Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Monday, June 23, 2025
What Remains of U.S.A.I.D.?
What Remains of U.S.A.I.D.?
“The Trump administration’s overhaul of U.S.A.I.D., driven by a desire to shrink foreign aid, resulted in a piecemeal approach to program restoration. While some critical programs, such as those combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, were reinstated due to external pressure and pleas from aid workers, smaller organizations were largely left behind. The overhaul, which prioritized a specific number of programs rather than addressing fraud, efficiency, or cost, left the agency’s future uncertain, with unspent funds and a lack of clear goals for foreign aid.
The few hundred programs that survived DOGE’s purge reveal the future of foreign aid.
Republicans have long wanted to shrink foreign aid, but President Trump took that desire to an extreme. These were U.S.A.I.D.’s projects when he took office.
As the United States Agency for International Development was being dismantled in early February, aid workers and officials in Washington and around the world set out to salvage what they could.
In the months since, there has been a widespread and under-the-radar effort to retain and restore some of the agency’s most critical work — including some projects favored by those who had the administration’s ear, a New York Times investigation shows.
Former President George W. Bush, who created the H.I.V./AIDS prevention program known as PEPFAR, called Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Leadership at the World Food Program called senators and ambassadors, and they said that millions of hungry people would die. Aid workers and foreign officials found programs that could be said to align with Mr. Trump’s America First agenda and flagged them for Republicans to pass on to the White House with a request to reinstate them.
The shell of U.S.A.I.D that is left today is the result of this chorus of pleas and negotiations, and of hasty decisions made by political leaders, many of whom had little experience in foreign aid.
Remaining U.S.A.I.D programs by sector
| Sector | Remaining programs | Share remaining | Value, in millions |
|---|---|---|---|
| All programs | 891 | 14% | $69,115 |
| Crisis relief | 528 | 63% | $9,457 |
| Malaria | 16 | 32% | $2,901 |
| H.I.V./AIDS | 99 | 31% | $23,954 |
| Tuberculosis | 16 | 28% | $400 |
| Emerging health threats | 10 | 23% | $948 |
| Disaster readiness | 52 | 21% | $868 |
| Water supply and sanitation | 11 | 12% | $133 |
| Maternal and child health | 9 | 11% | $579 |
| Social protections | 5 | 10% | $56 |
Note: Sector data was unavailable for 15 awards, worth $3 billion. Value is measured as obligations to date.
By The New York Times
The overhaul was a far cry from the comprehensive review to evaluate aid programs and realign them with U.S. foreign policy that Mr. Trump promised on his first day in office.
Aid workers said different departments frantically drafted their own lists of awards to keep or restore, but no one seemed to be looking at the big picture. Sometimes Mr. Rubio would sign off on a decision, only for staffers from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or other political appointees to determine the opposite. The piecemeal approach, aid workers said, ignored the reality that some programs relied on others to function.
U.S.A.I.D. employees and officials — including members of Congress who are supposed to provide oversight of the agency’s work — have said they are still struggling to decipher the administration’s goals for foreign aid.
This account is based on 70 interviews and dozens of internal documents and correspondence, and an analysis of both public and internal award databases.
Where U.S.A.I.D. funding remains
As a share of each country’s funding before cuts
Notes: Most funding to the United States is for administrative costs or for crops for food aid. Only awards operating primarily in a single country are included.
By The New York Times
The remaining awards are designed to address acute disease, hunger and other emergencies, and not areas like education, governance or jobs that are supposed to help countries avoid crises in the first place. Aid workers and experts said this is a short-sighted way to handle foreign aid that reflects a deep misunderstanding of the agency’s work and will have long-term consequences for Americans.
“You know what is not efficient? Putting out fires,” said Laura Meissner, a former U.S.A.I.D. contractor, whose work to manage humanitarian aid in multiple countries was terminated. “It’s way cheaper to stabilize people so they can weather the storm than to wait until they are destitute and their kids are malnourished.”
No rhyme or reason
In February, Elon Musk appeared in an X Spaces event in part to discuss DOGE’s work at U.S.A.I.D. “You have just got to get rid of the whole thing,” he said.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who helped create DOGE, was also on the call and offered a solution: “Let’s say something is cut that the people of this country just demand needs to exist again. It can always be voted back into existence.”
Mr. Musk agreed. “Well said, Vivek.”
Demands to return funding to certain U.S.A.I.D. programs were already underway.
The day after Mr. Musk’s talk, Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, publicly urged Mr. Rubio to move American-grown food aid that was stuck in U.S. ports with no funding for shipment. In the weeks to follow, U.S. shippers and farmers met with members of Congress to explain the value of their lifesaving programs.
