All of this is familiar territory for the Trump administration. Since the president took office, he has been promising to eradicate terrorism and eliminate the “beachhead of intolerance” created by radicalism. What was different here is that Pence promised a policy shift to accompany the rhetoric: Based on claims that the United Nations often denies funding requests from faith-based organizations and provides only “ineffective relief efforts,” the administration will now “provide support directly” through USAID.

Conservative religious-freedom advocates have long pushed for money to be redirected away from the UN. “I am overjoyed,” said Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute. “The [UN] projects that are taking place are superficial and cosmetic projects—coats of paint rather than a renovation or a reconstruction.” This funding shift, she said, is “a battle won.”

It seemed clear from Pence’s speech that religious aid organizations have been influential in bringing about this decision: The vice president specifically mentioned Carl Anderson, the head of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic group that provides aid to Christians in Iraq and elsewhere, for his humanitarian efforts. “The hope this announcement will give to Christians in the Middle East—and the real world impact it will have on the survival of threatened minority communities—cannot be underestimated,” Anderson said in a statement.

Despite the Trump administration’s previous promises to help persecuted religious minorities, it hasn’t necessarily backed its words with dollars. At a congressional briefing earlier this month, former Republican Representative Frank Wolf testified that “U.S. government assistance has not been forthcoming to Iraq’s Christian and Yezidi communities even though the president, vice president, Congress, and secretary of state have declared them victims of genocide.” Even now, it’s not clear how much money is going to shift to USAID: The agency said in a statement only that “the administration is exploring options for how to better ensure our assistance effectively reaches vulnerable communities.”

Last spring, the Trump administration proposed a 27-percent, 10-year reduction to USAID’s operational budget. “The schizophrenia is that they don’t like international aid,” said Shaun Casey, the director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University and former head of the State Department’s religious-outreach office. “They could absolutely devastate the global USAID budget, but if they come up with $10 million to put in the hands of a group of conservative Christian NGOs on the ground, that’s how they’re going to take credit.”

It’s a bit misleading to suggest that foreign-aid money will now go “directly” to Christian communities. As with other USAID programs, this money will likely be granted to private NGOs, including religious groups like Catholic Relief Services and World Vision, two of the agency’s top grantees, which will then be charged with distributing assistance. Casey—who served as a political appointee in the Obama administration—sees the funding shift as a way to “throw [conservatives] some crumbs”; “to give a chunk of change to USAID, and say, ‘Fly over Iraq at 50,000 feet and throw out sacks of money at mom-and-pop Christian NGOs.’”