Last week, DOGE dismantled USAID's demolition derby style. The cheers and roars echoed as fragments of the agency splintered across the internet.

However most of the scandalous grants that magnetised the attention of X users didn’t come as the result of any DOGE files, but from USASpending.gov, a government website publishing government grants and contracts online. A lot of dubious government funding was finally facing public scrutiny, but often the story seemed to be “look what we discovered” when much of the information has been online for years.

I may be wrong but I haven’t yet seen any new information that wasn’t already public, but I will very happily be corrected if there is.

In that sense, the story is in part a continuation of the “Where did all the journalists go?” saga. The data was there for years, and very few people were paying (or could get) the public's attention. Of course, the new civic scrutiny is also to be welcomed with open arms and hopefully fosters a stronger push for more government transparency and citizen engagement.

At the same time, a lot of the story has become messy. Claims were made of USAID pumping hundreds of millions of dollars through an empty office in rural California belonging to media NGO Internews when Internews also has an office less than a mile from the Whitehouse. Or that Internews is “secretive”, whereas its grants are available online through USASpending and are often detailed through its website. Others suggested the nearly 500m USAID gave to Internews was to push the “woke agenda” - a small part likely was, but more was probably spent on a more Neocon style militarism through its activities in Afghanistan, Ukraine et al. Or that Internews is a subsidiary of USAID, when it gets its funds from other US government departments, as well as a host of corporations, private foundations, and European governments.