The Trump administration has taken an axe to US foreign aid, eliminating 83% of programs run by the US Agency for International Development in a sweeping six-week purge that has done away with entire categories of development work that took decades to build up.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio announced the massive cuts on Monday, posting that roughly 5,200 of USAid’s 6,200 global programs have been terminated. The surviving initiatives – less than a fifth of America’s previous aid portfolio – will be absorbed by the state department.
“Our hard-working staff who worked very long hours” alongside Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) teams deserve credit for this “overdue and historic reform”, Rubio wrote on X, using his personal account.
The mass terminations follow Donald Trump’s 20 January executive order freezing foreign assistance for review that he claimed pushed forward a liberal global agenda.
This abrupt dismantling also overturns decades of bipartisan consensus that humanitarian and development assistance serves American security interests by stabilizing fragile regions, fostering economic growth, and building diplomatic goodwill – and were backed by Elon Musk’s so-called government efficiency unit.
Timeline
Trump’s cuts to USAid
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On his first day in office, President Donald Trump announces an immediate 90-day freeze on all US foreign assistance, including more than $40bn (£32bn) for international projects coming from USAid, the United States Agency for International Development.
A waiver is announced for humanitarian assistance, including “core lifesaving medicine” and “medical services, food, shelter and subsistence”. “This waiver does not apply to activities that involve abortions, family planning conferences, administrative costs … gender or DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) ideology programs, transgender surgeries, or other non-life saving assistance,” secretary of state Marco Rubio’s memo says, according to Reuters.
USAid’s website disappears.
USAid staff receive an email telling them not to come to work after a weekend in which its servers were removed and leadership and senior staff fired or put on disciplinary leave. Rubio declares himself acting administrator of USAid.
The waiver announced on 28 January is clarified to include HIV care and treatment services, prevention of mother-to-child transmission services and associated administrative costs.
Rubio announces that 83% of USAid programs have been cancelled. ‘The 5,200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,’ he announced on X. The remaining programs will be administered by the State Department.
“Tough, but necessary. Good working with you. The important parts of USAID should always have been with Dept of State,” Elon Musk responded on X following Rubio’s announcement.
The New York Times reported last week that there had been serious cut-ups between Musk and Rubio at a recent cabinet meeting over proposed cuts to the state department.
During that meeting, Trump reportedly defended Rubio for doing a “great job” and said that Musk’s team would be merely advising cabinet secretaries about future cuts. But Rubio’s apparent embrace of Musk’s objectives reveal the extent to which the billionaire Trump supporter wields power in the administration.
Rubio’s social media post on Monday said that review was now “officially ending”, with about 5,200 of USAid’s 6,200 programs eliminated.
Those programs “spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States”, Rubio wrote.
“In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping … to be administered more effectively under the state department,” he said. Democratic lawmakers and others call the shutdown of congressionally funded programs illegal, saying such a move requires Congress’s approval.
The state department did not respond to a request for comment on the criteria being used to keep alive the remaining programs and to respond to claims that cutting programs without congressional approval is illegal.
The Trump administration has given almost no details on which aid and development efforts abroad it spared as it mass-emailed contract terminations to aid groups and other USAid partners by the thousands within days earlier this month. The rapid pace, and the steps skipped in ending contracts, left USAid supporters challenging whether any actual program-by-program reviews had taken place.
According to internal documents reviewed by ProPublica, top health officials at USAid had for weeks warned Rubio and other leaders about the potential death toll that would result from the cuts, along with one million children untreated for severe malnutrition, up to 166,000 malaria deaths, and 200,000 more children paralyzed by polio over the next decade if they carried out their plan.
Aid groups say even some life-saving programs that Rubio and others had promised to spare got the termination notices, such as emergency nutritional support for starving children and drinking water serving sprawling camps for families uprooted by war in Sudan.
Republicans broadly have made clear they want foreign assistance that would promote a far narrower interpretation of US national interests.
The state department in one of multiple lawsuits it is battling over its rapid shutdown of USAid had said earlier this month it was killing more than 90% of USAid programs. Rubio gave no explanation for why his number was lower.
Contractors and staffers running efforts ranging from epidemic control to famine prevention to job and democracy training stopped work. Aid groups and other USAid partners laid off tens of thousands of their workers in the US and abroad.
Lawsuits say the sudden shutdown of USAid has stiffed aid groups and businesses that had contracts with it of billions of dollars.
The shutdown has left many USAid staffers and contractors and their families still overseas, many of them awaiting US-paid back payments and travel expenses back home.
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