Days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised a waiver for some global aid funds, the group representing some of the largest charity groups in the world is warning that many of its members still have not received their authorized funds or any guidance on how to get them.
After a weekend scramble following a judge’s order restoring fired employees to United States Agency for International Development, leaders at InterAction, which represents around 170 charities — many of which are carrying out aid programs authorized by Congress — said Monday they know of just two who have had any funding restored. Most are still in the dark about whether they are allowed to get funds and if they ever will.
Confusion is the new reality for aid organizations caught in the tumult of President Donald Trump’s foreign aid pause, Elon Musk’s DOGE, the attempted dismantling of USAID and the shift of that agency’s responsibilities to the State Department. Seasoned veterans from the relief world have been left scrambling for answers they used to get easily.
“Unfortunately, the secretary is blaming NGOs and calling us incompetent for not being able to work the process,” said Tom Hart, InterAction CEO and former president of the ONE Campaign charity founded in part by Bono. “I’m afraid that’s profoundly unfair. We’re doing exactly what he said.”
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Emails reviewed by NOTUS sent from InterAction to administration officials requesting formal communications about aid have gone unanswered since the day the White House issued a stop-work order to ongoing aid programs. InterAction leaders had some phone calls with government officials, but communications ended after USAID issued internal guidance to federal employees that many aid organizations viewed as a “gag order” on discussing future aid, sources told NOTUS.
Rubio issued his funding waiver on Jan. 28, releasing funds for humanitarian assistance, which he said included assistance for food and shelter and health care assistance, not including abortion, transgender surgeries or “DEI ideology programs.” Groups looking for more information were to contact the director of foreign assistance at the State Department. Rubio has reportedly empowered former Trump 1.0 official Peter Marocco to oversee USAID, but groups say his role remains unclear.
The State Department did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.
The commotion at USAID meant there were few people to reach there, if anyone. InterAction member groups would generally interact with a grant or funding officer who would, in writing, say program funding was authorized by the waiver, Hart said. Then the group would either request money or proceed in spending it with the expectation it would be paid back.
“We were encouraged that Secretary Rubio expanded the waiver,” Hart said. “It sounded great, like the right policy, at least the right first step.”
Some of his members started receiving the necessary paperwork to resume work authorized by Congress, leading to further optimism, only to find the government payment system rejected them when they tried to draw down funds.
InterAction represents groups ranging from large and well-known, like Oxfam and Habitat for Humanity International, to smaller groups with tightly focused portfolios. In conversations, some people involved with relief work rejected being politicized by the Trump administration and stressed that much of their work has never been seen as even slightly controversial.
Some leaders are wary of speaking out on the record, preferring to stay away from political confrontations. They operate on tight funding streams, and even if authorization eventually comes back from the U.S. government, some say they have already seen major disruptions to their work.
The continuing opacity around Rubio’s waiver and how to use it to get authorized federal funding to implement relief efforts led to reports last week of food aid rotting in ports. (The George W. Bush-era global AIDS prevention program PEPFAR was especially shouted out as authorized by the waiver, but even details of what was and was not applicable in that program were unclear.) The upheaval at USAID, a legally questionable move to begin with, left aid groups without their usual lines of communication to their usual sources of authorized funding, leaving InterAction to ask Rubio’s office directly for help.
They did on Feb. 4, in an email to the State Department that never got a response. That same day, Rubio snapped at complaints about the process at a press conference in Costa Rica. “If some organization is receiving funds from the United States and does not know how to apply for a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization,” he said, “or I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point.”
A federal judge ruled Friday that hundreds of dismissed employees at USAID should be reinstated and the planned furlough of thousands of others halted while a lawsuit filed against the lawsuit by some USAID employees is being considered. InterAction said it has not heard anything from anyone in the government, especially related to how that ruling changes things for foreign aid. And there has still been no response to the Feb. 4 email.
InterAction told NOTUS on Monday that a few more members have received the paperwork they need to spend money again, but they still can’t get any money from the payment system. Two have actually received some funding.
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Evan McMorris-Santoro is a reporter at NOTUS.
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