Elon Musk says USAID put through ‘wood chipper’ as website goes dark
The United States Agency for International Development is the world’s largest foreign aid agency.
Two months ago, Mang Hre Lian was on a stage in Washington being lauded by then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for his courageous and inspiring work promoting human rights and religious freedom in Burma.
Since Friday, the 2024 recipient of the State Department’s Human Rights Defender Award has been roaming the same corridors of American power. Only now he’s trying to convince U.S. policy makers his work matters.
He’s struggled to get what he called the “right meetings” to discuss the “crisis moment” for countries like his after President Donald Trump‘s executive order to freeze spending, pending a review, at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Trump wants to close USAID as part of a larger effort to crack down on federal bureaucracy. The effort is helmed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
USAID delivers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid and foreign assistance to dozens of countries. Some programs it funds have won emergency waivers. Others have launched legal challenges. But the order has caused widespread disruption and sparked concerns about the real-world consequences if USAID is largely defunded or disbanded altogether.
“I’m trying not to give my colleagues back home false hope,” Mang Hre Lian, who works for a human rights organization in Burma − also known as Myanmar − in southeast Asia that relies on USAID money, said in a phone interview Wednesday shortly before he was due to attend meetings at the State Department.
“My aim is to meet with people who are close to Trump. So far, I haven’t had any response from them.”
The Trump administration is attempting to shutter USAID without constitutionally mandated approval from Congress. It has made clear it sees no room for complexities or ambiguities.
“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, every policy we pursue must be justified by the answer to one of three questions,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during his confirmation hearing on Jan. 15. “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”
Here’s a look at how some USAID activity worldwide has been impacted by the funding freeze.
Food going to waste in warehouses
Almost 282 million people in 59 countries and territories experienced extreme food shortages that threatened their lives or livelihoods in 2023, according to the 2024 Global Report on Food Crises.
Until USAID food purchases and deliveries resumed late Monday as part of a waiver, more than 475,000 metric tons of U.S. food commodities − corn and cornmeal, lentils, pinto beans, rice, sorghum, vegetable oil, wheat and yellow split peas − bound for overseas were at risk of being wasted, according to a USAID official briefed on the matter.
This food, grown by American farmers, is enough to feed 36 million people.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing turmoil at USAID, said more than 29,000 metric tons of food commodities were, as of Monday, sitting on the floor in USAID warehouses in Houston unable to be loaded onto waiting U.S.-flagged ships for transportation to hungry people in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti and Sudan. There was also USAID food waiting to be loaded at ports in Boston; Chicago; Miami; New York; Norfolk, Virginia; and Savannah, Georgia, according to the official, who shared an internal USAID memo on the topic.
HIV prevention, treatment, deaths as thousands lose jobs
The global response to HIV is heavily dependent on USAID funds, according to the agency and other humanitarian organizations that work alongside it. A USAID-assisted program launched in 2003 by President George W. Bush called PEPFAR − President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief − has saved more than 26 million lives since its creation by investing in HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programs in 55 countries, according to UNAIDS.
HIV/AIDS programs have been issued waivers amid the USAID aid pause. However, Christine Stegling, deputy executive director at UNAIDS, said at a press briefing in Geneva last week that despite the waivers there’s been a serious “disruption of treatment services.”
Stegling said the biggest disruption has been to community health drop-in centers. She noted that about 5,000 health workers and 10,000 clerical staff in Ethiopia whose jobs depend on USAID assistance had their contracts terminated. Uganda is shuttering all its dedicated HIV/AIDS clinics.
Around 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide in 2023.
Stegling said that if PEPFAR is not formally re-authorized for USAID funding from 2025 to 2029 there would likely be a 400% increase in AIDS-related deaths around the world.
Crisis in Syria’s ISIS camps
A network of prisons has been holding former Islamic State group militants and their families in northeastern Syria since the organization was defeated in 2019 on the battlefield.
Camp al-Hol is one of them. It’s a bleak and trash-strewn tent city home to about 40,000 people. Security experts estimate that about 4,500 of al-Hol’s residents are former ISIS fighters, with the remaining women and children. The area’s Syrian Kurdish authorities have been providing security, food and humanitarian services for these prison camps, but they’ve been reliant on USAID-supported non-governmental organizations to help them deliver them.
Jihan Hanan, al-Hol’s director, warned on Monday that despite a 15-day U.S. funding waiver granted to the camp’s NGOs, conditions there have deteriorated rapidly in recent days, impacting most basic services. She said the World Health Organization has ceased some operations. U.S.-based Blumont, which had been providing essentials such as bread, water and cooking gas, briefly suspended operations before resuming them after the temporary waiver was issued. Blumont didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The camp is a concern for all nations, and citizens from every country are here, so they have a stake in supporting them,” Hanan told North Press Agency, a Syrian news agency.
In a recent Economist article, a Syrian Kurdish official was quoted as saying that without aid money security at the camp would be difficult to maintain, which could lead to mass prison breaks, aid an ISIS resurgence and complicate global counterterrorism efforts. ISIS claimed it inspired an American-born man who killed 14 people in New Orleans on New Year’s Day.
The article said workers at al-Hol “speak of a free-for-all within.”
