State Department completes foreign funding review, identifying 15,000 grants worth $60 billion for elimination
Under former president Joe Biden, USAID funneled scores of grants to foreign nations aimed at advancing ‘environmental justice’ and ‘LGBTQI+ Inclusive Development,’ among other left-wing priorities.
By Adam Kredo, The Washington Free Beacon
President Donald Trump’s State Department completed its review of U.S. foreign aid, identifying nearly 15,000 grants worth $60 billion for elimination, an internal memo reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon shows.
The review pertained to foreign aid that flowed from both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Within the State Department, auditors reviewed more than 9,100 grants worth an estimated $15.9 billion. It identified 4,100 of those grants worth $4.4 billion for elimination.
The lion’s share of the grants identified for elimination, then, came from the USAID side, where Trump administration officials moved to slash 5,800 grants valued at $54 billion.
That marks a 92 percent reduction in USAID’s multi-year grant spending, according to the State Department memo.
The “exhaustive review” reflects the monumental changes underway at USAID under Trump.
In late January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a 90-day freeze on foreign aid aimed at allowing the administration to review programs for their consistency with “U.S. foreign policy under the America First agenda.”
Under former president Joe Biden, USAID funneled scores of grants to foreign nations aimed at advancing “environmental justice” and “LGBTQI+ Inclusive Development,” among other left-wing priorities.
Trump went on to name Rubio USAID’s acting administrator as he explored formally placing the agency within the State Department.
The fate of the agency—as well as the funding cuts—remain in limbo. A number of foreign aid groups and contractors sued the administration earlier this month to resume the paused payments.
A Washington, D.C., judge ordered the administration to make nearly $2 billion in taxpayer-funded foreign aid payments by Wednesday’s end, though federal attorneys filed a motion on Wednesday urging an appeals court to freeze the order.
Roughly two hours before the midnight deadline, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked it, putting it on hold until the court weighs in further.
It is no surprise that the majority of the State Department’s cuts center around USAID’s international programming.
In addition to its climate and inclusivity spending, the aid group has funneled millions of dollars to anti-Israel advocacy groups and entities linked to terrorism, causing internal friction across multiple administrations, the Free Beacon reported earlier this month.
Going forward, the State Department will “reform the way the United States delivers foreign assistance” following “decades of institutional drift,” according to its Wednesday memo.
“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safe? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” the memo concludes.
Upon taking office, the Trump administration quickly set its sights on USAID, forwarding plans to shrink its workforce from around 10,000 staffers to roughly 600.
In the early days of the administration’s foreign funding freeze, Rubio allowed career staffers to submit waivers for projects they felt were aligned with the “America First” agenda.
Those staffers went on to submit some 200 waivers for programs that would have cost taxpayers $1.2 billion in a single week, including some that pertained to “environmental justice” and “LGBTQI+ Inclusive Development,” the Free Beacon reported.
The waiver requests exposed a severe disconnect between Trump’s team and career USAID employees.
Under Biden, USAID played a central role in the federal government’s promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion, including in foreign countries.
The agency championed such funding under its 2022-2030 climate strategy, a $150 billion “whole-of-agency approach” that aimed to create an “equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”
In 2023, for instance, Biden’s USAID allocated up to $1 million in taxpayer funds on a project to help disabled people in Tajikistan become “climate leaders,” the Free Beacon reported at the time.
