No oversight for billions in unspent aid

Priya Kathpal (right) and Taylor Williamson, who work for a company doing contract work for the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, carry signs outside the USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Monday. The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Agency for International Development has lost almost all ability to track $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid following the Trump administration’s foreign funding freeze and idling of staffers, a government watchdog warned Monday.
The administration’s fast-moving dismantling of the agency has left oversight of the aid “largely nonoperational,” USAID’s inspector general’s office said. That includes a greatly reduced ability to ensure that no assistance falls into the hands of violent extremist groups or goes astray in unstable regions or conflict zones, the watchdog said.
The Trump administration’s actions have “significantly impacted USAID’s capacity to disburse and safeguard its humanitarian assistance programming,” it said, also citing the risk of hundreds of millions of dollars in commodities rotting after staff was barred from delivering it.
The inspector general, however, also noted that it has “longstanding concerns about existing USAID oversight mechanisms.”
Meanwhile, the administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk continued their unraveling of the aid agency. The General Services Administration, which manages government buildings, told The Associated Press that it had stripped USAID from the lease on its Washington headquarters.
Staffers — some dressed in USAID sweatshirts or T-shirts — were blocked from going upstairs to their offices Monday. Guards, federal officers and officials stopped some from retrieving their belongings.
“Go home,” a man who identified himself as a USAID official told some staffers. “Why are you here?”
The eviction from the building, which USAID had occupied for decades, follows a court late Friday temporarily blocking a Trump administration order that would have pulled all but a fraction of workers off the job worldwide.
Two workers’ groups that sued over the targeting of USAID asked the court on Monday to find the Trump administration in violation of the judge’s order, after some workers were still locked out of USAID’s systems.
The government’s steps suggest it “intends to continue taking potentially irreversible steps to dismantle the agency” before the court can issue a final ruling in the case, the employee associations said. Another hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.