by WorldTribune Staff, March 10, 2025 Real World News
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Monday that 5,200 U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contracts were canceled, amounting to 83% of the agency’s programs.
The contracts would have cost American taxpayers “tens of billions” of dollars, Rubio said, adding that the contracts were not serving the U.S. and, in some cases, were harming the country’s national interests.
President Donald Trump, who said the foreign aid agency was being run by “radical lunatics,” moved the agency under the purview of the State Department last month.
“In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18 percent of programs we are keeping (approximately 1,000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department,” Rubio said.
Rubio wrote in a post to X: “Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.”
Musk replied on X that it was a “tough, but necessary” decision, adding: “Good working with you. The important parts of USAID should always have been with Dept. of State.”
The Trump administration last month placed USAID direct-hire staffers around the world on leave except those deemed essential while others were fired or placed on “administrative leave,” as Breitbart News reported.
In fiscal year 2023, USAID disbursed $72 billion of aid worldwide courtesy of funds provided by U.S. taxpayers on everything from “gender-affirming health care in Guatemala, teaching people in Kazakhstan to fight back against Internet trolls, voluntary male circumcisions in Mozambique, and creating work opportunities for young LGBTQI+ people in Serbia” to name just a few.
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