Many U.S.A.I.D.-supported organizations, including Catholic Relief Services and Mercy Corps, spoke with members of Congress. Several award recipients, including faith-based groups, had private meetings with Pete Marocco, who was managing the agency for Mr. Rubio. Other aid organizations sued the administration.
These efforts were far more frantic than standard lobbying on Capitol Hill. At the same time, U.S.A.I.D. staff members were pushing Trump-appointed officials inside the agency to restore dozens of terminated awards that provided lifesaving food or medicine or kept employees safe overseas.
Political leaders, who had told employees that they knew little about the agency’s programs, acknowledged in late February that some of these awards might have been cut in error, according to internal emails reviewed by The Times.
Then on March 2, a former U.S.A.I.D. official who oversaw global health programs leaked memos that estimated millions would suffer or die from disease if programs did not resume. Over the next day, more than 300 awards were restored, according to internal documents reviewed by The Times. More than 100 more would be “unterminated” in the days to follow.
A timeline of restored U.S.A.I.D. programs
Over several weeks, officials reinstated programs in reaction to external pressure, global events and specific interest groups.
Lifesaving aid restored the day after
leaked memo detailed dire consequences.
Food aid restored under pressure
from U.S. farmers.
Myanmar crisis relief programs
restored after earthquake.
Note: Data is not available after early April, but restorations have slowed significantly since then.
By The New York Times
The newly restored awards included U.S.-grown emergency food aid, disaster preparedness, programs to combat H.I.V./AIDS and malaria, and several awards in Jordan and Cuba.
A senior State Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly said that agency leaders had conducted a faster review than originally planned, after a federal judge ordered officials to reverse the president’s freeze on foreign aid programs.
The official added that recalibrations should be an expected part of any major overhaul and noted that a vast majority of the termination decisions remained in place. The agency declined to make officials available for an on-the-record interview.
U.S.A.I.D. staff members said they felt there was no rhyme or reason to any of it.
The idea was to destroy everything, said a global health security expert at U.S.A.I.D., who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, as did most aid workers and other officials interviewed for this article. If someone complained, they would bring it back.
Smaller, local organizations were largely absent from the restorations. Without people in Washington to speak up for them, many were left behind.
“Many were wholly dependent on U.S.A.I.D.,” said Tom Hart, the president of InterAction, an alliance of global nongovernmental organizations. “Suddenly pulling the rug from beneath them hurts the idea of helping countries reach self-reliance, a goal the first Trump administration rightly sought.”
Not about fraud, inefficiency or cost
Despite its claims that “waste and abuse run deep” at U.S.A.I.D., the administration did not prioritize keeping programs that work to reduce fraud.
Instead, officials canceled contracts designed to prevent abuse, including awards for inspectors to watch over aid delivery in high-risk locations in more than a dozen countries.
Cost savings was not a significant factor in the administration’s decision making, either. In March, Mr. Rubio announced that officials had cut about 83 percent of the programs at U.S.A.I.D., but, in dollar terms, they cut programs that were worth less than half of the agency’s obligations.
Officials kept some of U.S.A.I.D.’s largest commitments and cut thousands of less expensive ones, an analysis of multiyear grants and contracts shows. The median kept award was worth $6 million, and 40 percent of these awards were worth $10 million or more.
Some were worth billions. For example, the Washington-based private development firm Chemonics retained two awards for global health supply chains focused on H.I.V. and malaria, worth over $6 billion and $2 billion, respectively.
The median cut award, by contrast, was worth just over $1 million. About a third of the cut awards were worth $100,000 or less.
In March, Mr. Marocco told officials privately that he planned to save $125 billion by cutting programs at both U.S.A.I.D. and the State Department. All together, the canceled awards at U.S.A.I.D. were worth an estimated $76 billion over several years, and $47 billion had already been committed to them.
It remains unclear what will happen to that money. An analysis of spending data shows the canceled awards had about $17 billion left unspent when DOGE took its ax to the agency.
U.S.A.I.D. awards
$115 billion in committed funds
Remaining awards
$68 billion
Already spent
$84 billion
Remaining
funds
$14 billion
Terminated awards
$47 billion
Unspent funds
$17 billion
Note: Data on committed funds is as of early March, and spending data is through the end of February.
By The New York Times
If the overhaul wasn’t focused on fraud, efficiency or costs, there was one north star: a post on X from Mr. Rubio on March 10, which explained the government was keeping “approximately 1,000” U.S.A.I.D. programs. Agency staff members said they were told that they could recommend programs to restore — or even seek new funds for existing awards — but that they could never let the total count surpass 1,000.
