A group of prominent human rights organizations on Friday slammed the Biden administration’s plan to send more than a billion dollars in military aid to Egypt after having campaigned on handing “no more blank checks” to the North African government. 

Under President Joe Biden’s first budget proposal to Congress, the State Department is requesting $1.3 billion in foreign military financing (FMF) for Egypt, the same amount of military aid the longtime US strategic ally has received annually from the United States since 1987. 

In a statement provided exclusively to Al-Monitor, the nongovernmental organizations describe the funding request as one that “undermines the administration’s stated commitment to put human rights at the center of the U.S.-Egypt relationship.”

“The administration continues a troubling ‘business as usual’ partnership in direct contradiction to the president’s promise,” read the statement from the Project on Middle East Democracy, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The Freedom Initiative and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.