The Destruction of USAID Is A Hair On Fire Moment

... Trump is doing damage to practically every part of the federal government, but the warp speed destruction of USAID is by far the worst.

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

If money is tight or you’re already up to eyeballs in subscriptions, here’s another idea — share this article. Email it to a friend (or even an enemy). Post it on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Text or email it to your wife, husband, mother, father, brother, sister, or even your creepy second cousin who lives in Windsor, Ontario. Word of mouth is often the best way to build support for a creative endeavor, so if everyone here sends it to just one person … it would be much appreciated.

Shutterstock

One of the most significant challenges in dealing with the Trump White House is figuring out where to focus your energy. There is so much s**t flooding the zone that it’s natural to feel overwhelmed.

So, what should concern us most?

The gravest crisis in Washington, DC, right now is the wholesale destruction of the US Agency for International Development. It’s taken 18 days for the Trump Administration—with the help of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—to eviscerate a more than 60-year-old government agency with a budget of $68 billion that is a lifeline for millions of people worldwide and a key pillar of American foreign policy.

Before Trump took office, USAID employed more than 10,000 people. Trump is reducing staff to around 290. According to Devex, which reports on global development issues:

The purge leaves just 78 people in the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, 77 in the Bureau for Global Health, and smaller numbers in various regional offices — with only 21 focusing on the Middle East and 12 covering Africa. Let’s repeat that: 12 people will cover the whole of Africa.

Adding to the upheaval, the Bureau of Resilience, Environment and Food Security and the Bureau of Inclusive Growth, Partnerships and Innovation will be completely eliminated.

As I wrote a few days ago, the shutdown of USAID has had an immediate and catastrophic global impact.

No country on earth is more affected by malaria then Uganda. Every single day, the mosquito-borne disease kills 14 children under the age of 5. Because of Trump and Musk’s actions, Uganda’s Malaria Council has suspended insecticide spraying and shipments of bed nets, one of the most effective tools in limiting the spread of the disease, have ended.

Medical supplies to help pregnant women and save babies from dying of diarrhea are no longer reaching villagers in Zambia.

Efforts to eradicate polio and stop an outbreak of the Marburg virus, which is similar to Ebola and has a death rate of up to 90%, have stopped.

One of the most popular and effective U.S. government health programs, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has saved tens of millions of lives from the scourge of AIDS, is also halted. This includes the delivery of daily medications that are keeping alive 20 million people in 50 countries who are HIV-positive.

Thousands of people in the middle of USAID clinical trials have been abandoned, in some cases with experimental drugs and devices in their bodies.

Aid agencies worldwide are laying off staff, turning away the needy, and even shutting down operations.

This latter point is the crux of the issue. As Dan Drezner points out today:

Even if USAID funding is restored, the mechanisms to implement it have been eviscerated. Six months from now, the folks who have been fired will have moved on. State capacity has been destroyed; rebuilding it will be next to impossible. This is the asymmetry of Musk and Trump; both of them are great at disruption and God-awful at institutionalization.

If USAID's warp-speed destruction doesn’t end soon, it will be near-impossible to rebuild the agency. Staff will leave and not return, permanently erasing decades of institutional knowledge. Aid agencies and private NGOs will be disbanded, making it more difficult for a reconstructed USAID to find partner organizations. And with so much trust lost, how many agencies and foreign governments will want to work with US development officials?

If that happens — and it appears increasingly clear that’s the path we’re on — it will remove one of the pillars of US foreign policy, cripple America’s international standing, and create a policy vacuum that can and likely will be filled by America’s global competitors (it’s small wonder that the world’s worst regimes and America’s biggest rivals are cheering on Musk’s destruction of USAID).

Even worse, dismantling USAID’s programs will potentially cost millions of lives, breed instability, and reverse the extraordinary progress made over the past two decades in raising living standards and improving global health outcomes.