Aid workers saw the post as Mr. Rubio retaking some control of the U.S.A.I.D. overhaul after DOGE had taken it too far.
Divisions between the secretary and Mr. Musk’s team became clear in April, when Jeremy Lewin, a DOGE staff member who became a top U.S.A.I.D. official, canceled dozens of the most critical emergency food awards that officials had already promised to keep. Mr. Rubio had just signed off on more funds for at least one of the awards, a rare step and a clear sign of its priority.
Within days of the cuts, Mr. Lewin asked agency employees to restore at least six of the awards, according to an email reviewed by The Times. He apologized for the back and forth, saying it was his fault.
“You have Secretary Rubio getting kind of made a fool of by DOGE because he has repeatedly said that they are going to protect these kinds of lifesaving programs. And then you have DOGE go out and basically countermand him,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former U.S.A.I.D. adviser to the Biden and Obama administrations. “It’s really unclear who is steering the bus.”
The senior State Department official said that all decisions had been made by U.S.A.I.D. and State Department officials in close consultation with Mr. Rubio, and that they made adjustments as priorities evolved.
Picking up after DOGE
Conservatives have long wanted to reform foreign aid and the layers of bureaucracy that stand between Washington and the people who benefit. But the enormous scope of the U.S.A.I.D. reduction, and the rushed and opaque way it was done, has privately concerned many Republicans.
Andrew Natsios, a former U.S.A.I.D. administrator under President George W. Bush, said that DOGE made a mess that has left gaps for China and Russia to fill.
“Our economy, our security and our way of life is dependent on our connection to the developing world and not just the rich world,” he said “And we have just lost our influence in the developing world.”
As Mr. Musk has stepped back from the spotlight, the remaining steps of the overhaul have been relatively calm and more strategic, according to internal correspondence reviewed by The Times and interviews with people familiar with the decision making. Officials are bringing the remaining U.S.A.I.D. awards under the umbrella of the State Department this summer, where plans for these programs could change again.
The bureaus that will absorb the awards are facing significant cuts too, and employees have expressed concern that they simply do not have the staff, resources or expertise to run them. They plan to terminate more awards and to let others expire.
After months of uncertainty, even the chosen projects are struggling to plan for the future.
One is a World Food Program contract in Kenya that helps feed 700,000 refugees from nearby conflicts. The program is nearly out of food, and while it remains on the list of active U.S.A.I.D. awards, it has not received any funding this year.
As a result, the program’s organizers have had to reduce the rations they provide.
“Do I feed more people for a shorter period of time, or do I feed fewer people who are more critical?” said Lauren Landis, the program’s country director in Kenya. “We haven’t made that decision yet.”
Methodology
A complete list of U.S.A.I.D. awards operating after the president’s decision to review the agency’s work has not been made public. To assess which programs were kept or cut, The Times obtained internal data on individual award status from U.S.A.I.D. and the State Department in April and May and compared that data to similar information on award status that was shared with Congress in March and obtained by The Times. A small number of awards were missing from each of these data sets.
Reporters drew on data from ForeignAssistance.gov and USASpending.gov to determine information about the sectors, recipients and spending for each award.
Award status data is as of May 7; a few dozen awards have been cut since then, internal data shows.
Except where noted, the dollar value of awards is based on the amount that had been obligated over the lifetime of the award, as of May 7 for active awards and as of March 25 for terminated awards.
Spending, sector, and recipient data was not available for 45 terminated awards. Spending data was not available for 18 active awards.“
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Saturday, June 21, 2025
How Trump Treats Black History Differently Than Other Parts of America’s Past
How Trump Treats Black History Differently Than Other Parts of America’s Past
“Since taking office, President Trump has attempted to reframe the country’s history involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing or denying it. This includes scrubbing government websites of words like “injustice” and “oppression,” eliminating or obscuring the contributions of Black heroes, and purging school libraries of writings by Black authors. Critics argue this is part of a larger cultural and political battle against diversity, while the White House defends its actions as focusing on merit and unity.
Since taking office in January, President Trump has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history or at times denying that it happened.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent. She reported from Washington.
On the occasion of Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery, President Trump took a moment to complain that the national holiday even exists.
“Too many non-working holidays in America,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, just hours after his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made a point of noting that White House staff had shown up to work.
The president’s decision to snub Juneteenth — a day that has been cherished by generations of Black Americans before it was named a federal holiday in 2021 — is part of a pattern of words and actions by Mr. Trump that minimize, ignore or even erase some of the experiences and history of Black people in the United States. Since taking office in January, he has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history or at times denying that it happened.
