The Trump administration, with the assistance of X owner Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is shutting down partisan spending under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), placing a freeze on all the agency’s spending while pursuing plans to shut it completely down — the website has already been taken down. In Arizona, hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants have gone to Arizona State University and the University of Arizona to address climate change overseas and other questionable purposes.
Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) (pictured above) denounced the move. “Doing away with this agency or severely undermining its capacity will not just hurt people, it will also push countries that receive our help into the arms of our adversaries, making us less safe,” he said.
According to the University of Arizona Daily Wildcat, “The UA was Kelly’s fourth largest campaign donor, bringing in $101,501 to his political campaigns since his 2020 run for the remaining two years of Senator John McCain’s term, who passed away in 2018. ASU was the fifth largest contributor with $94,369.” That money includes contributions from the universities’ employees.
Mike Benz, founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, which aims to protect free speech online, posted on X earlier this month, “USAID grantee NGOs literally take their USAID money then turn around and lobby all key members of Congress to give more and more US taxpayer money to USAID each year in the budget. USAID buys an army of lobbyists with your tax dollars to give it more of your money.”
USAID grantee NGOs literally take their USAID money then turn around and lobby all key members of Congress to give more and more US taxpayer money to USAID each year in the budget. USAID buys an army of lobbyists with your tax dollars to give it more of your money
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 2, 2025
USAID gave ASU $3.3 million in 2011 to fund vocational education and training for clean energy. Similarly, the school received $1.4 million in 2012 for the same program in the Pacific Islands. ASU received $24.7 million in 2022 for combating gender based violence in San Salvador.
UA received $7.9 million in 2020 for funding “climate change adaptation research” and related programs such as expertise in “hydrometeorological hazards.” It received another $7 million in 2023 for “localized research on climate adaptation” and related subjects. In 2022, the school received a million dollars to “develop indicators and methods that enhance the evidence base for improving humanitarian investment in climate adaptation programming.” UA received $34,820 in 2012 for the International Conference on Climate Adaptation.
The bulk of the aid to the two schools went for assisting foreign countries with education and various societal issues. ASU received $10 million in 2023 for a young African leaders initiative. The school received $19.5 million in 2021 for assisting Egypt’s economic development. It received $16.8 million in 2019 to support Pakistani universities. Another $14.3 million went to the school in 2020 for research and innovation in supply chain-Africa. USAID gave ASU $11.6 million in 2018 to support higher education in Malawi. In 2015, ASU was awarded $8.7 million for Build-it, a program to assist Vietnam’s social and economic development.
ASU was given $6 million in 2019 to assist with teacher training in Morocco. ASU received $5 million in 2018 for funding “youthmappers” to create maps in undermapped areas. The school was given $4.6 million in 2022 to assist with higher education in Indonesia. USAID gave ASU $4.2 million in 2013 to educate teachers in India. A grant of $2.8 million in 2012 only stated that it was for improving higher education somewhere outside of the U.S.
Other grants provided to the universities mostly before 2012 included funding for education in Nigeria, Vietnam, and Niger, pest control in Senegal, global health programs, water solutions in Jordan and Lebanon, the seafood industry in Burma, sustainable development of drylands in Asia and the Middle East, and global development.
According to USASpending.gov, Congress allotted USAID over $44 billion in 2024, 0.4 percent of the entire federal budget. Musk, who has been posting about some of the most outrageous grants from USAID on his platform, said on X earlier this month, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Sen. Mark Kelly” by the US Senate and “University of Arizona” is by the University of Arizona.
