After the Trump administration upended the world’s largest foreign aid company last year, terminating hundreds of applications and firing nearly all of its employees, it had a clear plan for the organization: Eliminate it completely.
But because it is a congressionally created company, President Donald Trump needed politicians ‘ permission to do so. So this year, Trump representatives asked Congress for permission to screen the U. S. Agency for International Development and significantly reduce national spending on food, medicine and lifesaving work around the world.
Congress rejected that. Politicians, who hold the president’s purse strings and have monitoring of federal authorities, wanted USAID to be, even in its lowered form. They provided precise figures on what and how much money does the State Department spend on foreign aid, including$ 9.4 billion for HIV, tuberculosis, and disease, and$ 5 billion for emergency humanitarian assistance. They also insisted on regular, detailed information about how the management was spending the money.
Trump signed the bill, enshrining their commands into law.
According to ProPublica, Trump authorities are now failing to follow many of those orders, eight months into the fiscal year. Authorities have delayed spending on international health, have not issued money for some jobs and have labeled money destined for humanitarian aid as “unallocated” to control how it can be spent, according to a ProPublica review of government documents and conversations with legal professionals, current and former government employees, and members of Congress. Additionally, officials frequently don’t respond when lawmakers question them about their actions.
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Anna Maria Barry-Jester
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The White House and Congress have been battling over federal spending since Day 1 of the Trump administration, setting up a constitutional crisis — a breakdown of the division of power among the three branches of the federal government, according to several legal scholars.
Nowhere has the crisis been more obvious than through foreign aid. Last year, the administration took the unprecedented step of gutting USAID, terminating thousands of aid programs and letting funding expire, all without permission from Congress. Little was done by law enforcement to stop it.
Now, in defying Congress on foreign aid that Trump himself agreed to spend, the administration is quietly escalating the battle.
” It is a huge grab of power from the president, taking powers away from Congress”, said David Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown University and a leading scholar on administrative and constitutional law.
Congress established USAID decades ago to promote American diplomacy and soft power in various nations. As ProPublica previously reported, when Trump officials dismantled the agency last year, stopping payments on thousands of lifesaving programs that provided food, medicine and other supplies to impoverished nations, many people died, including children.
Even with USAID in disarray, Congress has made it clear that it expects the administration to continue providing foreign aid, sometimes at nearly the same level as it did in previous years.
” It’s proof that there is still broad, bipartisan support for America showing up in the world, helping people and working with our allies and partners on shared challenges, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it directly benefits us”, said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, the ranking member of the Senate committee with oversight of foreign aid funds. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S. C., the committee’s chair, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
However, the administration has implemented a number of measures to thwart the orders of Congress. The Office of Management and Budget, run by Russell Vought, was instrumental in blocking the spending of aid money last year. This year, it labeled both “unallocated” funds for global health and humanitarian aid, which requires that the OMB approve how they are spent.
Legal scholars say such moves, and the delayed spending by the State Department, likely violate the law. Foreign aid is a prime example of why Congress made it illegal for administrations and agencies to slow-walk such funds, said Bobby Kogan, an OMB adviser under former President Joe Biden currently with the Center for American Progress. ” If you spend no money for a year and all the clinics shut down,” he said,” the people who die”
The State Department has made little effort to spend some foreign aid money that Congress earmarked for specific purposes, including family planning, neglected diseases and nutrition, according to government staff and budget documents.
Even though funding has been maintained at a steady level by Congress, programs have received fewer dollars. That includes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the hallmark HIV program credited with saving 26 million lives around the world.
Administration officials are also spending on foreign aid at a much slower rate than they had in recent years, according to an analysis of federal funding data shared with ProPublica by Aid on the Hill, an advocacy group created by former USAID employees, although the State Department disputes its conclusions. Last week, a different group conducted a similar analysis.
Where Trump officials have made plans to spend funds, it’s often spurred outrage. Trump’s administration is signing bilateral agreements with poor nations under the new America First Global Health Strategy, which require access to health data in exchange for receiving life-saving medications the country once donated.
Jeremy Lewin, a 29-year-old lawyer who came into government via Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency with no prior humanitarian experience, is in charge of foreign aid. He has said that this new strategy will not only save countless lives, but also reform the aid sector and reduce dependence on U. S. funding.
Lewin has been “performing the duties” of undersecretary for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs since July, a position that Congress must approve, despite the administration’s continuing commitment to nominating him or anyone else for the position.
But he rarely, if ever, meets with career staff and doesn’t share information about his plans, even with the people who are expected to carry them out, according to six current and former career officials. Lewin keeps a tight grip on funding and information by requiring him to approve even routine payments.
And all the while, Trump appointees have failed to answer basic questions from Congress about what they are doing. Letters from lawmakers have gone unanswered and required reports unfiled.
