The State Department said, without citing evidence, that foreign assistance was cut because funds may have been misused.

The U.S. Agency for International Development recently canceled at least $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid — most of it food and nutrition for people on the brink of famine. Less than half of it was later un-canceled.

I tracked down all of the details for NPR last week. While the situation seems to be in flux, there’s one thing for sure: The U.S. is no longer providing any humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and Yemen.

The aid was cut because of “concern that the funding was benefiting terrorist groups, including the Houthis and the Taliban,” the State Department’s Tammy Bruce said.

It’s not clear if she meant that foreign assistance like food and nutrition were going directly to terrorist groups, an accusation that aid workers flatly deny, or if the aid is more generally benefiting the groups by maintaining some stability.

The State Department didn’t answer my questions about that.

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Other U.S.-funded projects were terminated because they provided cash-based assistance — where aid groups provide people with money or vouchers to purchase food and other necessities, a type of assistance “which the administration is moving away from,” Bruce said.

She cited “concerns about misuse and lack of appropriate accountability” as the reason for ending those awards.

Bruce also said that “no one was auditing” or checking where USAID money was going for “years, decades,” though the funding has been closely overseen by Congress and by the organizations administering aid.

The State Department told me that the cancellations reflect the Trump administration’s efforts to “reorient foreign assistance programming after decades of mismanagement, fraud, and misaligned priorities in the delivery of foreign assistance.”

They did not provide any details about these allegations in response to my inquiries.

These are pretty dangerous accusations to level at aid groups, in part because they could be used to expel the organizations from hostile countries.

U.S. aid is also infamous for being very tightly controlled.

Are you an aid worker affected by these cuts? Reach out on Signal: melodyschreiber.06.