This is a special Saturday edition of Devex Pro Insider from Senior Reporter Michael Igoe. For the next few months, this newsletter will tackle some of the biggest questions about the future of U.S. foreign aid, with insider reporting and analysis delivered straight to your inbox.
When billionaire Elon Musk set about dismantling USAID, he painted a picture of a rogue agency that had been allowed to operate outside of public view — until his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, finally pulled back the curtain.
“What we saw there is just a tremendous amount of money being sent to nongovernmental organizations,” Musk told Fox News’ Larry Kudlow in March. “This is a gigantic fraud loophole, where a government can give money to an NGO, and then there are no controls over that NGO. They’ve given billions of dollars — we estimate tens of billions of dollars — to NGOs that are essentially scams. We’re trying to put a stop to that.”