{"id":38332,"date":"2025-02-10T19:25:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T01:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38332"},"modified":"2025-02-10T20:38:29","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T02:38:29","slug":"unspent-aid-worth-billions-lacks-oversight-as-trump-dismantles-usaid-watchdog-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38332","title":{"rendered":"Unspent aid worth billions lacks oversight as Trump dismantles USAID, watchdog warns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The U.S. Agency for International Development has lost almost all ability to track $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid following the Trump administration\u2019s foreign funding freeze<\/u><\/a> and idling of staffers<\/u><\/a>, a government watchdog warned Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The administration\u2019s fast-moving dismantling of the agency<\/u><\/a> has left oversight of the aid \u201clargely nonoperational,\u201d USAID\u2019s inspector general\u2019s office said. That includes a greatly reduced ability to ensure that no assistance falls into the hands of violent extremist groups or goes astray in unstable regions or conflict zones, the watchdog said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration\u2019s actions have \u201csignificantly impacted USAID\u2019s capacity to disburse and safeguard its humanitarian assistance programming,\u201d it said, also citing the risk of hundreds of millions of dollars in commodities rotting after staff was barred from delivering it<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The inspector general, however, also noted that it has \u201clongstanding concerns about existing USAID oversight mechanisms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk continued their unraveling of the aid agency<\/u><\/a>. The General Services Administration, which manages government buildings, told The Associated Press that it had stripped USAID from the lease on its Washington headquarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Staffers \u2014 some dressed in USAID sweatshirts or T-shirts \u2014 were blocked from going upstairs to their offices Monday. Guards, federal officers and officials stopped some from retrieving their belongings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGo home,\u201d a man who identified himself as a USAID official told some staffers. \u201cWhy are you here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eviction from the building, which USAID had occupied for decades, follows a court late Friday temporarily blocking a Trump administration order<\/u><\/a> that would have pulled all but a fraction of workers off the job worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two workers\u2019 groups that sued over the targeting of USAID asked the court on Monday to find the Trump administration in violation of the judge\u2019s order, after some workers were still locked out of USAID\u2019s systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government\u2019s steps suggest it \u201cintends to continue taking potentially irreversible steps to dismantle the agency\u201d before the court can issue a final ruling in the case, the employee associations said. Another hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump<\/u><\/a> and Musk<\/u><\/a>, who runs what is billed as a cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have taken aim at other government agencies<\/u><\/a>. But USAID has been hit hardest, with Trump and Musk accusing the agency\u2019s work around the world<\/u><\/a> of being out of line with Trump\u2019s agenda and wasteful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Trump appointee at the heart of the sweeping changes at USAID defended the shutdown of the agency in a court filing Monday, saying Trump officials have been faced with \u201cnoncompliance\u201d and \u201cinsubordination\u201d from staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Marocco, USAID\u2019s recently appointed deputy administrator, submitted an affidavit Monday in the lawsuit brought by employees\u2019 groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In it, he accuses USAID staff of stalling and resisting the administration\u2019s funding freeze and what he described as a program-by-program review. Marocco said that made it necessary to pull all but about 600 staff off the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 freezing foreign assistance, forcing U.S.-funded aid and development programs worldwide to shut down and lay off staff. Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/u><\/a> said he had sought to mitigate the damage by issuing a waiver to exempt emergency food aid<\/u><\/a> and \u201clife-saving\u201d programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But USAID officials and aid groups say neither funding nor staffing have resumed to allow even the most essential programs to start work again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the largest humanitarian groups, called the U.S. cutoff the most devastating of any in its 79-year history. It said Monday that it will have to suspend programs serving hundreds of thousands<\/u><\/a> of people in 20 countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe impact of this will be felt severely by the most vulnerable, from deeply neglected Burkina Faso<\/u><\/a>, where we are the only organization supplying clean water to the 300,000 trapped in the blockaded city of Djibo, to war-torn Sudan, where we support nearly 500 bakeries in Darfur providing daily subsidized bread to hundreds of thousands of hunger-stricken people,\u201d the group said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier that aired Sunday before the Super Bowl, Trump suggested that he might allow a handful of aid and development programs to resume under Rubio\u2019s oversight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet him take care of the few good ones,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aid organizations say the damage that has been done to programs would make it impossible to restart many operations without additional substantial investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols on Friday temporarily blocked<\/u><\/a> a Trump administration order that would have put thousands of USAID staffers on administrative leave that day and given those abroad just 30 days to get back to the United States at government expense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the judge ordered the administration to restore agency email access for staffers, the order said nothing about reopening USAID headquarters. Some staffers and contractors reported having their agency email restored by Monday, while others said they did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The inspector general advisory notice said the Trump administration\u2019s moves would cut 90% of the staff in USAID\u2019s Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cutoff of funds means that the monitors charged with making sure no U.S. aid in the Middle East or Central Asia reaches the Islamic State group, Hezbollah, the Houthis or Hamas have been told not to come to work, the watchdog said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The watchdog office noted that it had pushed USAID last year to boost its training of agency staff to make sure that those monitors were properly screening for any such diversion of aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Washington, some staffers said they came to the USAID on Monday offices because they were confused by conflicting agency emails and notices over the weekend about whether they should go in. Others expected they would be turned away but went anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A USAID email sent Sunday night, saying it was \u201cFrom the office of the administrator,\u201d told employees that what it called \u201cthe former USAID headquarters\u201d and other USAID offices in the Washington area were closed until further notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

apnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The U.S. Agency for International Development has lost almost all ability to track $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid following the Trump administration\u2019s foreign funding freeze and idling of staffers, a government watchdog warned Monday. The administration\u2019s fast-moving dismantling of the agency has left oversight of the aid \u201clargely nonoperational,\u201d USAID\u2019s inspector general\u2019s office said. That includes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1761,32318,22451,1230,32206],"class_list":["post-38332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-aid","tag-dismantles","tag-oversight","tag-trump","tag-usaid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38334,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38332\/revisions\/38334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}