Charity run by Rory Stewart's wife has $1m funding cut after Musk reforms
A charity run by Rory Stewart's wife has lost $1 million of USAid funding as a result of Elon Musk's foreign aid-slashing Doge reforms, the former minister revealed.
Mr Stewart said that the support for Turquoise Mountain, a charity that works in Afghanistan, Myanmar and the Middle East, had stopped abruptly, despite it having a contract.
The organisation is led by Shoshana Stewart, who has worked for the charity since 2006 when it was set up by the King, then the Prince of Wales.
According to its website, the organisation seeks to 'revive historic areas and traditional crafts to provide jobs, skills and a renewed sense of pride' in the areas it works.
In a scene from the 2015 BBC documentary Bitter Lake, a woman reported to be from the charity is shown teaching Afghan women about Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a urinal that was exhibited in an art gallery in 1917 and is generally considered to be the first piece of conceptual art.
Mr Stewart told The Rest Is Politics podcast, which he co-hosts with Alistair Campbell, on Wednesday: 'It doesn't matter you have a contract.
'Turquoise Mountain, which my wife Shoshana runs, had a contract (and) had another million dollars to go and the money just stops'.
Mr Musk, the tech billionaire and head of the new department of government efficiency (Doge), announced on Monday that USAid would be shut down.
USAid is the world's largest single aid donor, distributing some $72 billion of assistance in 2023 to a range of causes, from natural disaster relief to access to clean water and HIV/Aids treatments.
Mr Stewart met his wife when he moved to Kabul in 2005 to help set up Turquoise Mountain. He was chief executive of the charity himself for two years before his wife took on the role.
The charity says it has restored more than 150 buildings and trained more than 15,000 artisans, generating over $17 million.
It comes just weeks after the former Tory MP became embroiled in a social media spat with JD Vance, the US vice-president.
Mr Stewart hit out at Mr Vance after the US vice-president discussed religion in a recent Fox News interview when he said that the 'Christian concept' of an order of love had been 'inverted' by the far-Left.
Mr Vance retaliated by telling Mr Stewart: 'The problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.'
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