“Women loyal to ISIS hold sway with guns and train a new generation of ideologues,” it said. “The perimeter is pierced by tunnels, allowing weapons in and inmates out. Killings are commonplace. Children are sold as fighters.”
Hearts and minds
One senior USAID official based in Asia said that while the organization is known worldwide for its direct, in-the-field assistance in the name of disease prevention and refugee support, it also does work on democracy, and human rights and promotes good governance. This involves, the official said, working with governments and civic actors in places around the world that are both democratizing and hoping to democratize.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to draw scrutiny from the Trump administration, said this work often involves helping local organizations secure grants not just for human rights initiatives, but for fair and unbiased media coverage, technical assistance for local mayors and municipal leaders seeking to organize around democratic ideals, and to support the families of political prisoners and those affected by sexual violence.
Za Uk Ling is the deputy executive director of the Chin Human Rights Organization, the same group that Mang Hre Lian works for. Chin state is a Christian-majority region of western Myanmar. Chin are an ethnic minority group who have long faced persecution and discrimination by Myanmar’s ruling Buddhist nationalists.
In a phone interview, Za Uk Ling described the withdrawal of USAID funding for his organization as “devastating.” He said it has meant that he’s had to lay off or reduce the salaries of about one-third of his staff. Since a 2021 coup returned Myanmar to military rule, the Chin Human Rights Organization has focused on documenting human rights abuses and community work. It has had to halt some of this work because it can’t afford to buy gas for cars to send doctors and others into remote parts of Chin state that border India. Za Uk Ling has closed a communications channel that alerts residents of impending government air strikes.
“It’s money that helps us document violent atrocities, and prevent atrocities,” he said.
“Real lives are being impacted in the thousands and it’s all from the stroke of a pen,” said Za Uk Ling, referring Trump’s executive order to pause USAID spending.
Elsewhere, in Ukraine, USAID has supported initiatives from energy security to civil society development. It has also funded Ukrainian prosecutors seeking to hold Russia to account for its alleged war crimes in Ukraine, carried out since the start of Moscow’s fulls-scale invasion almost three years ago. The Reuters news agency has reported that at least six USAID-backed projects at Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office ranging from preserving evidence from the battlefield to anti-corruption programs are at risk of closure. Ukraine’s PGO did not return a comment request.
Blow to Brazil’s conservation efforts
USAID’s largest initiative in Brazil is the Partnership for the Conservation of Amazon Biodiversity, according to reporting by the Associated Press. It focuses on preserving and improving the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples and forest communities. About two-thirds of the world’s largest rainforest is in Brazil.
One Brazilian organization USAID has supported is the Amazon-based Roraima Indigenous Council, which operates in 35 areas including the territory of the Yanomami tribe. This is an area that totals about 60,600 square miles, which is larger than Greece. In an area vulnerable to illegal gold mining and drug trafficking, the Roraima Indigenous Council is using USAID money for improved family farming and helping the population adapt to climate change.
“The partnership with USAID has existed for seven years. If the decision is to end it, this will shake our organizational structure and projects that are very important for strengthening the economy and autonomy of Indigenous peoples,” Edinho Macuxi, the tuxaua (leader) of the Indigenous Council, told the Associated Press.
“Our message to President Trump is that he should maintain the resources not only for Brazil but for other countries as well. In Brazil, Indigenous peoples who access this funding are the ones who effectively keep most of the forest standing, ensuring life not just for people in Brazil, but also the world.”
USAID: Is it flawed? Corrupt and wasteful?
Andrew Natsios led USAID from 2001 to 2006.
He said the Trump administration should refashion the agency, not dismantle it.
“When I took over as administrator of USAID in 2001, I worked to align the agency’s priorities with President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, as most USAID leaders do for the presidents they serve. I initiated a review of every USAID program and canceled scores of projects that wasted taxpayer money,” he wrote recently in Foreign Affairs magazine.
“It’s perfectly appropriate for the Trump administration to initiate its own such review. It makes little sense, however, to issue a blanket stop order before doing so. The world today is not the one that Washington’s post–Cold War foreign aid strategy was designed for,” he wrote. “Simply slashing vital programs is a huge mistake, but a far-reaching review and restructuring of U.S. foreign aid is overdue.”
The White House statement backing its assertion that USAID needed dismantling was entitled, “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep.” The news release stated that USAID “has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous − and, in many cases, malicious − pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight.”
The new release then listed 12 examples of that alleged USAID behavior.
A Washington Post fact check of the examples, which linked to various right-wing websites, concluded that 11 out of the 12 claims about USAID’s work were misleading, wrong or lacked context.
On Tuesday, USAID’s inspector general, Paul Martin, was abruptly fired after his office released a report critical of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency. Inspector general reports are fact-filled audits aimed at identifying abuse, waste and fraud.
One of the headline findings of the report that preceded Martin’s dismissal was that the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID and its sweeping freeze on foreign assistance has made it more difficult to track potential misuse of U.S. taxpayer-funded humanitarian assistance.
Critics of USAID have long argued that millions of dollars in the agency’s funding have unintentionally gone to extremist groups tied to designated terrorist organizations and their allies.
Another, more granular finding of the USAID IG report released this week was that abolishing the agency will make “partner vetting,” including screening for the funding of entities or salaries of individuals associated with U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, more difficult.