During his first day in office, Trump placed a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid. His executive order forced the furloughs or layoffs of thousands of employees and shut down thousands of programs worldwide.
As of Sunday evening, the USAID website is still down. Between 800 and 900 institutional support contractors from the Global Health and Humanitarian Assistance bureaus have already been laid off in recent days, a person familiar with the agency’s developments told The Epoch Times. The person did not know the exact number of direct staff remaining after the firings, but said they would be in a minority.
Congressional Democrats have expressed concern that USAID may cease to act as an independent agency if Trump attaches it to the State Department. They have said that USAID is vital to national security and that Trump lacks the legal authority to eliminate a congressionally funded independent agency.
However, Trump and congressional Republicans have said that much of the agency’s foreign aid and development programs are wasteful and have supported causes that advance left-leaning political agendas.
The concerns over the administration’s plans with USAID arose two weeks after it froze billions of dollars of U.S. security assistance and humanitarian development. The United States is the largest donor of humanitarian aid in the world.
President John F. Kennedy formed USAID to counter Soviet influence at the height of the Cold War. Currently, the agency is crucial to the U.S. efforts in curtailing the influence of the Chinese regime, which has robust foreign influence operations.
Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961 and then an executive order making USAID an independent agency.
Staff members from the agency monitored its fate in chat groups on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, discussing updates on the status of flags and signs outside the USAID headquarters in Washington. As of Feb. 1, both were present outside the agency’s building.
“As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc,” Murphy wrote. “U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.”
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whom Trump appointed to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency, endorsed the dissolution of USAID.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has maintained several life-saving emergency programs during the freeze, but aid groups have argued that confusion remains over which programs are still allowed to operate.
In his first public statement on the topic, Rubio said on Jan. 30 that USAID’s programs were under review to remove those that do not align with U.S. national interests. He did not say whether the agency would be eliminated.
Shutting down some of these programs during the 90-day review resulted in “a lot more cooperation” from aid recipients, Rubio said.
During Trump’s first term, he tried to slash the budget for foreign operations by a third. After Congress pushed back, the administration used freezes and other efforts to stop the flow of congressionally appropriated funds for foreign programs.
Ultimately, Congress’s investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, ruled that Trump violated the Impoundment Act.
