Exclusive: Inside USAID's postmortem program review

Last month, the Trump administration canceled nearly 10,000 foreign aid awards. But over the last few days, USAID staff have been forced to review those projects post-mortem to make sure the number of awards they canceled matched the figures tweeted out by Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this week. “Why should I make up a justification for why you've already terminated an award?” said one USAID staffer, who was charged with going through the process this week and last. “I don’t know what your justification was, and I'm not going to do your work retroactively, backward, to give you a reason.” On Feb. 26, the Trump administration canceled 5,800 awards at the U.S. Agency for International Development and another 4,100 at the State Department. In a court filing published that day, the government said Rubio had “individually reviewed” each of those cancellations and determined slicing them from the agency was in the country’s “national interest.” Over the next few days, organizations across the world received termination notices — including for programs that had already been exempted from the foreign aid freeze for delivering lifesaving humanitarian support. “State and USAID have now completed their review of all funding instruments and determined, on an individualized basis, either to retain or terminate each instrument,” the government stated in a court document, which was filed on March 3. Two days later, questionnaires were sent to both implementing partners and USAID staff — with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget calling those surveys a “foreign assistance review.” Organizations and USAID staff were given until March 11 to complete their forms, according to internal guidance obtained by Devex. USAID leadership was slated to “conclude their review and send to OMB by March 17,” that guidance stated. But on March 10, Rubio tweeted that the review was officially over — and that USAID was retaining 1,000 programs while cutting 5,200. Double take On the partner side, organizations were asked 21 questions, including whether they had worked with confirmed terrorist groups, if they encouraged free speech, whether they had received funding from China, Russia, Cuba, or Iran, and if they had an approach to transitioning projects off foreign assistance. The survey, which hit inboxes on March 5, was framed to partners as a “voluntary request for information.” What organizations weren’t told was that every answer they provided would be scored on a scale of 0 to 5 — with 0 for no and 5 for yes. Those scores would then feed into another survey conducted on the USAID side, where staff were asked to assess programs through another set of questions. That included whether programs supported U.S. “energy independence,” defended women from “gender ideology,” or provided lifesaving assistance. It also asked staff to confirm the programs did not have components related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and environmental justice, among several other questions. One day later, USAID employees received a follow-up email from the State Department, which asked them to add another set of considerations to their review. Does this project help the U.S. secure rare earth minerals? How much does the project directly impact the U.S.’s efforts to counter China? What impact does this project have on limiting the flow of fentanyl across American borders? And how does this program combat the persecution of Christians? The answers to each of those questions, along with the earlier ones sent to USAID staff, had to be ranked on a scale of 1 to 5. But while staff were still scrambling to add the scores to a now-sprawling spreadsheet, a tweet went out from Rubio on the social media platform X. “After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID,” Rubio posted earlier this week. “The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.” Those numbers he listed didn’t add up to what had previously been testified to in federal court. Earlier this month, the Trump administration said they’d kept 500 programs, not Rubio’s new figure of 1,000 — and that it had terminated 5,800 programs, not 5,200. Despite the announcement, the work at USAID continued. Some were hopeful that by going through the exercise, staff could bring back some of the programs that had already been terminated. But soon after submitting the scores to the State Department, staff were told on Wednesday that they had tried to bring too many awards back to life. “What we were told in terms of numbers is that we don’t have an exact number of awards that could come back, but it does have to match the tweet,” said another USAID staff member involved in the review process. “After going through this exercise to really demonstrate why a lot of this stuff contributes to saving lives, and have it dismissed as saying: ‘Well, we’ve got a target that was determined by a tweet, and we have to hit that benchmark?’ It’s not a good look.” Doing the math In Monday’s tweet, Rubio’s numbers spared a slightly larger amount of awards than the figures cited in earlier testimony. Some of that increase may have been due to programs getting cut and then reinstated, a back-and-forth that has affected organizations across the sector throughout the past two weeks. The first USAID staffer told Devex that while their team was conducting the retroactive review, they heard from yet another organization that had its program terminated, un-terminated, and then re-terminated in the last two weeks. It’s something several organizations have experienced in recent weeks, including those responsible for feeding 5 million children at risk of starvation across the world. “The timelines don't add up at all,” said the first USAID staffer, noting that their team was directed to review both active and canceled foreign aid programs. “It doesn't even make sense internally.” Either way, USAID staff were then forced to do the math, creating a spreadsheet with program titles, organization names, project scores, organization scores, and a score that aggregated those two numbers together. One emergency food program in Djibouti received a score of just 109 out of a maximum score of 180. Another initiative in Ethiopia — which provided protein-rich food for children and breastfeeding mothers — received even less, according to a screenshot of the spreadsheet viewed by Devex. But as the State Department began its tally, USAID staff noticed the aggregate numbers weren’t adding up. In another spreadsheet, under a tab called “adjusted score,” organizations were consistently scoring differently on their aggregate score than they should have, prompting questions about how the State Department was conducting its tally. By Thursday, the USAID staffers said their columns with specific scores for organizations and programs were cut from the spreadsheet, leaving only the “adjusted” scores. “People were seeing scores next to their projects that they didn’t really understand,” said the second USAID staffer. “Then the breakout between the organizational and project assessment disappeared.” According to the internal guidance, the review is not yet over. By close of business today, USAID’s leadership was slated to “clear on final submissions” and send the list to the agency’s Bureau for Planning, Learning, and Resource Management. That team will notify USAID’s front office when submissions are “ready for review.” And then, USAID leadership will conclude the review, the guidance states, ultimately sending it to OMB by March, 17. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. “Did we really expect this was going to be a sincere exercise?” said the second staff member. “It feels like it was just for show.”