Credit: International New York Times Photo
Top officials in the Trump administration and allies in Congress, eager to dismantle the US Agency for International Development, have accused the agency of misusing taxpayer funds. But many of their claims were misleading or lacked context.
The agency, long a target for conservative critics who have questioned the value of foreign aid, has been subject to sharp upheaval in the last week. After freezing foreign aid for 90 days, the Trump administration said it would drastically reduce the agency's workforce, although a federal judge paused elements of the plan Friday.
The speed and scale of the efforts to gut USAID are part of a larger bid by Trump and his allies to cut costs across the federal government.
Here is a fact-check of their claims about the agency.
What Was Said
"In some cases with USAID, 10, 12, 13 per cent, maybe less, of the money was actually reaching the recipient, and the rest was going into the overhead and the bureaucracy."-- Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a news conference Tuesday
This is misleading. Rubio was likely referring to a January report from USAID showing that about $2.1 billion, or 12.1 per cent of its funding, went directly to local partners. But that does not mean that 80 per cent to 90 per cent of funding was spent on "overhead and bureaucracy." In fact, most of the agency's funding is channeled through other recipients like American companies and charities as well as public international organizations.
For years, USAID has tried to shift more resources to and engage more directly with local partners, but the agency continues to team up with nonlocal partners to carry out the bulk of its aid programs. Catholic Relief Services, for example, is a nonlocal partner that has received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the agency for charity work. By Rubio's logic, such work would be considered "overhead."
According to a 2024 analysis by the Congressional Research Service, about two-thirds of USAID's funding from fiscal year 2013 to fiscal year 2022 went to project-based assistance, about 19 per cent toward contributions to public international organizations like the World Food Program and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and 1.9 per cent in contributions to the budgets of foreign governments. About 7.7 per cent was spent on administrative costs.
What Was Said
"And I would just say a strong message to Democrats who are out there pretending to be outraged about the long list of crap that this administration is cutting, federal waste and funding, like $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala, $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt, $20 million on a new 'Sesame Street' show in Iraq, $4.5 million to combat disinformation in Kazakhstan."-- Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, at a news conference Wednesday
"Because if you look at the waste and abuse that has run through USAID over the past several years, these are some of the insane priorities that that organization has been spending money on: $1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia's workplaces, $70,000 for a production of a DEI musical in Ireland, $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru."-- Leavitt in remarks to reporters Tuesday
This is exaggerated. Leavitt's descriptions of the awards were largely inaccurate for five of the eight examples she listed.
She was correct that USAID awarded a $20 million grant to Sesame Workshop to produce a television show for young children called "Ahlan Simsim Iraq"; $4.5 million to "advance integrity and accountability in the information space and build societal resilience in the face of disinformation" in Kazakhstan; and $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia.
But she omitted context or misstated key details in her descriptions of the five other grants.
A $2 million grant was awarded to Asociación Lambda, a Guatemalan group, to "deliver gender-affirming health care, advocate for improved quality and access to services, and provide economic empowerment opportunities." Gender-affirming care is an umbrella term that includes surgery as well as hormone therapy, counseling, hair removal and speech therapy; it is unclear how much of the $2 million, if any, specifically funded surgical interventions. The group's work also includes providing technical assistance, education and training to LGBTQ+ people.
The $6 million award in Egypt referred to a bilateral assistance agreement signed in 2019, under the first Trump administration, that made no mention of promoting tourism. The agreement sought to "increase educational opportunities and strengthen the livelihoods of the people of North Sinai" and "provide access to transportation for rural communities and economic livelihood programming for families."
And the State Department, not USAID, funded the last three projects Leavitt cited: about $70,000 for a musical performance at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Dublin featuring American and Irish singers, and $32,000 to the Fulbright Commission in Peru to create a comic book "featuring an LGBTQ+ hero to address social and mental health issues." For the opera in Colombia staged by an American composer, $22,000 of the $47,000 outlay was in nonfederal funding.
What Was Said
"They've asked for, you know, the expenses of USAID. I mean, look, look -- this is what was uncovered, three just quick examples, I mean you tell me if this is unreasonable, some of the stuff that the money was being spent on that we didn't even know, crazy examples that came out. Look, $100 million on initiatives like expanding atheism in Nepal. That's what American taxpayers should be paying for? No way. Transgender operas in Colombia, drag shows in Ecuador, no way."-- House Speaker Mike Johnson at a news conference Wednesday
This is misleading. Johnson's comments may give the impression that these were USAID initiatives, but the three examples he cited were awards from the State Department.
In 2021, the State Department solicited proposals for an award of $500,000 for projects that support religious freedom in two to three countries in South or Central Asia, the Middle East or North Africa. The goal was to "to ensure everyone enjoys religious freedom, including the freedom to dissent from religious belief and to not practice or adhere to a religion" and "combat discrimination, harassment and abuses against atheist, humanist, nonpracticing and nonaffiliated individuals of all religious communities."
The award was the subject of a yearslong investigation by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Documents the lawmakers obtained showed that the award recipient was a group called Humanists International, which said it would use the funding for "two subgrants to member organizations in Sri Lanka and Nepal." Republicans argued that the group and its member organization in Nepal, Soch Nepal, promoted atheism; the State Department maintained that the groups protected both the right to believe and not believe and "saved many, many lives."
The State Department also funded $25,000 of the $47,000 opera staged in Colombia and gave $20,600 to a nonprofit in Ecuador for a film festival. Fox News reported in 2022 that the grant stated that the festival would include 12 drag shows, though the language currently describing the grant does not specifically mention drag shows.
Regardless, these were not USAID grants.