'Radical far left' grant given to Edinburgh festival by US State Department slammed by Trump administration

Detailing a list of what he described as “radical, far-left grants” issued by the State Department and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the Joe Biden administration, congressman Brian Mast cited $39,652 (£31,000) of funding given to the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) for its 2023 season.

Mr Mast, the House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee chairman, criticised the EIBF “seminars” in a video which he claimed would make the State Department “actually answer for” its funding decisions.

Other grants slated by Mr Mast alongside the book festival funding include $15 million of condoms given to the Taliban, $446,700 to promote the expansion of atheism in Nepal, $32,000 to support an LGBTQ-centred comic book in Peru and $70,884 to create a musical to promote diversity and inclusion in Ireland.

The US funding is believed to have supported the Transatlantic Conversations programme at the 2023 festival, which featured nine American authors, including Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who discussed her novel detailing generations of one family through the slave trade and Civil War and Torrey Peters on their debut novel about a trans woman and her ex-partner who has detransitioned.

In the video, after listing dozens of funding beneficiaries, Mr Mast said: “We've got hundreds more of these that we could list: on and on and on and on. Democrats, you might be saying, ‘Oh, this is just a drop in the bucket’, but this is a state of waste.

“Every one of those is a wasteful drop in the bucket and no American worker deserves to have their dollars go into these things.”

The video was published shortly after Mr Trump froze funding for the US Government's overseas aid arm, USAID. All of the nearly 10,000 employees at USAID, aside from personnel deemed essential, have been placed on administrative leave, while staff working for the organisation’s head office in Washington have been told they will be assigned 15 minutes later this week to “retrieve their personal belongings”.

An Edinburgh International Book Festival spokesperson said: “The US Embassy, London, has supported American and US based authors to attend and take part in events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, like many other nations from around the world that support their artists at various festivals and events in the UK and elsewhere.

“We are a platform for debate and discussion and our programming aims to be inclusive, diverse and to contain a wide spectrum of ideas and political opinions; our 2024 funding from the US Embassy, London, supported a programme including geopolitical discussion and countering misinformation entitled 'Democracy Matters' which also provided the opportunity for young people to attend events on democracy for free.”

She added: “Any author appearing at the Book Festival is invited by the Book Festival because their work is of high quality, and of relevance to our audiences. We believe in the value of cultural exchange and will continue to seek ways to platform writers from a very broad range of countries, perspectives, and viewpoints and across all genres of the written word.”