Funds for critical health programs around the world remain frozen, and their work is despite the orders of federal judges who temporarily suspend the dismantling of the Trump administration against the government's major foreign aid agencies. , could not resume.
Interviews with people working on health initiatives in Africa and Asia found that Kenyan parents, who are believed to have tuberculosis, are unable to take the test. For those who flee in internal conflict, camps in Nigeria and Bangladeshi do not have clean drinking water. The treatment food program cannot treat children with acute malnutrition in South Sudan.
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A State Department spokesman said Tuesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio's office has issued more than 180 exemptions, allowing lifesaving operations to resume, and more are approved daily. The department did not reply to requests that provide a list of 180 projects.
However, even exempt programs have been frozen, as the organization has not run for weeks, according to over 40 groups of people funded by USAID. Masu. Without accessing that money, the program will not function.
Organizations usually receive subsidies with a slight increase. This will slightly increase their grants by submitting requests for activities they misperform. They rely on that quick turnaround to continue working. Many of the affected groups are nonprofits with no other source of funding.
“Some NGOs have exemptions, but moneyless exemptions are just paper and you cannot run the program on paper alone,” said the best interactions representing 165 organizations that provide foreign aid. said Tom Hart, executive director. “These organizations are not paid for jobs dating back to December. They don't guarantee they will be paid for those or future jobs.”
At a meeting with aid organization last week, Trump's appointee Peter Marrocco, now the State Department's Foreign Aid Director, said the payment system is offline but will be restored by February 18th. It was done.
Marrocco signed a declaration filed with a federal court judge and reported on his compliance with the government's restraint order. In it, he argued that the administration is acting on other regulations rather than executive orders in order to continue to freeze funds.
The Trump administration has argued that the exemption system allows the emergency to continue. However, the process of issuing exemptions is complicated, a State Department spokesperson said. Because the department had to make sure that the organizations seeking them were not misrepresenting their activities.
“The department has previously described many activities as life-saving humanitarian assistance, but in fact, it has been DEI or gender ideological programs, transgender surgery, or other non-enhanced assistance, and America's primary diplomacy. It found that it includes efforts to explicitly oppose the policy agenda, the statement said.
USAID did not fund gender transition surgery. The gender-focused program included efforts to protect women from domestic violence and to prevent HIV infection in vulnerable teenage girls.
Exempted organizations report that one or two activities have been approved for a large project to restart, but surrounding and related activities are still frozen.
The CEO of a large organization provides health care that provides health care that was requested not to be identified because he was prohibited from talking to news media on a USAID stopwork order, and his agency They said they received two of the 24 exemptions they applied. If an organization has all exemptions, they cover about 5% of its activities. So far, we have not received any funds. “You can't buy medicines with exemptions,” he said.
The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation is the only organization that The Times discovered in an extensive investigation of USAID recipients who resumed work after receiving the exemption.
However, the foundation had no access to new money. Trish Karlin, executive vice president of the organization, uses the money he received as a repayment of his spending before the suspension order to resume his HIV testing and treatment programs. She said the foundation received exemptions for 13 of its 17 projects.
“For awards that are not funded by advances and are paid late after we charge the US government, we are not paid and have a deadline of nearly $5 million,” she said. I said that.
Karoun Demirjian contributed the report.
