Secretary of State Marco Rubio notified lawmakers on Monday that he'll work with Congress to reorganize the U.S. Agency for International Development, reports The Wall Street Journal, stepping back from the closure of the agency Elon Musk envisioned and said President Trump agreed to.
An email to USAID employees on Monday morning had said “Agency leadership” made the decision to close the headquarters of the independent agency. The message said that replies should be directed to an email address that appears to be associated with Gavin Kliger, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as a special adviser to the director of the Office of Personnel Management and who works for DOGE, according to the WSJ.
By the way, Wired says it’s identified "six young men — all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records — who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project.”
Kliger attended the University of California at Berkeley until 2020, Wired says.
Some Democratic lawmakers tried on Monday to enter the USAID headquarters. They were blocked by officers from even entering the lobby, and Rubio said he was the acting administrator of the agency despite it being an independent body for six decades.
The Democrats say court challenges are underway and that they'll block approval of Trump’s State Department nominations until the shutdown is reversed.
The United States is the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid, and the moves have upended decades of U.S. policy that put humanitarian, development and security assistance in the center of efforts to build alliances and counter China and Russia, says The Associated Press.
Trump, Musk and Republicans in Congress have made the U.S. foreign assistance program a special target, accusing it of waste and advancing liberal social programs, AP says.
A New York Times article says funding from USAID "has been essential in transporting lifesaving treatments worldwide.”
For example, medical supplies, including drugs to stop hemorrhages in pregnant women and rehydration salts that treat life-threatening diarrhea in toddlers, can't reach villages in Zambia because the trucking companies transporting them were paid through a suspended supply project of USAID.
And there’s nobody to take custody of millions of dollars’ worth of supplies for oxygen systems, purchased for programs funded by USAID that support health clinics in some of the world’s poorest countries, that are scheduled to reach ports in coming days.
I mentioned last week that Americans tend to overestimate the share of the federal budget that's spent on foreign aid, citing an article from Brookings.
AP cites surveys from the Kaiser Family Foundation that have have found that on average, Americans say spending on foreign aid makes up 31 percent of the federal budget rather than the actual 1 percent or less.