Last we highlighted some of the good work USAID has done over the years. Today we’re back because the current administration is effectively dismantling the agency without the congressional oversight or input required.
Without getting conspiratorial, but it’s almost like, how can you not, we’ll start off with two bits of information that seem tangentially related.
First, Elon Musk, who somehow, extra-constitutionally, is swinging the wrecking ball through the US government, called USAID “evil” and a “criminal organization.”
Second, and relevant in cases such as these, the USAID Inspector General was investigating the agency’s partnership with Musk’s company Starlink. Something was off with the five thousand Starlink satellite terminals that were sent to the Ukrainian government, according to The Lever.
Via The Lever:
In September, the agency’s inspector general told Congress the probe was reviewing “USAID’s oversight of Starlink Satellite Terminals provided to the Ukrainian government, and USAID’s efforts to protect against sexual exploitation and abuse in Ukraine.” Other USAID webpages mentioning SpaceX and Starlink seem to have disappeared from the agency’s website, though some remain available at the Internet Archive.
So there’s that, and we mention it because it seems relevant.
Now, unfortunately, USAID.
It’s currently shuttered, and its employees were told to return to the United States. Out in the world, there’s more havoc.
Via Wired:
The impacts of the agency’s dismantling on humanitarian relief, public health, and human rights work, combined with the wider 90-day State Department pause on foreign aid payments, are already far-reaching and severe around the world. Sources tell WIRED that the situation is also impacting anti-human-trafficking work targeted at addressing forced labor compounds that fuel digital fraud like investment scams.
The funding cuts and pauses have immediately made it harder for people to safely escape scam compounds, according to half a dozen sources working to combat scams and trafficking. The cuts have also shrunk services that house and care for human trafficking victims and are limiting investigatory work into criminal groups.
Meanwhile, Grist reports on how the USAID shutdown threatens achieving climate goals and resiliency:
USAID’s climate-related funding helps low-income countries build renewable energy and adapt to worsening natural disasters, as well as conserve carbon sinks and sensitive ecosystems…
[Since 2022] USAID offices around the world began tweaking their operations to ensure the projects they were funding would hold up as temperatures continue to rise. For example, the agency would ensure water and sewer systems could handle bigger floods, or would plan to inoculate against diseases that might spread faster in warm weather. The effort was especially important in sectors like agriculture, which is both emissions-heavy and extremely vulnerable to the weather shocks that come with even small climatic shifts.
These efforts are effectively shuttered. An anecdote highlighted by Inside Climate News is unfortunately enlightening.
This week in Nairobi, Kenya, a group of international humanitarian, business and government partners met to discuss an initiative to use renewable energy to provide power and internet access to medical facilities in sub-Saharan Africa that currently struggle to keep the lights on.
The program, called the Health Electrification and Telecommunications Alliance (HETA), aims to use solar panels and battery storage to ensure reliable power and communications access to 10,000 facilities in 11 countries that provide care for about 1.9 million people.
But the staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the lead agency bringing partners together to complete the project, wasn’t there.
Instead, because of the Trump shutdown, “They missed the meeting that they basically spent the last five years aiming towards,” former USAID official Daniel Kammen told Inside Climate News.
USAID controls a $40 billion budget and like any agency of such size, there’s bound to be waste and mismanagement. In normal times, sensible people would point this out, congressional hearings would follow, changes would be made.
Such would be the way in normal times. But these aren’t normal times. Instead, a wrecking ball is demolishing the agency and the good work it does around the world. Reuters, for example, reports that “500,000 metric tons of food worth $340 million is in limbo, in transit or storage, as humanitarian organizations wait for US State Department approval to distribute it.”
Not long ago, USAID enjoyed widespread bipartisan support. Marco Rubio, whose State Department stands to take over the agency, says his “frustration” with the agency “goes back to my time in Congress. It is a completely unresponsive agency.”
As the Bulwark reports, Rubio’s disdain is actually new:
Rubio’s old Senate Twitter account included many instances of him praising USAID work and even chastising then-President Joe Biden for not doing enough to support the establishment.
“If President Biden actually cares about the standard of living in developing countries, he’d let @USAID and @DFCgov invest in affordable fossil fuel and fertilizer infrastructure,” he wrote in November 2023.
Yes, in normal times, the US government would function as the US government is supposed to function. Congress would mandate changes to the agency. You and I might not like them, but that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
Instead, the Trump administration is in some performative delirium where they smash things now and who cares what the courts may say later.
