Washington (AFP) – President Donald Trump on Friday called for USAID to be shuttered, escalating his unprecedented campaign to dismantle the humanitarian agency. “THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social app without offering any evidence to back up his assertion. His latest attack on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes US humanitarian aid globally, is part of a drive that has triggered chaos in its global network and allegations of weakening American influence on the world stage.
In the three weeks since he began his new term, Trump has launched a crusade led by his top donor and the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, to downsize or dismantle swaths of the US government. The most concentrated fire has been on USAID. On Friday, Musk — who along with Trump has spread blatantly false information about USAID’s finances — reposted photos on social media of the agency’s signage being taken down from its Washington headquarters. The Trump administration has already frozen foreign aid and ordered thousands of internationally-based staff to return to the United States, with reported impacts on the ground steadily growing.
On Thursday, a union official confirmed reports that the USAID headcount of 10,000 employees would be reduced to around only 300. Labor unions are challenging the legality of the onslaught, including a separate government-wide offer of buyouts by Musk’s team. A federal judge on Friday ordered a pause to the administration’s plan to put 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave at 11:59 pm. Democrats in Congress say it would be unconstitutional for Trump — who has also vowed to close the Department of Education — to shut down government agencies without the legislature’s green light.
The United States’ current budget allocates about $70 billion for international assistance. However, while Washington is the biggest aid donor in the world, the money has only amounted to between 0.7 and 1.4 percent of total US government spending in the last quarter century, according to the Pew Research Center. USAID runs health and emergency programs in around 120 countries, including the world’s poorest regions. It is seen as a vital source of soft power for the United States in its struggle for influence with rivals including China.
Samantha Power, the USAID chief under former president Joe Biden, dubbed the agency “America’s superpower” in a scathing New York Times opinion piece Friday. “We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in US history,” said Power. Unless the dismantling is halted, Power wrote, “future generations will marvel that it wasn’t China’s actions that eroded US standing and global security” but rather “an American president and the billionaire he unleashed to shoot first and aim later.”
Hard-right Republicans and libertarians have long questioned the need for USAID and criticized what they say is wasteful spending abroad. Also on Friday, Trump froze US aid to South Africa, citing a law in the country that he alleges allows farmland to be seized from white farmers, despite Johannesburg’s denials.
South Africa-born Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have rampaged through agencies that most Americans have for decades taken for granted or ignored. While Democrats have struggled to find footing to halt the moves, court challenges are slowly taking shape. An attempt by Trump to overturn the constitutional guarantee to birthright citizenship has been blocked by a judge, and on Thursday, another judge paused the federal worker buyouts program, pending arguments on Monday.
Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, ran into controversy last week with reports that he and his team were accessing sensitive Treasury Department data and systems. An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced,” US media reported. Adding to the drama, one member of the DOGE team resigned after it emerged that he had advocated racism and eugenics on social media. On Friday, following backing for the sacked 25-year-old from Trump, Musk said he would reinstate the staffer.
The staffer, according to posts uncovered by the Wall Street Journal, said just last year that he was “racist before it was cool.” Vice President JD Vance weighed in Friday, saying he did not think “stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” while criticizing the reporter for trying to “destroy people.” “So I say bring him back.”
© 2024 AFP
