The USAID's closure is one of many casualties of the Trump Regime's cruelty
The USAID's closure is a triumph for DOGE and Project 2025 and destructive for those around the world who relied on aid.
On July 1st, 2025, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) closed its doors due to the Trump Regime’s insane fascist policies regarding foreign aid, all to serve the radical DOGE and Project 2025 agendas.
According to a recent study from The Lancet, up to 14 million lives worldwide could be lost due to the closure of USAID.
The Trump Administration’s decision to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) isn’t just an attempt to find savings out of a bloated budget - it’s the culmination of a decades-long conservative fantasy: to strip American foreign policy of its most humane, effective, and visionary arm. And now, today, that fantasy has become a harsh reality.
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Terminating USAID will harm, if not potentially kill millions; will cost us far more in blood and treasure than it saves in dollars; and it will serve as a gift to our global adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran. That’s not just bad policy. That’s sabotage.
Since USAID was founded by President Kennedy in 1961, it has been a beacon of American idealism, pragmatism, and influence. It’s the agency that builds schools in Afghanistan, delivers HIV medication to Sub-Saharan Africa, supports civil society in Ukraine, and funds food aid in the Horn of Africa. For the cost of less than 1% of the federal budget, it has prevented wars, fostered democratic transitions, saved lives, and expanded American global leadership.
So why eliminate it?
Because for decades, the far-right of American politics has viewed development aid not as a strategic asset, but as an ideological nuisance. From Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC) railing against foreign aid in the 1980s to the Tea Party scorning multilateralism in the 2010s, there’s been a steady drumbeat coming from the far-right: retreat from the world, slash the foreign aid budget, and reduce American foreign policy to nothing more than military might.
Donald Trump, with his America First mantra, Project 2025 playbook, and DOGE implementation, finally gave that movement its sledgehammer.
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USAID is also one of the few instruments we have that aligns our values with our interests. In new democracies, it supports independent media and anti-corruption reform. In regions at risk of famine, it prevents humanitarian catastrophe. In post-conflict societies, it stabilizes the peace. These are the building blocks of a safer world. Gutting USAID won’t just shrink our footprint - it will destroy the scaffolding of peace and progress that we spent generations constructing.
And let’s be clear: this didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s the predictable endpoint of a conservative worldview that has long equated engagement with weakness and aid with waste. It’s rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of American power - seen not as a tool to help and inspire, but only as a tool to coerce.
Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern? on the rise and fall of USAID (07.09.2025):
Created in 1961, USAID was the largest provider of food aid in the world, and the dominant means by which the US distributed foreign aid. It also provided crucial help to those at risk of HIV/AIDS, It has been characterized as a tool of US power, but has embraced bottom-up and participatory approaches to aid. USAID oversaw $40 billion in spending, which relied extensively on funding local providers and a network of grants, which were canceled by Musk.
The destruction of USAID had less to do with the actions of the agency than with the broader governing context of an American presidency that has embraced an authoritarian, conspiracy-driven and populist approach to governing. USAID may be the first case of a government agency killed by conspiracy theories.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced the cancelation of 83% of USAID's programs, ending the agency, while moving what remained into the State Department.
DOGE engaged in a massive downsizing project across the federal government during the initial months of Trump's second term, but it's worth exploring why USAID was the first and most aggressively targeted federal agency. Trump had campaigned on eliminating the Department of Education, but there was little emphasis on USAID.
While Trump said he supported the elimination of the agency after Musk initiated it, the pursuit of USAID seemed to be Musk's project. Musk made a series of false claims about USAID, repeating online conspiracy theories targeting the agency. USAID's dismantling was not merely an attempt to improve government efficiency or solely an ideological opposition to foreign aid distribution. Instead, it relied on strategies—such as leveraging unitary executive control—that reveal a broader seizure of power that pose real threats to US government capacity at home and credibility abroad.
The Role of Unitary Executive Theory
The actions against USAID, and other agencies, invoke constitutional questions about US executive power and their limits. Historically, there is wide acceptance that the creation of agencies and programs—and by extension their elimination—are Congressional decisions in the US system of government.
