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Rubio Orders Abolishment of USAID's Entire International Workforce
All foreign assistance programs will now be managed by the secretary of state.
Jun 10, 2025
A cable from the U.S. State Department Tuesday showed that the Trump administration is eliminating the entire international workforce of the foreign aid agency that has provided lifesaving assistance in the Global South for over six decades.
"The Department of State is streamlining procedures under National Security Decision Directive 38 to abolish all USAID overseas positions," read the cable, referring to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The document was obtained by The Guardian.
USAID was one of the first targets of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whose former leader, billionaire Elon Musk, has baselessly called the agency a "criminal organization."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in March that 5,200 of the agency's 6,200 international initiatives had been eliminated and that the few remaining programs were now under the control of the State Department.
The announcement by Rubio on Tuesday means all foreign assistance programs will be managed by the department, with the administration firing hundreds of foreign service officers, contractors, and local employees across more than 100 countries.
USAID officials and international humanitarian experts have warned since the Trump administration first moved to freeze foreign assistance in January that cuts to the agency would leave at least 1 million children without treatment for malnutrition, leave 200,000 more children paralyzed from vaccine-preventable polio over next decade, and cause up to 160,000 deaths from malaria.
But President Donald Trump has persistently claimed the agency is "run by a bunch of radical lunatics" and Rubio has said USAID operates "independent of the national interest."
"Everything they do has to be aligned with U.S. foreign policy," said Rubio earlier this year.
The announcement of the elimination of USAID's entire workforce came as government watchdog Public Citizen released a new report on Trump's stop-work order affecting the agency in January. The order "likely affected 32 USAID-funded clinical trials conducted across 25 countries and as many as 94 thousand participants."
According to the report:
- More than half of the trials (17 of 32) were specifically researching the world's deadliest infectious diseases: human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, tuberculosis, and malaria.
- For eight trials where contact persons provided additional information, seven trials were affected before participants were enrolled or after data analysis was complete; one trial reported minor patient safety issues.
- The trials were conducted across five continents, predominantly in Africa (13 countries) and in Asia (nine countries).
- The study sites most frequently mentioned across all trials were South Africa (9 times); Kenya and the United States (6 times each); and Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (4 times each).
Due to the stop-work order, said Nina Zeldes, a health researcher at Public Citizen's Health Research Group, "researchers were unable to safeguard the welfare of participants and uphold their ethical obligations."
Public Citizen said that "the sudden, medically uncalled-for suspension of the clinical trials was a serious violation of research ethics, potentially jeopardizing the health of trial participants and the integrity of the trials."
The Center for Global Development also published an analysis Tuesday of estimates that have stated the White House's proposal of cutting global health and humanitarian aid funding by two-thirds would put 1 million lives at risk.
Researchers Charles Kenny and Justin Sandefur found that it was "implausible" that cuts to U.S. foreign assistance would only impact so-called "waste" and would preserve lifesaving assistance, as the administration has claimed.
"Using our estimates of costs per life saved for U.S. global health and humanitarian assistance based on available empirical evidence, we can calculate the potential number of lives at risk from such cuts," wrote Kenny and Sandefur. "The calculation suggests the cuts could lead to 675,000 additional deaths from HIV, and a combined 285,000 deaths from malaria and tuberculosis."
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Elon Musk's Legacy Is Cruelty and Death
Of all the actions Musk and President Trump set in motion, nothing will hurt more people around the world than their dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Jun 07, 2025
Elon Musk is leaving the White House — and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. But of all the actions Musk and President Trump set in motion, nothing will hurt more people around the world than their dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
By making disease-stemming drugs, clean water, and food available to millions, USAID has probably saved more lives worldwide than any entity in history.
Since 2000, USAID’s programs have prevented the deaths of 58 million people from tuberculosis, 25 million from HIV/AIDS, and over 11 million from malaria. It’s given 70 million people access to safe drinking water and, working in concert with global vaccine initiatives, helped to nearly eradicate polio.
As the main funder of global health interventions, USAID served as a bulwark against diseases that don’t halt at national borders. Its programs identified emerging epidemics and minimized the spread of drug-resistant diseases that threaten Americans as well.
Although it’s commonly assumed to be much higher, foreign aid is just 1 percent of federal spending, so cutting it won’t begin to balance the budget. So instead Trump and Musk attacked USAID by slandering it, calling it a “criminal agency” (Musk) that’s “run by a bunch of radical lunatics” (Trump).
This, of course, was a lie. USAID was known for having rigorous oversight, with 275 investigators and auditors in its watchdog office.
Most USAID funding in low-income countries targets disease prevention, economic growth, and disaster relief. But DOGE and Trump made staggering false claims, like Trump’s that USAID was sending “$50 million to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.”
As a result, USAID was the first casualty in the Trump administration’s struggle to make the federal government subservient not to the Constitution but to one man. And Musk — the world’s richest man, whose income last year exceeded USAID’s entire budget — and his fellow billionaire President Trump withdrew medicines and food from millions of the world’s most vulnerable people. Afterward, Musk gleefully announced that they’d fed “USAID into the wood chipper.”
I’ve followed USAID since seeing its economic and agricultural programs in the African Sahel in the 1980s, and I’ve spent 40 years heading nonprofits working to provide clean drinking water internationally.
No organization I’ve led has received USAID funding, but over the years I’ve known scores of USAID staff who were hard working and conscientious about spending U.S. tax dollars. Trump owes an apology to USAID’s employees, now indiscriminately fired or coerced into early retirement.