There’s no way to sugarcoat this: if USAID is not saved in the next few days or weeks, the impact will be catastrophic, enduring, and permanent.

There’s something else to consider as well.

If Trump and Musk can fire 99 percent of USAID’s staff, they will try to duplicate that “success” elsewhere in the foreign government. I don’t know if what’s happening at USAID is a test case for Musk and his DOGE minions, but if they are allowed to get away with this, I have to assume it will only embolden them to sow further destruction.

Having Said That

I don’t mean to minimize the impact of Trump’s other actions and the swathe of destruction that Elon Musk has rained down on the federal government. Giving twenty-something Musk acolytes the keys to Treasury payment systems is hardly a good thing. Neither are the efforts to fire thousands of FBI officials and agents who worked on the January 6 cases. However, there are significant legal impediments to these Trump-led efforts.

As the legal advocacy group Democracy Docket notes:

As of last week, two separate judges in Rhode Island and Washington D.C. issued temporary restraining orders blocking administration guidance that effectively instituted a government-wide freeze on all federal agency grants and loans. The judges said the freeze — which caused entities like emergency shelters and healthcare providers to be shut out of funding portals or denied mission critical resources — likely violates federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

On Wednesday and Thursday, federal judges in Maryland and Washington Stateissued nationwide preliminary injunctions blocking Trump’s executive order purporting to severely restrict birthright citizenship. The courts sided with immigration advocacy groups, affected individuals and Democratic attorneys general who alleged the order likely runs afoul of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. At a hearing, the judge in Washington — an 84-year-old Reagan appointee — said “the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow… I refuse to let that beacon go dark today.”

In addition, a federal judge prevented DOGE employees from accessing Department of the Treasury records and financial payment systems, and another federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump Administration’s “deferred resignation” employee buyout plan.

FBI employees are suing the agency to prevent the release of the names of those involved in investigating January 6, and the current head of the agency is admirably standing up to the Trump administration’s efforts to fire agents and completely politicize the organization.

Moreover, for all the talk of Musk et al. firing or laying off thousands of government employees … it’s easier said than done. Federal workers have legal protections, and much of what the White House is trying to do will face legal challenges.

A lawsuit was finally filed yesterday by unions representing USAID employees to stop Trump’s efforts to place almost all of the agency’s workers on administrative leave. But that administrative leave goes into effect later today. Make no mistake, time is running out. If the destruction of USAID doesn’t stop soon, millions of people will pay the price, and America’s national security interests will be permanently crippled.

With That In Mind …

I must say a quick word about this loathsome op-ed from Politico columnist Rachel Bade. Here’s the crux of it:

After three months of soul-searching about how to revive their party, some Democrats this week believe they have finally found a rallying point following Donald Trump’s presidential victory.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s campaign to dismantle the federal bureaucracy piece by piece at Trump’s behest, starting with the U.S. Agency for International Development, lit a fire under many Democratic lawmakers — several of whom rallied Monday outside USAID headquarters.

But relaunching the resistance to defend one of the least popular corners of the federal budget could be a monster miscalculation — and some prominent Democrats told me they have serious strategic reservations about how their party is fighting back.

…. Democrats’ messaging problem goes beyond USAID, however. They’ve raised alarms about Trump and Musk firing inspectors general, purging FBI officials who probed Trump and offering to buy out thousands more federal workers. Only a fraction of Americans have a personal connection to any of it.

I am legitimately gobsmacked at the cynicism of this argument. You can only argue, “Democrats shouldn’t defend foreign aid because it’s not popular,” when you’ve entirely divorced political calculations from policy outcomes.

If Democrats aren’t trying to protect USAID and save a key pillar of American foreign policy, what the hell is the point of being a Democrat? Should they act like Republicans and shrug at Trump’s illegal and dangerous actions because they don’t want to get primaried in their next election? I get the importance of picking your political battles. But if you’re not picking this one, you might as well quit politics and work at the post office.

Musical Interlude