‘Sesame Street in Iraq’: USAID’s ‘wasteful and dangerous’ spending exposed by senator

Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst published a list of projects and programs she says the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has helped fund across the years, highlighting it as ‘wasteful and dangerous’ spending that has gripped taxpayers until the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) stepped in. 

‘From funneling tax dollars to risky research in Wuhan to sending Ukrainians to Paris Fashion Week, USAID is one of the worst offenders of waste in Washington… all around the world,’ Ernst posted to X on Monday before rattling off a handful of examples. 

Ernst highlighted that the agency ‘authorized a whopping $20 million to create a Sesame Street in Iraq.’ 

Under the Biden administration, USAID awarded $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshopto produce a show called ‘Ahlan Simsim Iraq’ in an effort to ‘promote inclusion, mutual respect, and understanding across ethnic, religious, and sectarian groups.’ 

‘As Iraq recovers from years of conflict, communities struggle to find a new sense of normalcy while physical and emotional wounds remain,’ an archived link to USAID’s website reads. ‘The legacy of Iraq’s conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) left many children without a stable home or displaced, especially those from Iraq’s ethnic and religious minorities. Additionally, Iraqi youth, who make up over half of the population, are unable to find jobs in an economy strained by war and corruption, creating vulnerabilities to radicalization.’ 

USAID’s website shut down this week as DOGE and tech billionaire Elon Musk put the agency under its microscope. 

The show is styled like the American kids’ show ‘Sesame Street,’ and was granted funding that began in 2021 and runs until 2027, according to the achieved website. The show continues to air in the Middle East, a review of its website shows. 

In another example Ernst highlighted, USAID was found to have provided millions of dollars to farmers in Afghanistan in an effort to get them to grow food instead of poppy fields and opium. 

The plan, however, backfired and led to an increase in poppy production, and thus opium production, during the war in Afghanistan. 

‘During the height of the war in Afghanistan, USAID spent millions of dollars to help Afghans grow crops instead of opium,’ Ernst posted to X Monday. ‘The results: opium poppy cultivation across the country nearly doubled, according to the UN.’ 

USAID, as well as the U.S. military, paid farmers to build or rehab miles of irrigation canals in the Helmand province, Afghanistan, during the Obama administration in an effort to persuade the farmers to grow fruits and other plants, the Washington Post reported in 2019. The farmers, however, used the canals to grow poppies. 

Poppy production almost doubled in the region between 2010 and 2014, the Post reported, citing U.N. figures. 

In another example, Ernst said USAID spent $2 million to fund ‘Moroccan pottery classes and promotion.’ Morocco has for thousands of years created pottery, dating back to 6,000 B.C.  

Former Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, who died in 2020, published a government ‘waste book’ in 2012 detailing that USAID ‘began pursuing a four year plan to improve the economic competitiveness of Morocco’ beginning in 2009, which included $27 million in funding. 

A portion of the funding was directed to a program that ‘involved training Moroccans to create and design pottery to sell in domestic and international markets,’ according to the report. 

The American pottery instructor hired to teach local artists, however, was unable to communicate with them as a translator for the program was ‘not fluent in English,’ according to the waste book. 

‘An American pottery instructor was contracted to provide several weeks of training classes to local artists to improve their methods and teach them how to successfully make pottery that could be brought to market,’ the waste book reported. ‘Unfortunately, the translator hired for the sessions was not fluent in English and was unable to transmit large portions of the lectures to the participants.’ 

Ernst added in another example that USAID ‘funneled nearly $1 million into batty research on coronaviruses at China’s infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology, which the CIA admits was the likely source of COVID-19.’ 

The Government Accountability Office published a report in 2023 finding that both USAID and the National Institutes of Health directed taxpayer funds to American universities and a nonprofit organization before the money found its way to Chinese groups, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The report found that between 2014 and 2021, U.S. taxpayer funds were redirected to entities, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Wuhan University and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, which is part of the Chinese Communist Party. The three groups each received more than $2 million combined from the U.S. government ‘through seven subawards,’ according to the report.

‘The selected entities are government institutions or laboratories in China that conduct work on infectious diseases, including pandemic viruses, and have had actions taken by federal agencies to address safety or security concerns,’ the report states. ‘All three selected Chinese entities received funds.’

In January, the CIA under the second Trump administration released an updated assessment on the origins of COVID-19, favoring the theory that the contagious disease was due to a lab leak. The CIA previously had maintained that it did not have sufficient evidence to conclude whether COVID originated in a lab or a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan, China.

Ernst claimed in the X thread that USAID also provided funds to boost tourism to Lebanon and to send Ukrainian models to fashion week. 

‘The agency spent $2 million promoting tourism to Lebanon, a nation the State Department warns against traveling to ‘due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, unexploded landmines, and the risk of armed conflict,” she wrote. 

‘USAID spends money like it’s going out of fashion, literally,’ she wrote. ‘Trade assistance to Ukraine paid for models and designers to take trips to New York City, London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, and South by Southwest in Austin.’

The Trump administration and DOGE, which is led by Musk, put USAID in its line of fire over the weekend, as DOGE continues tearing through government agencies to strip them of reported overspending and corruption. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that he is now the acting director of USAID, and told the media on Monday that the agency needs to be brought in line with Trump’s ‘America First’ policies, which include heightened scrutiny over the distribution of taxpayer funds overseas. 

Musk has meanwhile slammed the agency as a ‘viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America,’ and reported in an audio-only message on X overnight on Sunday that ‘we’re in the process’ of ‘shutting down USAID’ and that Trump reportedly agreed to shutter the agency.

Democrats have slammed the Trump administration’s efforts on USAID. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., accused Trump of starting a dictatorship while she protested outside USAID headquarters on Monday. 

‘It is a really, really sad day in America. We are witnessing a constitutional crisis,’ Omar said. ‘We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one. And here we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like when you gut the Constitution, and you install yourself as the sole power. That is how dictators are made.’

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman and Caitlin McFall contributed to this report.