Billions of taxpayer dollars are still funding radical leftist policies and potentially terrorist organizations despite the Trump administration’s foreign aid reforms, experts say.
Under the second Trump administration, America has already provided $3.8 billion to the United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Brett Schaefer, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, warns that this unrestricted aid arrangement lacks proper guardrails and oversight.
“85% of the funding that has been supplied so far has been going to the very same U.N. organizations, very same NGOs that the administration is critical of,” Schaefer said at an Oct. 27 Washington, D.C., panel event on U.S. foreign aid.
He added that “the administration’s complaints haven’t been addressed by the shift in approach under the current process.”
The panel event, jointly hosted by the Benjamin Franklin Fellowship and The Heritage Foundation, aimed to trace how U.S. foreign aid has changed in the months since the Trump administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Max Primorac, senior research fellow at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation, emphasized the radical leftist ideology and antisemitism embedded in many of these U.S.-funded programs.
“This is not just old-fashioned democrat views, this is hardcore radical stuff, it’s very radical,” he continued, noting that OCHA is among “the groups that are deeply involved in supporting Hamas activities, anti-Israel, antisemitism, gathering the base documents that other U.N. agencies use to prove that Israel’s committing war crimes and now, that U.S. troops are committing war crimes in Iran.”
Schaefer explained that foreign aid is now overseen by the Office of Foreign Assistance Oversight within the State Department, which lacks the partner vetting procedures that were previously in place until 2025. The department now allocates macro-grants to international aid agencies like the United Nations and World Bank.
Asked of concerns about accountability, a State Department spokesman asserted the agency’s partnership with the U.N. is “the most cost effective and accountable U.N. humanitarian framework the Department of State has ever built.”
“For the first time,” the spokesman added, “the United States sits on OCHA’s pooled fund advisory boards and has embedded Accountability and Impact Teams (AIT) reporting waste, fraud, abuse, and diversion directly back to the Department. No previous administration secured that level of visibility or leverage inside UN humanitarian operations.”
Schaefer contended that the current accountability mechanisms are not strong enough.
“By giving money through OCHA, the U.S. has substantially less direct control over these funds once they leave the U.S. coffers and go to OCHA,” Schaefer said. “OCHA is the one that determines where the funds go—and that should cause concern on the part of the U.S., on part of Congress because it undermines U.S. authority.”
The American Accountability and Impact Teams, Schaefer mentioned, “are not permitted to investigate. They’re not permitted to compel evidence, and they’re not permitted to enforce coercive actions on the misuse of these funds.”
The U.N, Schaefer added, uses its own list of terrorist organizations when vetting project funding.
“Organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and other U.S. designated terrorist organizations are not captured by the vetting done by OCHA,” Schaefer said. “There’s also significant concern about terrorist individuals being affiliated with terrorist groups that are currently employed by U.N. organizations or were, in the past, employed by U.N. organizations being re-employed.”
OCHA did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.
Emily Brearley, founder and CEO of development consultancy agency Solution 42, said that through its large contributions to and mismanagement of the World Bank, America is also directly funding the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.
“China wins 20% of World Bank contracts, American companies win 1%,” Brearley said.
“We could change that, again, in one week,” she added, “if we simply change the procurement measures that are sitting on the shelf.”
“We don’t need to hire a bunch of people in the State Department to do the same thing but with a Republican bend,” Brearley said. “We need to go back to factory settings. We need to figure out what the U.S. government does well, what our development partners want, and what can be transparent.”
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
