Up to half a billion dollars’ worth of food aid may not be getting to the people who are supposed to receive it, even though the Trump administration said it would, according to a report from a key government watchdog.
The report, which the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development published late Monday afternoon, offers a narrow but scathing look at what has happened in the weeks since the Trump administration froze most foreign aid and — in a related, overlapping move — put most of the USAID staff on administrative leave.
The administration’s actions are part of a broader attack on foreign aid and USAID, the federal agency that delivers the majority of it. President Donald Trump and his allies say the aid is a waste of taxpayer money and that USAID employees are using their power to enact a radical, “woke” agenda on issues like climate change, abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
Aid workers, public health experts and a loud, bipartisan chorus of formerofficials have pushed back by pointing out all the ways foreign assistance can advance American interests ― whether by helping to stop disease outbreaks before they can spread through international travel, for example, or by promoting good feelings toward the U.S. in unstable parts of the world.
And that’s on top of the humanitarian objective, which is to provide essential, sometimes life-sustaining food and medical care to people who might not otherwise have it.
A Jan. 24 “stop work” order from Secretary of State Marco Rubio included a vague exception for humanitarian food assistance. New guidance the State Department has issued since then has provided more details about what’s allowable, in what Rubio has said is an effort to ensure necessary aid gets through.
That hasn’t been happening, the new report says, in part because of widespread confusion over the successive, overlapping administration orders. In addition, it also says that the furloughing of nearly the entire USAID workforce has made it difficult for remaining agency personnel to answer questions or to oversee operations.
“While initial guidance following the pause in foreign assistance funding provided a waiver for emergency food assistance, shipments of in-kind food assistance have been delayed around the world,” the report says.
“This uncertainty put more than $489 million of food assistance at ports, in transit, and in warehouses at risk of spoilage, unanticipated storage needs, and diversion,” it continues.
The report also notes that, with the ranks of USAID personnel so thin, the agency cannot perform vital oversight functions ― like ensuring the safety of workers and partners in dangerous places abroad or watching over aid shipments to make sure they don’t fall into the hands of U.S. enemies or terrorists.
At the moment, the report says, these functions “are now largely nonoperational.”
It’s not clear how the report came to be ― whether the inspector general’s office decided to issue the report on its own or was asked to do so by some authority. The State Department media office did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on Monday.
Whatever its provenance, it’s the kind of report that may be increasingly rare inside the Trump administration, which has already fired more than a dozen inspectors general from other parts of the federal government.
As for the impact of the report, that’s also unclear. Its findings reinforce what aid workers and former officials have been saying for weeks and what journalists have been reporting ― namely, that the Trump administration has severely disrupted assistance, putting both foreign lives and American interests at risk, despite the administration’s vow to make sure humanitarian aid continues to flow.
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On Friday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to allow USAID workers back onto the job. The administration reportedly continued to block workers from the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday, however.