Every federal agency can stand being streamlined. But what happened to USAID wasn’t reform — it was destruction. “They didn’t know what they were doing or care to find out, but I came to realize that cruelty is their purpose,” one senator told me in April. “Cruelty is how they think they demonstrate power.”
It’s fair to say American voters didn’t ask for this. USAID went unmentioned during the 2024 presidential campaign — and bipartisan majorities continue to say they oppose gutting the agency.
American entities which partnered with USAID — including corporations, faith-based organizations, foundations, universities, and civic groups like Rotary International — will continue to raise their own private funds. But by themselves they can’t replace USAID’s leadership abroad.
Now that Trump and Musk have eviscerated the agency, millions will suffer. The Center for Global Development estimates that U.S. foreign assistance has been saving 3 million lives annually. The journal Nature calculates that the loss of U.S. global health funding alone could result in 25 million additional deaths over the next 15 years.
For Americans — including Trump voters — feeling queasy over what’s been carried out in their name, it’s not too late to convey to Congress your support for life-saving foreign assistance.
Regardless of how they voted, Americans should be proud of how their foreign aid has reduced worldwide poverty, sickness, hunger, and thirst — all for 1 percent of the federal budget. The future cost to the United States, if it abandons its leadership in global health and development, will prove incalculable.
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Insiders Say Trump Foreign Aid Cuts Causing 'Violence and Chaos' in Fragile Nations
"It is devastating, but it's not surprising," said one former senior State Department official. "It's all what people in the national security community have predicted."
May 28, 2025
U.S. State Department officials in at least two countries have recently warned that the Trump administration's sudden foreign aid cutoff is fueling "violence and chaos" in some of the world's most vulnerable nations, according to a report published Wednesday.
Internal State Department communications viewed by
ProPublicarevealed that U.S. Embassy officials in the southeastern African nation of Malawi sounded the alarm on cuts to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which have "yielded a sharp increase in criminality, sexual violence, and instances of human trafficking" in the Dzaleka refugee camp.
Meanwhile, dramatically reduced U.S. funding to feed refugees in Kenya has sparked violent protests and other incidents, including the trampling death of a pregnant woman during a stampede for food in which police opened fire on desperately hungry people.
"In Kenya, for example, the WFP will cut its rations in June down to 28% — or less than 600 calories a day per person — a low never seen before...The WFP’s standard minimum for adults is 2,100 calories per day." Just unbelievable suffering as U.S. withdraws foreign aid.
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— Lisa Song (@lisalsong.bsky.social) May 28, 2025 at 1:15 PM
This, as President Donald Trump's administration—spearheaded by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its de facto leader, Elon Musk—has taken a wrecking ball approach to vital offices and programs including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where contracts for programs including those that fed and provided healthcare for millions of people and fought diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS have been slashed by up to 90%.
Republicans have attempted to justify the cuts under the guise of tackling the staggering U.S. national debt, even as they push a massive tax cut that would disproportionately benefit the ultrarich and corporations while adding trillions of dollars to the deficit, according to a nonpartisan congressional committee.
Although a federal judge ruled in March that Musk's moves to shutter USAID were likely unconstitutional and ordered a halt to the effort, much damage has already been done.
"It is devastating, but it's not surprising," Eric Schwartz, a former State Department assistant secretary and National Security Council member, told ProPublica. "It's all what people in the national security community have predicted."
"I struggle for adjectives to adequately describe the horror that this administration has visited on the world," Schwartz added. "It keeps me up at night."
It is unclear if any of the cables were sent via the official dissent channel set up during the administration of then-President Richard Nixon in an effort to allow State Department personnel to voice opposition to U.S. policies and practices—especially in regard to the Vietnam War—and stop leaks to the press.
The State Department responded to the ProPublica exposé in a statement saying: "It is grossly misleading to blame unrest and violence around the world on America. No one can reasonably expect the United States to be equipped to feed every person on Earth or be responsible for providing medication for every living human."
Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed during a congressional hearing that "no one has died" due to USAID cuts, an assertion refuted by Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who displayed photos and harrowing stories of people who have, in fact, died since funding for vital programs was slashed or eliminated.
"It's clear that people are dying because U.S. aid was suspended and then reduced. But it's difficult to come up with a precise death toll that can be tied directly to Trump administration policies," according to a Washington Post analysis by Glenn Kessler published on Tuesday. "The death certificates, after all, aren't marked, 'Due to lack of funding by U.S. government.'"
Last month, the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that there will be "more preventable deaths and untold suffering around the world" due to the Trump administration.
"These sudden cuts by the Trump administration are a human-made disaster for the millions of people struggling to survive amid wars, disease outbreaks, and other emergencies," Avril Benoît, who heads the U.S. branch of MSF, said last month.
"We are living off the fumes of what was delivered in late 2024 or early 2025."
On the ground in Kenya, WFP country director Lauren Landis told ProPublica that her organization is cutting daily aid rations to less than 600 calories per person—far less than the standard minimum 2,100 calories per day under agency guidelines.
"We are living off the fumes of what was delivered in late 2024 or early 2025," Landis said, describing children who look like "walking skeletons" due to severe malnutrition.
Meanwhile, enough food to feed more than 1 million people in some of the world's most fragile places through most of the summer is moldering in storage as USAID funds run dry and workers are laid off.
This,
warned WFP last month, "could amount to a death sentence for millions of people facing extreme hunger and starvation."
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