Among the flurry of executive orders President Donald Trump signed on his second day in office, his order suspending U.S. foreign aid programs for 90 days is a critical opportunity for opponents of Islamism. Violent extremists and their supporters long have relied on the federal government for funding and legitimacy. The American taxpayer supplies funds through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which launders it through powerful networks of radical-run charitable institutions.
Unlike its predecessors, the new administration appears to be aware of the problem. Trump’s executive order warns: “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.”
All foreign assistance, the order states, must be “fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.”
During his confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that “every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue” must make America “stronger,” “safer,” and “more prosperous.”
USAID has knowingly funded terrorists and their proxies, making America weaker and less safe.
As the Middle East Forum has documented extensively over the past decade, violent extremists have prospered under the federal government’s aid programs. USAID has knowingly funded terrorists and their proxies, making America weaker and less safe.
In 2023, the Middle East Forum uncovered over $100 million of approved federal funding to 501(c) humanitarian aid charities aligned with Hamas, much of which USAID issued. This was the rule rather than the exception. In 2018, the Forum uncovered evidence that USAID financed a designated terrorist organization, the Islamic Relief Agency in Sudan, which maintained close links with Al-Qaeda precursor Maktab al-Khidmat. USAID issued the payments to the Sudanese charity at the request of top USAID charitable partner World Vision. Despite a subsequent Senate Finance Committee inquiry denouncing World Vision’s embrace of terrorists, USAID continued to pump millions of dollars through World Vision.
In recent years, USAID approved $188,000 in grants to Helping Hand for Relief and Development, the U.S. branch of the violent South Asian Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami. In 2017, Helping Hand for Relief and Development partnered in Pakistan with the designated terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which conducted the 2008 Mumbai attacks. USAID continued funding Helping Hand for Relief and Development despite a USAID inspector general investigation and media and congressional warnings.
In Gaza, USAID consistently funded Hamas proxies. Since 2016, USAID has handed over $900,000 to the Bayader Association for Environment and Development, a charity involved with senior Hamas officials, including the son of the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Hamas groups such as Bayader enjoy USAID support indirectly as well. American 501(c) organizations granted millions of dollars in USAID grants, such as Catholic Relief Services, Global Communities, the International Medical Corps, and the American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), all partner with Bayader and other Hamas proxies.
USAID has partnered repeatedly with ANERA, granting the charity $12.5 million in 2024, despite ANERA staff expressing support for designated terrorists and terror attacks against Jews.
USAID also has granted Islamic Relief, one of the largest Islamist charities in the world, hundreds of thousands of dollars. In Gaza, Hamas social media published photos with the charity and Hamas politburo members.
Simply put, USAID funding to Islamists and terror supporters makes the U.S. government one of the most generous patrons of global Islamism. Missing data in government databases suggest the problem could be significantly worse.
USAID funding to Islamists and terror supporters makes the U.S. government one of the most generous patrons of global Islamism.
For instance, a USAID August 2022 news update celebrated the construction of a “USAID-funded Unlimited Friends Association [UFA] educational and community center in Gaza.” This funding was approved despite widespread public reporting of Unlimited Friends Association’s involvement with Hamas. Although Unlimited Friends Association is the ultimate beneficiary of USAID support, published federal spending records do not disclose its role as beneficiary.
This is not unusual. Checks on USAID’s actual spending behaviors are minimal. Over the past 18 years, the beneficiaries of almost 2,000 USAID grants worth over $29 billion combined are listed in government spending databases merely as “miscellaneous foreign awardees.” These untraceable grant programs include funding efforts in locations such as Gaza, Syria, and Afghanistan.
In November, federal authorities revealed that $9 million of USAID grants, handed out through these “miscellaneous” programs, ended up with “armed combatant groups, including the Al-Nusra Front, which is a designated foreign terrorist organization affiliated with al-Qaida in Iraq.”
America’s international aid system is in crisis. During Trump’s 90-day foreign aid suspension, the federal government must remember three things. First, USAID and other agencies must adopt the statement of Obama administration solicitor general Elana Kagan in 2010: “When you help Hezbollah build homes, you are also helping Hezbollah build bombs.” This is true with any terror group. Second, the Trump administration should vet procedures to ensure that no organization whose staff expresses support for designated terrorist organizations should ever a receive a cent of taxpayers’ money.
Finally, the most powerful weapon against extremists’ abuse of government spending is transparency. The Trump administration must publicly disclose all applicants for public funds, solicit public submissions about beneficiaries’ propriety, and end all censorship and redaction of USAID records.
If Washington is a swamp, the foreign aid bureaucracy is even more so. Transparency is the best remedy and is decades overdue.
