DOGE's 'defend the spend' effort hits the aid sector

Halfway through last month, a new kind of email began hitting the inboxes of aid organization staff. Sent by a user called Defend the Spend, it asked financial heads for payment justification before any further cash could be disbursed. “Thank you for providing your recent payment request,” states one copy of the email seen by Devex. “An ideal payment justification includes a specific description of why the funds are necessary, and why they are aligned with the award.” The emails — landing when staff attempt to draw down project funds — are arriving just as organizations say USAID payments have slowed. A recent court filing noted that last week, the Trump administration processed 99% fewer payments than it had one month earlier. And now, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has stalled payments again, with emails from defendthespend@hhs.gov demanding a “detailed justification” before any work is reimbursed. “It feels like we’re going through round two of this,” said a programmatic lead from one affected organization, who requested to speak anonymously due to fear of retribution, and will be referred to as “the organization” going forward. “How much more can we endure?” Nearly three months ago, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to thaw its foreign aid freeze. It took weeks for that to begin — and even then, payments were confined to the few programs that survived the administration’s cull. After weeks of halted payments — and thousands of program cancellations — organizations began to receive funding from the U.S. government in the middle of March. That shift followed a legal battle led by a coalition of USAID implementing partners, which began challenging the Trump administration’s foreign aid freeze in early February. After a dizzying legal back-and-forth, in early March, a judge ordered the government to process payments at a rate of some 300 per day. Just over a month later, the payments began, with some organizations receiving more than others. But as the money began to flow, several agencies were able to pull several programs back from the brink. In Ukraine, for example, the organization was able to rehire 170 staff it had been forced to terminate earlier. It also rebooted mobile health clinics across the war-battered country, the programmatic lead added, responding to pressure from the U.S. Agency for International Development to continue programs that the government had allowed to continue. “At one point, we had quite a lot of payments, which gave our organization the confidence to continue activities,” they added. “But now, a couple of weeks have gone by since payments have come in — and that takes us right back to where we were.” Over the last several weeks, the court filing shows that payments to USAID’s implementing partners have slowed to a crawl — from just over 6,000 the last week of March, to 2,644 the first week of April, to just 343 the week after. By last week, just 59 payments were processed for the plaintiffs in the case — while 522 invoices — totaling more than $70 million — remained unpaid, the filing states. In an earlier court filing, the Trump administration said new invoices were causing some of those delays. But they also reported a different set of statistics: during the last weekend of April, the government said it had processed 1,379 payments, and stated that it was “committed to paying for work that was properly completed, so long as the claims are legitimate.” “We got paid April 18 and have not been paid since then,” said another employee at the organization. “Now, we’re talking about: How do we work next week, and what do we need to shut down because of the delays?” The drop-off in payments coincided with two events. First, the court granted the Trump administration a reporting reprieve, pausing an earlier requirement that mandated the government report on its payments to non-plaintiff organizations. One week later, the DOGE emails began arriving — including 200 messages in a single day, April 24, to the organization’s financial lead. There were two types of emails, the organization’s employee explained: one asking what the award was for, how the funds were used, and why the money was necessary; and another that asked for itemized costs, including details on services, vendors and subcontractors. Those are the type of details, the employee explained, that are typically ironed out during the original grant process. “Our accounting system — which was built, over decades, to comply with U.S. government reporting financial requirements — cannot comply with this requirement,” said the organization’s financial lead. “They’re changing the rules of the game as we’re going, and then having to retroactively apply that to the past is a really challenging environment.” The “defend the spend” effort was first rolled out in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency responsible for domestic public health programs. By April 12, DOGE stated that over $700 million had been “subject to payment justifications” at that agency, and that federal officials were now mandated to review and approve each request manually before a payment could be made. “Thanks to the great work by @HHSGov, for the first time ever, the American people will be able to see line-by-line payment descriptions & justifications — coming soon to the DOGE website,” DOGE posted on X, the social media platform owned by the former head of the budget-slashing agency, Elon Musk. Soon after, the effort expanded to foreign aid — the court filing states that multiple plaintiffs have now received DOGE emails. On Tuesday, the presiding judge asked the Trump administration’s attorney, Indraneel Sur, why the government had begun sending those messages. Sur stated that it was “new to me and this case,” and that he had only learned about the emails a day before. “We are still trying to understand where it fits,” said Sur. “There is no expectation that it would impact the payment timeline.” But for the organization, that’s exactly what’s happened. The emails have created another layer of red tape for programs that have already gone through both congressional approval and the Trump administration’s 90-day foreign aid review — a process now extended to mid-May. Several organizations suing the government have also been asked to resubmit invoices already filed, and are now awaiting payment on the double invoice. Others were referred to agreement and contracting officers who, they later learned, no longer work at USAID. “We’re a sophisticated organization. I can build reports. But I need time,” said the organization’s financial lead, who is now working with their information technology team to build a new system to ease the processing burden. “So we’ve invested in more IT resources and more staff time. We’re just sort of spinning here.” Defend the Spend emails have hit organizations drawing funds from USAID, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Labor. “The best thing I can think about in my mind is gaslighting. It’s like, you need to resume. Why aren’t you resuming?” the programmatic lead said. “Well, you haven’t paid us. And if you don’t pay us, we can’t pay our vendors, we can’t pay our doctors, we can’t pay our nurses.” Adva Saldinger contributed reporting.