While USAID was created by executive order it was codified in statute by Congress in 1998. Nevertheless, Musk and Trump claimed the legal right to eliminate the agency, while firing employees in legally dubious ways, provoking legal challenges. USAID was the first and most extreme example, but President Trump has also sought to eliminate other agencies, such as the US Agency for Global Media, Americorps, and the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
To do so, Trump has relied on unitary executive theory. This theory is a relatively novel reading of the constitution that holds that the President is the personification of the executive branch, and therefore holds all executive power. Moreover, efforts by other branches, such as the judiciary or Congress, to limit executive power are unconstitutional. On its face, the theory seems at odds with the origins of the US state, which emphasized a rejection of centralized, King-like authority and a strong emphasis on separation of powers.
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The destruction of USAID was remarkable in that it did not reflect any sort of broad-based consensus. While other actors in Trump's political environment—such as the Project 2025, or the budget blueprint from the Center for Renewing America, led by Trump's budget chief Russ Vought—called for reductions in USAID spending, they did not seek to eliminate it. The assault on USAID seemed disproportionately driven by the beliefs of one person, Musk. And those beliefs were largely disconnected from the reality of what USAID did.
For example:
Musk said that 90% of USAID spending never reaches communities, implying that most funding was wasted. But this claim demonstrates a misunderstanding of the budget. While 10% of the budget goes to direct payments to local organizations, another 46% goes to funding to multilateral agencies and 31% to American companies and nonprofits, much of which goes to direct provision, such as HIV programs, anti-malaria products, and emergency food services.
Musk claimed that $50 million was spent to send condoms to Hamas. Trump repeated this false claim, as did members of Congress. The organization that receives the funds does provide family planning, but its USAID funds were providing emergency health support to refugees in Gaza.
Musk has repeated other conspiracy theories about USAID found online including that it helped to create COVID-19, is rigging elections, and manufacturing media consent.
Musk elevated claims that USAID was protected by journalists because it had been secretly funding the media, based on government subscription services to media outlets.
Musk was not atypical of the broader Trump movement, which held conspiratorial worldviews about other parts of government it labeled as “the deep state,” but the effect on USAID was the most immediate and consequential. Such views could have been easily debunked, had DOGE been willing to talk to and trust career officials. But Musk displayed deep distrust of civil servants, labeling USAID “a viper's nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America,” and “a criminal organization.”
Alix Breeden at Daily Kos on how the shutdown of USAID has ruined food assistance (07.15.2025):
President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have become so fixated on becoming “America First” that a batch of prepurchased high-energy biscuits will never make it into the hands of those in need.
As of Tuesday, roughly 500 metric tons of emergency food intended for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan are about to expire, according to The Atlantic. Now, instead of potentially being able to feed 1.5 million children for a week, the U.S. will waste extra money—on top of the $800,000 spent to purchase it—to destroy the unviable rations.
Federal workers reportedly attempted to contact the new head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who could pull the right strings and make use of the nutritionally dense food. Ultimately, though, their attempts were unsuccessful.
On one hand, it’s hard to argue against giving lifesaving resources to children. On the other (less rational) hand, if you ask the Trump administration, distributing food to countries like Afghanistan or Yemen could potentially feed terrorists, which is enough of a reason for them to cut off aid completely.
In April, NPR reported that USAID contracts were slashed in these countries just from the fear that they were benefitting terrorist organizations alone.
Jay Kuo wrote in the Status Kuo on the rescissions bill and USAID’s closing (07.17.2025):
When Elon Musk came in and took his chainsaw to the federal government earlier this year, he bragged he had fed USAID to the wood chipper. That sudden loss of funds, paired with the overnight firing of federal workers across the agency, resulted in hundreds of thousands of desperate people around the world no longer having access to food and medicine.
The rescission bill passed yesterday by the Senate targets $8 billion in unspent foreign assistance that would have gone to the neediest and most desperate people in the world, all kept alive by critical programs once funded by USAID.
The closing down of USAID was avoidable, and thanks to the Trump Regime and DOGE, the organization got a funeral that it didn’t deserve.
This will go down as one of the many casualties of the Trump Regime that will be negatively remembered and made America worse off.