Democrats want to prosecute Musk over USAID cuts, but aren’t saying they would restore funding

When President Donald Trump and Elon Musk dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) early in Trump’s second administration, Democrats and sympathetic media railed against the cuts and accused Musk of murder.

Yet, after winning big in the midterm elections, Democrats aren’t saying they would restore USAID funding, only that they would investigate and prosecute Musk for his role in dismantling the agency.

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the likely new chair of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN’s “State of the Union” after the election that his committee would investigate Musk for his work on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), including the firing of federal workers.

Even if funding moved ahead, services would not return immediately, expert says

"I think there's a lot of interest, not just from our committee, but from committees across the Congress to speak to Mr. Musk," Garcia said. “What happened with DOGE in particular and with federal employees losing the jobs the way they did and people's data likely being compromised, I think is very serious.”

In 2025, immediately following DOGE’s cuts to USAID, Democrats like Rep. Gregory Meeks, Ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that funding to USAID needed to be restored. But since the election, Democrats haven’t mentioned USAID except when talking about investigating Musk.

If Democrats were to decide to move forward with restoring USAID funding, services would not return immediately, as Foundation for Freedom Online’s Mike Benz told Just the News, No Noise television show in October.

“USAID has not been shut down legislatively, so turning it back on in that sense would be pretty easy,” Benz said. 

“However, the grants have been, for the most part, transferred over to the State Department's Foreign Assistance Branch, and there has been a kind of shock and awe message sent to the class of electioneers and kind of subversive influence types, insofar as many of them had spent 10, 20, 30 years at USAID and had built their careers around that being a permanent position,” he continued. “Even if you turn the apparatus back on, there will be a slower ramp up because, simply, I think the precarious nature of it, knowing it might be turned off again four years after that, makes a career at USAID inherently less attractive because of the political thin ice that it now sits on.”

Make USAID cuts permanent, Rep. Hageman says

Last week, Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., who will be Wyoming’s next U.S. senator in January, told Just the News that Republicans need to use their remaining months in power to make USAID cuts permanent.

"We need to make sure that the cutting of those programs stays permanent," she said, referring to USAID. "We need to make sure that the DOJ work is permanent [...] Those are exactly the kinds of things that we need to use reconciliation for. That's what it is for: to make sure that we have implemented our budget priorities for the benefit of the American people."

Restoring USAID funding may not be politically viable given all the waste, fraud, and abuse that was found in the agency. Most recently, on Monday, a former USAID employee was sentenced to a federal prison term for defrauding the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to illegally obtain more than $176,000, USAID’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), reported.

Simeon Bakare, 56, of Waldorf, Maryland, was sentenced to six months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release for a wire fraud scheme. Bakare was also ordered to forfeit $176,000 and to pay another $176,000 in restitution. Bakare admitted in court that he submitted or facilitated the submission of multiple fraudulent applications for COVID-relief funds even though the businesses he listed on the applications did not qualify.

A long history of waste and fraud at USAID

When the Trump administration first announced it would cut USAID funding, it released a brief list of some examples of the waste and fraud that had occurred at the agency over the past several decades. The list included spending $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities,” $2.5 million for electric vehicles in Vietnam, $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia, $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala, and more.

Just the News has also extensively covered the USAID fraud still being discovered and punished, including multiple organizations operating in Africa.

And not all of USAID was dismantled, with some of its operations getting folded into the State Department to cut down on bureaucracy. However, some of same issues that plagued the agency for decades still exist, a senior U.S. official who is involved in the situation but not authorized to speak publicly told Just the News.

“USAID, and its programs now transferred over to the State Department, were, and are, rife with fraud, waste, and abuse,” the official said.

The official added that some of the same fraudulent organizations are now being funded through the United Nations, using funds from the U.S.

“Now, the United Nations has been given a blank check for supposed aid programs, while our taxpayer dollars are funding the very same NGOs, via U.N. pass-throughs, that USAID used to fund,” the official said. “The system needs a shakeup, not just shuffling along the same fraud to the State Department under the guise of reform.”

Reports from the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation discuss some of these programs, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which was found to employ more than 100 terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 atrocities in 2023.