Government websites have been scrubbed of hundreds of words, including “injustice” and “oppression.” Federal agencies eliminated or obscured the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen who fought in the military, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. School libraries were purged of writings by pre-eminent Black authors like Maya Angelou. Mr. Trump has assailed the Smithsonian Institution for what he characterized as “divisive, race-centered ideology” in its exhibits on race. He ordered the renaming of monuments to honor Confederate soldiers who fought to preserve slavery.
And on Thursday, instead of marking the day when the last enslaved people were informed of their freedom from forced labor, Mr. Trump lamented that Americans had a day off from work and suggested that the holiday was little more than a drain on the economy.
Taken together, Mr. Trump’s actions are part of a larger cultural and political battle, in which diversity has become an all-purpose target for society’s ills.
“Trump’s behavior around Juneteenth isn’t isolated at all — it speaks to how he views our community, and everyone who doesn’t look like him or isn’t as wealthy as he is,” said Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. “It’s why he’s stripping away our rights, erasing our history and silencing our voices.”
The White House has defended its actions as part of an effort to put merit ahead of diversity, and to focus less on divisions among Americans. On Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump promised to usher in a “colorblind” society.
“The Black community is more interested in results than in performative messages that do more to check a box than anything else,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. Black Americans, he said, “lined up to support President Trump in historic fashion because of policies that transcend race and align with common sense.”
But to critics, Mr. Trump’s decision to brush off Juneteenth smacks of hypocrisy.
He signed Juneteenth proclamations in his first presidential term. And in 2020, while he was campaigning for re-election, Mr. Trump agreed to reschedule a campaign rally that he was supposed to hold on Juneteenth because it was perceived as insensitive.
The rally was in Tulsa, Okla., the city where in 1921 white people carried out a racist massacre in an area known as Black Wall Street. Later, he tried to claim credit for drawing attention to the holiday, saying he “made Juneteenth very famous.”
But on Thursday, in a year with no votes on the line, he did not even say the name of the holiday.
The decision not to issue a proclamation honoring Juneteenth was made by a senior Trump administration official, according to a person familiar with the internal deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The person said the president and his senior staff were too preoccupied with the escalating conflict in Iran to mark the holiday.
Mr. Trump also spent Thursday posting on his social media account, including an executive order that extended the use of TikTok, another attack on Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, and his approval of emergency for storm-ravaged states. He also reposted other accounts that boasted about his economy numbers and blamed former President Barack Obama for the Iran conflict.
By the end of the night, he had posted two videos of his entrance to an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout, and praise for a court decision in his favor.
In the past week alone, he’d issued proclamations commemorating Father’s Day, Flag Day and National Flag Week, and the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill — none of which are among the 11 annual federal holidays.
Since Mr. Trump came back to office, historians and civil rights leaders have noticed an attempt to sanitize the country’s history of racism.
Chad Williams, a historian and professor of African American and Black diaspora studies at Boston University, said Mr. Trump’s actions, taken as a whole, showed that the administration was seeking to craft a “propaganda version of history.”
“They’re trying to erase the history of Black struggle and Black resistance by denying the realities of racism and white supremacy,” Mr. Williams said. “They’re crafting a history that romanticizes the past at the expense of a true telling of the complexities and nuances of the American experience.”
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed the commemoration of Juneteenth into law in 2021, after the nationwide protests that followed the police killings of Black Americans including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The holiday recognizes the day when a Union general arrived in Galveston, Texas, nearly two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, to inform enslaved African Americans there that the Civil War had ended.
Mr. Trump has been vocal about what parts of the nation’s history he believes deserves recognition.
Since taking office, he has declared new, unpaid (and unrecognized because they have not been certified by Congress) federal holidays. Mr. Trump also announced that he would be “reinstating” Columbus Day, even though it was never canceled as a federal holiday.
He also established “Gulf of America Day,” to recognize his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, on Feb. 9; “Victory Day for World War II,” on May 8; and renaming Veterans Day, on Nov. 11, as “Victory Day for World War I.” Mr. Trump said in his announcement that he would not be closing down the country to observe the days.
Mr. Fields, the White House spokesman, said the president was focused on improving the lives of Black Americans rather than virtue signaling.
“We did Juneteenth, we did the D.E.I. thing, we had the diverse cabinet, and what did that do for us? Absolutely, nothing,” Mr. Fields said. “Inflation tore through households. More Black people were on food stamps. Education never prospered.”
Bruce LeVell, a former adviser to Mr. Trump who led his diversity coalition for his 2016 campaign, said Mr. Trump’s support among Black voters demonstrated that they were not looking to him for validation of their history, but rather to improve their futures.
