at war with America.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s first order of business was taking the Houthis off the list of foreign terrorist organizations, making it legal to fund them, despite “their reprehensible conduct, including attacks against civilians and the kidnapping of American citizens” because of “the humanitarian consequences” that would take place in Yemen. Even as the Houthis went to war against America, “humanitarian aid” provisions protected the delivery of fuel, and the port and airport operations that allowed the Houthis to get more money and weapons.

Earlier this year, the UN demanded $2.47 billion for its 2025 Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan. In February, the Houthis killed a WFP worker (an event that got far less publicity than the deaths of aid workers in Gaza), but in April, the WFP expressed outrage that the United States was finally, at least temporarily, pausing aid and would not be allocating over $100 million in funds to the enemy region at war with the United States.

After 9 years of non-stop famine (and billions in spending), 17 million people are facing acute hunger in Yemen. That’s up from 15.9 million people in 2019.

Since the famine began, Yemen’s population shot up from 30 million to 39 million.

Having a population increase by 10 million or 30% during a famine is unprecedented. What accounts for this Yemeni miracle? Miraculously, Yemen’s population rose sharply as an unprecedented wave of foreign aid poured into this country. It’s unknown how many of these miracle births were real or fake names to collect yet more humanitarian aid for the hungry.

After the latest round of airstrikes, a Yemeni man interviewed on camera, chanted, “Death to America” and bragged that “our country is fortified with the skulls of American demons.”

More accurately, it’s fortified with $5.9 billion in American taxpayer money.

Since Yemen’s population seem to have figured out how to increase by a third during a famine affecting half their population, they clearly don’t need any more help from us, which should be used to help actual starvation victims in African countries that can’t just pump oil from the ground. Not only should we stop sending aid to Yemen, we should block all further aid.

If we don’t want to be in a perpetual war over passage through the Red Sea or depend on the goodwill of a terrorist group for access to it, we should cut off the money to the terrorists.

And while Iran has supplied the Houthis with weapons and money, in Yemen, much as in Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza, much of the money going to the terrorists comes from us.