Trump’s foreign aid: to Christian organisations, not to ‘woke’ NGOs

The US State Department, led by the Catholic Marco Rubio, has announced nearly $2 billion for religious and community organisations working in healthcare and humanitarian aid. This blatantly refutes all criticism of the cuts to US international aid and the closure of USAid. Not to mention that, at the end of July, Mike Hammer, the head of the US mission in Cuba, met with Carmen Maria Martinez, the director of Cáritas Cuba, in Havana, to begin distributing 100 million dollars' worth of humanitarian aid to vulnerable families.

On 6 August, the US State Department stated that this is the ‘largest allocation of international health aid to religious organisations in over twenty years’. Beneficiaries include the Christian networks and organisations “World Vision”, “Compassion International” and “Samaritan’s Purse”. The majority of the funding, amounting to approximately $1.4 billion (£1.1 billion), forms part of Washington's “America First Global Health Strategy”, a global health strategy inspired by the “America First” doctrine. These funds are earmarked to support hospitals, clinics, and health and community facilities run by Christian religious and civil society organisations in over 20 countries worldwide. This is in stark contrast to the indiscriminate funding first allocated by Obama and then Biden to multinationals promoting abortion, LGBT ideology, and the most depraved forms of human behaviour. At last, the Trump administration is drawing a distinction between those who kill babies in the womb — and often women as well — and those who seek to heal, rather than corrupt, young people's sense of modesty, destroy families and ideologically colonising entire nations.

Incidentally, just a few days ago, an investigation by the Associated Press, (hardly a conservative news agency) published a shocking report on USAID’s investments in Nepal. The American agency was paying large sums to 100 LGBT+ aid workers who had lost their jobs due to funding cuts and had turned to prostitution to survive. These workers were walking the streets alongside the very people they had once been so committed to helping.

A further grant of $538 million(£466 million) has been earmarked specifically for humanitarian emergency response operations. The sum will be distributed between Samaritan's Purse and a consortium led by World Vision and Compassion International, which are all Christian organisations dedicated to providing aid in countries facing sudden environmental and social emergencies. One of the conditions of the funding is that 80 per cent of the total resources must be allocated directly to 'field services', i.e. activities aimed specifically at people in need rather than staff and managers of international organisations. Previously, only 'around 35–40 per cent' of resources went directly to frontline activities whilst the rest was absorbed by 'administrative, overheads and management costs'.

The best response to the heated criticism of USAid's closure, as decided by the Trump administration, lies in the facts.

Among the main funding allocations approved by the US since January 2026 are: $1.8 billion to the UN for humanitarian aid channelled through OCHA (the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). This is in addition to the $2 billion allocated last winter for supporting third countries in line with US foreign policy interests, earmarked for the Central African Republic, Lebanon and Venezuela. Furthermore, 600 million has been allocated to the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) and UNICEF for the purchase of paediatric vaccines in low-income countries, partially restoring funding that had previously been frozen. Additionally, $4.8 billion has been allocated to PEPFAR and $1.25 billion to the Global Fund to HIV treatment projects.

In any case, the Trump Administration has decided to pick and choose between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aid: the disbursement of funds must comply with the new directive ‘Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance’ (PHFFA), which categorically excludes funding for programmes linked to the ‘woke’ ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), gender ideology or abortion. Just to give a comparison, our fine and pompous Europe has a humanitarian budget of 1.9 billion euros for 2026, which means that the sole US funding for religious organisations is equal to the EU’s entire annual allocation.