“We vote for the wallet,” he said. “The emotions come when we’re trying to pick our next pastor for our church.”
Mr. LeVell, a business owner from Ft. Hood, Texas, whose family has been celebrating Juneteenth for decades, said that he and other Black Americans were more concerned with things that Mr. Trump could change, like the economy and immigration.
“That particular historic day when they liberated the slaves in Texas, nothing will ever erase that, it’s there for eternity,” he said. “Whether you like it or dislike it, or celebrate or don’t, it’s still part of what happened and nothing takes that away.”
But Melanie L. Campbell, chairwoman of the Power of the Ballot Action Fund, an advocacy group focused on policies for Black Americans, said that larger issues were at play.
“He’s clear that he wants a white America,” Ms. Campbell said of Mr. Trump, “and what white America looks like for him does not include anybody of color.”
Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.“
Friday, June 20, 2025
Thousands remember George Floyd on fifth anniversary of death
Thousands remember George Floyd on fifth anniversary of death
EPA“Americans across the country remembered George Floyd five years after he was killed by police, with special gatherings in the city where he grew up and the one where he died.
The murder of Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin led to nationwide protests against racism and police brutality.
On Sunday, Floyd's family gathered in their hometown of Houston near Floyd's gravesite for a service led by the Rev Al Sharpton, while Minneapolis held several commemorations.
What many hailed as a national "reckoning" with racism after Floyd's death, though, seems to be fading as President Donald Trump starts to roll back police reforms in Minneapolis and other cities.
ReutersThe Associated Press reported that thousands of people, including police reform and civil-rights activists, gathered on Sunday for the anniversary.
In Minneapolis, a morning church service and evening gospel concert were part of events to mark the events of 25 May 2020, at the annual Rise and Remember Festival in George Floyd Square, the intersection where Floyd was murdered and which has since been named to honour him.
"Now is the time for the people to rise up and continue the good work we started," Angela Harrelson, Floyd's aunt and co-chair of the Rise and Remember nonprofit, said in a statement about the festival.
Getty Images
ReutersIn Houston, where Floyd grew up and where he is buried, local organisations held poetry sessions, musical performances and speeches by local pastors.
Rev Sharpton, a civil rights leader, held a press conference and memorial service with Floyd's family, as well as elected officials and friends. They called for changes begun in the wake of Floyd's to continue, especially pushing President Donald Trump to keep up federal police reform agreements.
Floyd was murdered in 2020 during a police arrest in Minneapolis when Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.
The killing - captured on a bystander's phone camera - sparked global outrage and a wave of demonstrations against racial injustice and police use of force.
Chauvin has been serving a 22-year prison sentence after he was convicted of murdering the 46-year-old. Other officers were convicted for failing to intervene in the killing.
In a post on X, Rev Sharpton said Floyd's death had "forced a long overdue reckoning with systemic racism and galvanized millions to take to the streets in protest".
"The conviction of the officer responsible was a rare step toward justice, but our work is far from over," he said.
In the wake of Floyd's death, under former President Joe Biden, the justice department opened civil investigations into several local law enforcement agencies, including Minneapolis, Louisville, Phoenix and Lexington, Mississippi, where investigators found evidence of systemic police misconduct.
ReutersThe department reached agreements with both the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments that included oversight measures like enhanced training, accountability, and improved data collection of police activity.
But last Wednesday, the Trump administration said those findings relied on "flawed methodologies and incomplete data".
Administration officials said the agreement were "handcuffing" local police departments.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, though, said this week that his city would still "comply with every sentence, of every paragraph, of the 169-page consent decree that we signed this year".
Since returning to office, Trump has also taken aim at Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI) measures intended to reduce racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. Early in his tenure, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate DEI policies in the federal government, some of which were the result of protests during what is often called "Black Lives Matter Summer", held after the deaths of Floyd and others,
Critics including Trump say such programmes can themselves be discriminatory. Addressing West Point on Saturday, he said that in ending DEI in the military the administration was "getting rid of the distractions" and "focusing our military on its core mission".
Meanwhile, the mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, removed Black Lives Matter Plaza, a strip of road that was emblazoned with the phrase near the White House. This week, a famous mural of Floyd in Houston was destroyed as part of a building demolition, as well, according to Houston Public Media.
Recent surveys suggest Americans believe there have been few improvements for the lives of black people in the US five years after Floyd's passing, including a May survey from Pew Research Center in which 72% of participants said there had been no meaningful changes.
The number of Americans expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement has also fallen by 15% since June 2020, the same survey suggests.
Correction 5 June 2025: This report originally said that Derek Chauvin had stood on George Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes and has been amended to make clear he knelt on it.“