Sen. Joni Ernst warns of willful sabotage at USAID, cites millions in funding for Wuhan lab, terrorists and more

The embattled US Agency for International Development has engaged in “willful sabotage of congressional oversight” over recent years while doling out taxpayer dollars to groups that overbilled the US and possibly gave funds to terrorists, Sen.Joni Ernst alleged.

The Republican Hawkeye State senator and Senate DOGE Caucus chair, listed a slew of examples on social media this week on why “USAID is one of the worst offenders of waste in Washington.”This includes $2 million in funding related to Moroccan pottery classes, some $2 million backing trips to Lebanon, over $1 million to fund research in the Wuhan lab, $20 million to make a Sesame Street in Iraq and $9 million in humanitarian aid that “ended up in the hands of violent terrorists.”The White House has similarly outlined “waste and abuse” in USAID as the Trump administration eyes a dramatic overhaul of the agency and has explored folding it into the State Department.The administration pointed to USAID spending $2 million to fund LBTQ activism and sex changes in Guatemala, $6 million for tourism in Egypt, $32,000 on a “transgender comic book” in Peru, $2.5 million backing electric vehicles in Vietnam, money that backed “personalized” contraceptives in developing countries and more.In a Wednesday letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ernst (R-Iowa) cited her concerns about wasteful spending and recounted obstruction she faced from USAID.In one example she highlighted, an inspector general discovered that Chemonics, a USAID contractor, overbilled the feds by “as much as $270 million through fiscal year 2019” and was caught “possibly offering kickbacks to terrorist groups.”Chemonics had been heavily involved in a $9.5 billion USAID initiative to beef up global health supply chains, which ultimately ended in dozens of arrests and indictments over the resale of agency-funded products on the black market.“Overbilling the United States taxpayer, while very serious, is not the ...