Who Are “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees,” and Why Did USAID Give Them So Much Money?

A media circus is surrounding USAID this week, and not an unwarranted one. The Trump Administration and DOGE seem to have committed to essentially scrapping the whole department and rolling it into the State Department. And many people on both sides of the aisle are up in arms about what USAID is and isn’t, and ought or ought not to be, funding. As a result, USAID spending habits have been investigated so thoroughly in the past 48 hours that there is little value in retreading the same research ground that has already been ground down to the bedrock. Thousands of people are already discussing $10.5 million for “independent media” in the Balkans, $20 million for an Arabic translation of Sesame Street, $2 million for promoting sex changes in Guatemala, and so much more.

One topic that hasn’t been beaten like the proverbial dead horse is how much we don’t know about USAID’s spending.

Over the past four years more than $4.2 billion in grants have been awarded to “miscellaneous foreign awardees” which is USAID shorthand for “we don’t want to say who got the money.” Now it’s not entirely nefarious. USAID will sometimes censor the name of grant recipients for security purposes, fearing that terrorist cells or foreign adversaries might target people receiving USAID funding. But the idea that any non-defense or intelligence gathering government department is allowed to redact the names of nonprofit grant recipients of $4 billion is truly shocking. Are all of them really in mortal peril should people know that they’re receiving taxpayer dollars? It seems unlikely.

So, if the taxpayer isn’t allowed to know who is receiving their money, are they at least allowed to know what it’s for? For $459 million worth of grants, no. Since 2021, 20 USAID grants totaling $459,879,230 have been distributed with both the recipient names and the purpose of the grant redacted. They all read “USAID FOREIGN ASSISTANCE FOR PROGRAMS OVERSEAS” with no additional information provided. Apparently, it is not safe for the taxpayers to even know even the continent where the money was shipped.

Foolishness and Waste

Among the grants that do have a description, there is just as much foolishness and waste as those without recipient redactions. A short list includes:

• $32 million for “multi-purpose cash assistance to vulnerable households in Gaza.” Surely, nothing could go wrong handing out petty cash in a province controlled by Hamas!
• $49 million for “addressing COVID-19” in Ukraine. One would think that nation has bigger problems at the moment.
• $23.3 million for “RCCE/COVID”, which stands for Risk Communication and Community Engagement, “in the media worldwide.” Was it really USAID’s position that the media needed more money to talk about COVID, and that talking about COVID was so dangerous that the recipient needed to be redacted?
• $20 million for “improving social cohesion in Burma” by creating a “locally-driven, community-owned development agenda.” No amount of research would likely ever explain what that might possibly mean.
• $15.1 million for “investigative journalism” by an anonymous entity somewhere in the area of Europe and Eurasia. These grants are doing nothing to tamp down speculation that USAID has long been a front for American intelligence agencies.
• $7.9 million for “protection activities in Syria” with no additional information provided. USAID really is not helping itself beat the allegations of involvement in paramilitary spying.
• $9.5 million for supporting the “locally driven development of an active, resilient, innovative, and well-informed democratic society in Eurasia.” It’s unclear how any amount of money could make any country in Eurasia more democratic, especially when it was the supposed belief of the previous administration that money in politics tears apart the fabric of democracy.
• $4.2 million for “promoting citizen engagement in political process,” again with no additional information provided. It might be nice to at least know the country where the taxpayer is funding get-out-the-vote work.
• $3.6 million for “strengthening the competitiveness, financial independence, and sustainability of the independent media sector.” This would be the first time that government funding has ever made any industry more competitive, independent, and sustainable, but theoretically, there is a first time for everything.
• $2.7 million for advocating for a total constitutional reform, somewhere, on some continent. Some might call that sort of thing “advocating for regime change,” but the experts at USAID surely know better.
• $1.2 million for a program in some unknown country, and the doublespeak of the program description is so absurd that it is best presented in its entirety: “The goal of the award is to bring together socially cohesive communities, and improve civic trust by pursuing shared solutions to address past social justice issues and current inequalities.”

Paying Enemies of America

Outside of the patently absurd grants listed above, large amounts of aid are going to countries and territories that hate the United States and its people and are actively trying to harm both. Yemen and Gaza both received numerous grants totaling tens of millions of dollars to (understandably) redacted recipients at least claiming to do humanitarian work, but why is the United States giving aid to these countries? The whole list is baffling, and USAID deserves every ounce of the scrutiny it is now receiving.

Also important are the rank speculation and outright falsehoods that have spread online about what USAID is and isn’t funding. CRC has published an excellent guide to understanding the nuances of “donor-advised funds” and how they have led to confusion and erroneous reports about what USAID is funding. As should be clear from the list above, there are already more than enough thoroughly documentable examples to make the case against USAID, speculation is simply not needed or productive.