Ana Ramirez/San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma

Two days before staffers at the US African Development Foundation (USADF) refused to let DOGE staffers enter the door to their offices, Donald Trump stood before Congress and mocked what he described as “appalling waste” in foreign aid.

“Eight million to promote LGBTQ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” the president scoffed. “Sixty million for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America. Sixty million.” 

Grassroots aid aims to help communities “solve their own problems”—and stem migration to the U.S.

The expenditures he outlined weren’t USADF programs, and it’s unclear if the Lesotho funding, for instance, is even real—the country’s government has said it has “no idea” what Trump was referring to. But as Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE team continue trying to dismantle foreign aid, they’ve stepped beyond the USAID to set their sights on two very small agencies: the USADF and the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), which was founded by Congress in 1969 and funds community development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

On February 19, Trump issued an executive order directing that both agencies should “eliminate non-statutory functions and associated personnel to the extent consistent with applicable law.” In practice, that has meant quickly gutting both in ways that the agencies themselves and some Democratic members of Congress say is illegal, given that both were founded by Congress and should only be dismantled by an act of Congress.

As Trump’s speech made clear, the campaign against these tiny agencies has relied on literal, government-backed disinformation. Trump and DOGE have twisted and mischaracterized the U.S.’ own aid programs to make them sound frivolous, wasteful, and unimportant. Ironically, both agencies have worked towards goals that Trump and Musk have claimed they support: the IAF was specifically focused on reducing what they call “irregular migration” to the United States. And the USADF tries to stabilize economies in rural Africa, in part, a USADF staffer tells Mother Jones, to discourage people from joining terrorist groups which destabilize........

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