ProPublica spoke with dozens of current and former government officials, congressional staff, and international experts in global health and humanitarian aid to understand how the administration is observing congressional mandates and federal law. ProPublica also spoke with the administration’s documents, including agreements, memos, and internal communications. Many people spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from the administration.
A State Department spokesman who declined to be identified responded to a list of in-depth inquiries about the concerns and said they would continue to follow the president’s instructions regarding foreign aid spending. ” We are not withholding any funds appropriated to, or available to, State”, they said. ” If additional funds are made available to State, we will work to obligate them consistent with legal requirements and Administration priorities”.
They claimed that Lewin had recently spent four hours talking about foreign aid and that officials had regularly briefed Congress. They also said they have “reduced by 80 % the number of outstanding reports and letters” since Trump retook office.
” We are working with Congress to find the appropriate level for global health,” the spokesperson said.
In response to a series of detailed questions about this story, OMB spokesperson Rachel Cauley said,” This is patently false”, adding that” USAID was a weaponized government agency”. She did not respond to a follow-up question asking what was false.
Spending Less or Not at All
After nearly all of USAID’s employees were fired and the majority of its programs closed down last summer, the agency’s remnants were transferred to the State Department. The State Department began winding down many of the remaining programs earlier this year in response to repeated assurances from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that lifesaving aid would continue.
And staff have been working with a severely constricted budget, officials gave them just half of the available money for PEPFAR, said Dr. Mike Reid, who was the program’s chief scientific officer until he left earlier this year over concerns about how the program is being run. Of the$ 9.4 billion for global health spending for the State Department that Trump signed into law earlier this year, Congress earmarked about$ 4.6 billion for PEPFAR. However, staff members claim that there is no way to spend all of that money.
Congress also explicitly directed the State Department to spend pots of money on family planning ($ 524 million ), nutrition ($ 165 million ) and neglected tropical diseases ($ 109 million ), according to the bill. State Department officials have made little to no effort from those pots, according to a review of government records and two individuals with knowledge of the department’s activities.
In response, a State Department spokesperson said it has” continued to obligate and spend every dollar appropriated for global HIV/AIDS programs” and” we continue to implement life-saving care in global health priority areas, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and maternal and child health”.
They added:” The State Department has been in the process of slowly replacing old carry-over USAID grants with new State Department grants and contracts which have fresh funds, new terms and conditions, and better align with the new America First foreign assistance strategy”.
According to the Aid on the Hill analysis of federal funding data, global health programming generally is progressing much more slowly than it did in the past. Of the more than$ 9 billion that Congress told the Trump administration to spend on global health last year, the administration had by the end of this March obligated just$ 190 million, 5 % of what was spent on average in that period in the five years before Trump returned to office. By that point, officials would have typically obligated about half of the money. Another advocacy organization, Health Security Policy Academy, published an analysis last week that drew a similar conclusion.
The State Department said it” cannot and will not” verify any independent analysis, but disagreed with the figures, saying that it has “approved and implemented spending” for more than$ 7.5 billion to align with the bilateral agreements and disaster response. It said,” You either have vastly outdated numbers or are simply mistaken,” but it wouldn’t go into specifics.
The agreements signed with nations around the world, a centerpiece of the State Department’s foreign aid policy, will in many cases involve sending funds directly to those governments, some of which have been mired in corruption scandals. However, the funding has not yet been released and the details of the programs are still being worked out.
Meanwhile, Lewin has been increasingly leaning on large international organizations to deliver aid once managed by USAID employees.
Earlier this year, Lewin funneled$ 3.8 billion to a small arm of the United Nations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, quadrupling the budget of the agency.
Trump has frequently criticized the United Nations as being ineffective. But after nearly all of USAID’s staff was fired, the skeleton crew at the State Department doesn’t have the capacity or expertise to manage so much humanitarian aid themselves, according to a dozen people familiar with the new system.
The U. S. is not permitted to independently audit the funds, despite the U. N. agreeing to run a pilot project for greater internal oversight under the agreement with OCHA, a copy of which was reviewed by ProPublica.
Eri Kaneko, OCHA’s spokesperson, said the agency has worked quickly since December to disburse funds for” the most urgent and life-threatening needs” and that U. N. entities are “fully committed to the highest standards of accountability and oversight”.
The U. S. has been the largest donor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a multilateral organization that provides medicines and prevention measures to millions of people around the world, since its inception. Lewin just made an expanded partnership with the foundation to spread HIV prevention throughout Africa. But the Trump administration last year withheld payments pledged under the Biden administration, forcing the fund to reduce the amounts it gave to nations.
In this context, Congress issued specific instructions to Rubio on what to pay and when in the spending bill, and instructed him to fulfill those pledges “in a timely manner.”
That hasn’t happened.
A State Department spokesperson told ProPublica that” all current funding obligations have been met”. However, the administration should contribute an additional$ 661 million, according to a board member for the Global Fund, congressional staff, and Friends of the Global Fight, a group that supports the fund in the United States.
