Washington: The Trump administration said it is eliminating more than 90 per cent of the US Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and USD 60 billion in overall US assistance around the world, putting numbers on its plans to eliminate the majority of US development and humanitarian help abroad.
The cuts detailed by the administration would leave few surviving USAID projects for advocates to try to save in what are ongoing court battles with the administration.
The Trump administration outlined its plans in both an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press and filings in one of those federal lawsuits Wednesday.
The Supreme Court intervened in that case late Wednesday and temporarily blocked a court order requiring the administration to release billions of dollars in foreign aid by midnight.
Wednesday’s disclosures also give an idea of the scale of the administration’s retreat from US aid and development assistance overseas, and from decades of US policy that foreign aid helps US interests by stabilising other countries and economies and building alliances.
The memo said officials were “clearing significant waste stemming from decades of institutional drift.” More changes are planned in how USAID and the State Department deliver foreign assistance, it said, “to use taxpayer dollars wisely to advance American interests.”
President Donald Trump and ally 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.
Trump January 20 ordered what he said would be a 90-day programme-by-programme review of which foreign assistance programmes deserved to continue, and cut off all foreign assistance funds almost overnight.
The funding freeze has stopped thousands of US-funded programmes abroad, and the administration and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams have pulled the majority of USAID staff off the job through forced leave and firings.
Widely successful USAID programmes credited with containing outbreaks of Ebola and other threats and saving more than 20 million lives in Africa through HIV and AIDS treatment are among those still cut off from agency funds, USAID officials and officials with partner organisations say. Meanwhile, formal notifications of programme cancellations are rolling out.
In the federal court filings Wednesday, nonprofits owed money on contracts with USAID describe both Trump political appointees and members of Musk’s teams terminating USAID’s contracts around the world at breakneck speed, without time for any meaningful review, they say.
“‘There are MANY more terminations coming, so please gear up!” a USAID official wrote staff Monday, in an email quoted by lawyers for the nonprofits in the filings.
The nonprofits, among thousands of contractors, owed billions of dollars in payment since the freeze began, called the en masse contract terminations a manoeuvre to get around complying with the order to lift the funding freeze temporarily.
So did a Democratic lawmaker.
The administration was attempting to “blow through Congress and the courts by announcing the completion of their sham review’ of foreign aid and the immediate termination of thousands of aid programs all over the world,” said Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
A coalition representing major US and global businesses and nongovernmental organisations and former officials expressed shock at the move. “The American people deserve a transparent accounting of what will be lost — on counterterror, global health, food security, and competition,” the US Global Leadership Coalition said.
The State Department said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had reviewed the terminations.
In all, the Trump administration said it will eliminate 5,800 of 6,200 multiyear USAID contract awards, for a cut of USD 54 billion. Another 4,100 of 9,100 State Department grants were being eliminated, for a cut of USD 4.4 billion.
The State Department memo, which was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, described the administration as spurred by a federal court order that gave officials until the end of the day Wednesday to lift the Trump administration’s monthlong block on foreign aid funding.
“In response, State and USAID moved rapidly,” targeting USAID and State Department foreign aid programmes in vast numbers for contract terminations, the memo said.
Trump administration officials — after repeated warnings from the federal judge in the case — also said Wednesday they were finally beginning to send out their first or any payments after more than a month with no known spending. Officials were processing a few million dollars of back payments, officials said, owed to US and international organisations and companies.
But US District Judge Amir H. Ali’s order to unfreeze billions of dollars by midnight Wednesday will remain on hold until the Supreme Court has a chance to weigh in more fully, according to the brief order signed by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Ali had ordered the federal government to comply with his decision temporarily blocking a freeze on foreign aid, ruling in a lawsuit filed by nonprofit groups and businesses. An appellate panel refused the administration’s request to intervene before the high court weighed in.
The plaintiffs have until noon Friday to respond, Roberts said.
The administration has filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court in one other case so far, arguing that a lower court was wrong to reinstate the head of a federal watchdog agency after Trump fired him.
