Cape Town | Health groups and non-governmental organisations expressed surprise and outrage Thursday and said many humanitarian programmes would collapse after the Trump administration's decision to cut 90 per cent of USAID's foreign aid contracts.
The move, barely a month after US President Donald Trump announced a 90-day review of spending, will permanently defund programmes across the world that fight hunger and disease and provide other life-saving help for millions.
“Women and children will go hungry, food will rot in warehouses while families starve, children will be born with HIV — among other tragedies,” said the InterAction group, an alliance of NGOs in the United States that work on aid programs across the world.
“This needless suffering will not make America safer, stronger, or more prosperous. Rather, it will breed instability, migration, and desperation.”
Organisations that receive funding from the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, had received letters advising of the termination of their funding and programmes overnight, people who spoke on condition of anonymity said.
The Trump administration announced Wednesday it was stopping some USD 60 billion in overall aid and assistance around the world because it didn't advance American interests.
Some 10,000 USAID contracts with NGOs and others were terminated in the Trump administration's move, InterAction said, “effectively crippling American foreign assistance.”
Liz Schrayer, president and CEO of the US Global Leadership Coalition, a non-profit that promotes US diplomatic and humanitarian efforts, warned that the Trump administration's move would cede ground and international influence to China, Russia and Iran.
“The American people deserve a transparent accounting of what will be lost – on counterterror, global health, food security, and competition,” Schrayer said in a statement.
In South Africa, an alliance of health groups said that thousands of USAID contracts for HIV programmes in the country had been permanently cancelled overnight “as the United States government abandons thousands of the most vulnerable people in South Africa and abroad.”
USAID provides a large amount of funding to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which is credited with saving millions of lives in Africa and more than 26 million globally since it was started by Republican President George W. Bush in 2003.
The letters of termination cut life-saving services for people requiring treatment for HIV and tuberculosis, said the South African health group alliance called CHANGE.
South Africa has around 5.5 million people on treatment for HIV, the most in the world. While the US only funds 17 per cent of South Africa's HIV programme, the cuts to USAID would put the entire program at risk because of how US money helps in critical areas, CHANGE said.
Trump and ally and advisor Elon Musk have hit foreign aid harder and faster than almost any other target in their push to cut the size of the federal government. Both men say USAID projects advance a liberal agenda and are a waste of money.
Termination letters delivered by the administration to USAID partners across the world said their funding was being ended “for convenience and the interests of the US government,” according to a person with knowledge of the letters who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly on the issue.
The person said the letters also advised the NGOs and programs affected that an administrator for USAID had “determined your award is not aligned with Agency priorities and made a determination that continuing this programme is not in the national interests."
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a waiver programme in the days after Trump's order freezing aid that was meant to save funding for life-saving services. Many of those waivers were not enacted, and groups said Thursday that even programmes that had been initially identified as life-saving had lost their funding permanently in the new order.
Trump ordered what he said would be a three-month review of which foreign assistance programmes deserved to continue in his first day back in office on January 20, and cut off all foreign assistance funds almost overnight.
The administration and Musk's Department of Government Efficiency teams have also pulled the majority of USAID staff off the job through forced leave and firings. Thousands of USAID workers were being given a 15-minute window Thursday and Friday to clear out their workspaces.
Washington | US Agency for International Development workers who have been fired or placed on leave as part of the Trump administration's dismantling of the agency began paying mournful final visits to their abruptly closed Washington headquarters on Thursday, under the administration's 15-minute windows to clear out their offices while escorted by federal officers.
Some staffers wept as they carried out grocery bags and suitcases with what was left from their life's work. Supporters clapped and cheered outside or drove by tapping their car horns to bolster their spirits.
A woman coming back out of the building loaded down with backpacks and bags burst into tears at the cheers that greeted her. Many of a small but growing crowd of supporters outside enveloped her in hugs.
USAID has been one of the biggest targets of a broad campaign by President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, a project of Trump adviser Elon Musk, to slash the size of the federal government. The actions at USAID leave only a small fraction of its employees on the job.
Trump and Musk have moved swiftly to shutter the foreign aid agency, calling its programmes out of line with the Republican president's agenda and asserting without evidence that its work is wasteful. In addition to its scope, their effort is extraordinary because it has not involved Congress, which authorised the agency and has provided its funding.
Federal officers were waiting outside USAID's former headquarters as well, intercepting USAID staffers as they arrived, rolling suitcases or toting bags, to escort them inside.
David Radcliffe, who spent 30 years at the Department of Defence as an Army veteran and civil servant, was one of those showing up in support of the federal aid staffers. The message on the sign he carried: “YOU Made America Great! Thank You USAID.”
USAID's aid and development work over the decade had represented the best of the United States to the world and distinguished the US as a leader, Radcliffe said. “I'm shocked and dismayed," he said. "It makes no sense from a policy perspective.”
While larger bureaus at the agency are urging supporters to turn up to “clap out” staffers over the next two days, a Trump administration ban on USAID staffers speaking publicly also has many fearing retaliation if they speak publicly.
“We're just here to say thank you for your service. We appreciate everything you've done and all the sacrifices you've made in service to your country," said Randy Chester, the vice president of the American Foreign Service Association representing USAID staffers.
Chester's is among several nonprofits and businesses suing the Trump administration over a more than monthlong cutoff of foreign assistance funds that has shut down US humanitarian and development aid around the world and its mass removals of USAID workers.
USAID placed 4,080 staffers who work across the globe on leave Monday. That was joined by a "reduction in force” that will affect another 1,600 employees, a State Department spokesman said in an emailed response to questions.
A report from the Congressional Research Service earlier this month said congressional authorisation is required “to abolish, move, or consolidate USAID,” but the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate have made no pushback against the administration's actions.
There's virtually nothing left to fund, anyway: The administration now says it is eliminating more than 90 per cent of USAID's foreign aid contracts and USD 60 billion in US assistance around the world.
On Thursday, someone had left a bucket of flowers outside the building, for workers to place at the memorial wall inside to the 99 USAID workers killed in the line of duty.
It's unclear how many of the more than 5,600 USAID employees who have been fired or placed on leave work at the agency's headquarters building in Washington. A notice on the agency's website said staff at other locations will have the chance to collect their personal belongings at a later date.
The notice laid out instructions for when specific groups of employees should arrive to be screened by security and escorted to their former workspaces.
Those being let go must turn in all USAID-issued assets. Workers on administrative leave were told to retain their USAID-issued materials, including diplomatic passports, “until such time that they are separated from the agency.”
Many USAID workers saw the administration's terms for retrieving their belongings as insulting. In the notice, the employees were instructed not to bring weapons, including firearms, “spear guns” and “hand grenades.” Each worker is being given just 15 minutes at their former workstation.
The administration's efforts to slash the federal government are embroiled in various lawsuits, but court challenges to temporarily halt the shutdown of USAID have been unsuccessful.
However, a federal judge on Tuesday gave the Trump administration a deadline of this week to release billions of dollars in US foreign aid, saying it had given no sign of complying with his nearly two-week-old court order to ease the funding freeze.
Late Wednesday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked that order, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying it will remain on hold until the high court has a chance to weigh in more fully.
That court action resulted from a lawsuit filed by nonprofit organisations over the cutoff of foreign assistance through USAID and the State Department.
Trump froze the money through an executive order on his first day in office that targeted what he portrayed as wasteful programmes that do not correspond to his foreign policy goals.
Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly said in a statement that the attack on USAID employees was “unwarranted and unprecedented.” Connolly, whose district includes a sizable federal workforce, called the aid agency workers part of the “world's premier development and foreign assistance agency” who save “millions of lives every year.”