” The State Department is underfunding the Global Fund”, Schatz said. It is in violation of congressional appropriations.
When the senator asked about the funding during Rubio’s recent testimony to Congress, Rubio said,” I think that will move shortly, very quickly”.
A” Fundamental Threat to the Rule of Law”
Once Congress passed laws approving federal spending, the money passed through the OMB, which in turn gave the funds to designated agencies, making sure they didn’t spend them too quickly or too slowly.
Under Trump, the OMB, led by Vought, has repeatedly blocked funds approved by Congress from going to agencies using legally dubious maneuvers, experts in federal spending and constitutional law told ProPublica.
As ProPublica has documented, Vought views presidential power in a broad sense and has moved to give the executive branch significantly more authority to avoid using money that is legally appropriated. Foreign aid has been a clear focus, after USAID was razed last year, Vought was made acting administrator and tasked with overseeing the closeout of the agency. Eric Ueland, a Vought deputy at the OMB, is currently performing those duties.
According to its own data, the OMB currently labels more than$ 500 million in global health money as “unallocated,” which makes it impossible for the State Department to spend without first contacting the OMB. It had also labeled most of the humanitarian aid money this way, but began releasing some of those funds in May. By June 11, the State Department had received all of that funding.
Several people inside and outside the government told ProPublica they fear that the administration is withholding the funds because it is planning not to spend them at all. They have good reason to be concerned: That’s exactly what Trump did last year.
The administration reclaimed some$ 13 billion in foreign aid that Congress had authorized in 2025, some of which was done by using a maneuver that was widely disregarded by legal experts as illegal.
That maneuver, which Vought calls a “pocket rescission”, essentially asks Congress to cancel funds so late in the fiscal year that there isn’t enough time for them to be spent if Congress says no. Pocket rescissions are prohibited, according to the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog of Congress, and several constitutional scholars told ProPublica that the action was in violation of the Impoundment Control Act. That law, passed in 1974 in the wake of disputes with President Richard Nixon, restricts the president’s authority to withhold, or impound, funds approved by Congress.
A federal court initially blocked the maneuver as part of ongoing lawsuits related to the dismantling of USAID. However, the administration filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, which issued an emergency ruling split along ideological lines that allowed the clawback to continue despite not ruling on the merits.
The GAO has standing to take legal action on a pocket rescission. Edda Emmanuelli Perez, the general counsel of GAO, informed ProPublica that her office was monitoring ongoing litigation and was continuing to review potential impoundments, and that it has not yet decided to file any lawsuits.
While there are still nearly four months left in this fiscal year, career officials and legal experts say another rescission — legal or not — would further erode Congress ‘ power of the purse, threatening the U. S. democracy.
” If that’s going to be a regular occurrence, then we have a real fundamental threat to the rule of law”, said Cerin Lindgrensavage, a former Justice Department lawyer who works for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that fights against authoritarianism. The president doesn’t want to spend the money, but Congress has said so. The question is, who wins? Congress is supposed to prevail under the law. Right now, the president is”.
Budget watchers say there are concerning signs that the administration plans to withhold more funds.
The OMB made a public announcement in April to Congress that it was withholding funds intended for global health to cover the high costs associated with the thousands of USAID programs that Trump administration officials abruptly terminated last year.
OMB officials told lawmakers they were setting aside$ 19 billion to cover those costs, though they anticipated the total would be” substantially” less. The figure, according to internal documents obtained by ProPublica, does not include the cost of the numerous lawsuits brought about by the closures or the dozens of new hires and other agency operations required to handle them.
The bulk of that money came from unspent funds for the canceled programs and other unobligated dollars from previous years. But$ 3.2 billion came from funds earmarked by Congress for global health and development programs that Trump signed into law in 2025. That money will expire and be inadmissible if it’s not obligated by the end of September.
Democratic lawmakers were incensed by the OMB’s decision. Senators demanded that the administration use the$ 3.2 billion as directed,” consistent with the law,” in a letter to Trump officials. It was described as an “appalling admission of waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars.” They asked for a response by May 8. As of June 16, lawmakers had not received one.
Rubio claimed that the funds were within the purview of the OMB when questioned about them during the recent Senate hearing. Schatz pointed out that Rubio had moved all foreign aid under the State Department and had just wrestled some of that money away from the OMB to respond to an Ebola outbreak. It also shows that you are perfectly able to receive money from those closed accounts if you choose to,” he told the secretary. “Ebola is an urgent priority, but so is malaria, so is TB and so is HIV/AIDS”.
” Proposing a rescission is a Presidential authority, and we will follow President Trump’s direction as to any future rescissions”, the State Department spokesperson told ProPublica. ” We are currently planning to obligate all appropriated balances, in accordance with the law.”
The post” A Huge Grab of Power”: Trump Is Defying Congress on Foreign Aid appeared first on ProPublica.
