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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowSecretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the Trump administration had finished its six-week purge of programs of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development, and said he would move the 18% of aid and development programs that survived under the State Department.
Rubio made the announcement in a post on X. It marked one of his relatively few public comments on what has been a historic shift away from U.S. foreign aid and development, executed by Trump political appointees at State and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams.
Rubio in the post thanked DOGE and “our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform” in foreign aid.
President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all of the tens of billions of dollars of U.S. aid and development work abroad. Trump charged that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.
Rubio’s social media post Monday said that review was now “officially ending,” with some 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’ approval.
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.
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 U.S. national interests going forward.
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.
The dismantling of USAID that followed Trump’s order upended decades of policy that humanitarian and development aid abroad advanced U.S. national security by stabilizing regions and economies, strengthening alliances and building goodwill.
In the weeks after Trump’s order, one of his appointees and transition team members, Pete Marocco, and Musk pulled USAID staff around the world off the job through forced leaves and firings, shut down USAID payments overnight and terminated aid and development contracts by the thousands.
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 U.S. 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 U.S.-paid back payments and travel expenses back home.
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Rubio, Trump, and Musk just created a massive power vacuum that China will happily fill.
When China is seen as the ONLY global superpower, we’ll remember this as a major reason why.
The Trump administrations will be seen by history as what caused America to lose its place as the greatest country in the world. People will be mystified as to how any sane people would have let Trump off the hook for January 6th, much less a second term to finish destroying the country.
Russia couldn’t compete with America, but a multiple decade PSYOP effort led by a former KGB agent convinced America to tear itself apart. And people will claim they had no clue when it all happened clear as day, in broad daylight.
What’s most amazing is that it ‘s the kids of “Greatest Generation” who are responsible. All the sacrifices their parent made, and they tossed it all. Baby Boomers, indeed.
Unconscionable. Thanks MAGA. Way to go America. Good job.
Fantastic news. One of the biggest instruments of the deep state has been permanently hobbled. America will be stronger when Joe B and his coterie are driven stark-raving mad.
To the nearest ten thousand, how many CCP agents were admitted and working across various American institutions throughout the Biden administration? Should USAID, if it had any real interest in preserving American strength, have been able to sniff this out–up to and including the cozy relationship these CCP agents had with members of Congress like Eric Swalwell?
The usual gaggle were silent on questions like that back then, and they’re silent on it now….yet howling mad when a corrupt agency that served as a gravy train for uniparty policies gets called out.
We are ceding the field to China.
Shameful. Never mind the politics. Think of all the suffering and death this will cause.
And we have yet to see one shred of evidence of the claims of mismanagement, along with the “millions” of dead people receiving Social Security. Nothing, zip, nadda, just claims.
Your partisanship will eternally blind you to this reality. Even if a glitch in the programming (a bit akin to Y2K) helps explain why 150-year-olds were getting SS benefits–individuals who clear no longer exist–the fact remains that the money got disbursed and went somewhere. You just don’t care because it’s your tribe, so you pretend “no evidence” kind of like the legacy media (“claims without evidence”, LOL) that a majority of the effort laughed off when they cast their ballot last November.
Deeply unfortunate for you how little regard 60% of Americans have for WaPo and AP, the two primary “news” sources the IBJ syndicates.
The worst part about this, is that all of these programs were in the best interest of the US. We don’t want disease spreading wild. We don’t want countries destabilized because that only breeds unrest. None of these programs we did because we were just being nice. We we doing them because it was good for America and American business. We WERE putting America first because we could afford to.
Facts. It’s called being proactive, and being proactive costs money. Who would have thought?
These programs were in the best interest of the Deep State–a small claque of globalist elites (the Fourth Reichers) and their upper-middle class sycophants spread across the country, the latter of which comprise the lion’s share of the IBJ commentariat.
The Fourth Reichers actually very much wanted “disease spreading wild” because of the fear it spawned and how easy it was to control the panicked public. I mean, look at the charade they unleashed in early 2020.
China only cares about China. Face it Libs, this was a massive fraud providing graft and privilege to left organizations and policies. People always pontificate. How does Nancy or Chuck or AOC have so much money on politicians’ salary. Now we know, look no further.
Fraud? Then charge them. How much money did the House republicans spend to investigate the Bidens? Where are the charges?
There’s a difference between fraud and the prior admin directing money to projects they support. And those projects are very minor in the federal gov’t budget. The current admin will have that luxury now and others won’t agree with it. Plus, Musk will continue to enrich himself on gov’t money and cut agencies staff/resources enough to make on-going investigations of his companies by several federal agencies (like the EPA) go away.