WASHINGTON: The Trump administration said Wednesday it is eliminating more than 90 percent of the US Agency for International Development\u2019s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall US assistance around the world, putting numbers on its plans to eliminate the majority of US development and humanitarian help abroad.
\nThe cuts detailed by the administration would leave few surviving USAID projects for advocates to try to save in what are ongoing court battles with the administration.
\nThe Trump administration outlined its plans in both an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press and filings in one of those federal lawsuits Wednesday.
\nWednesday\u2019s disclosures also give an idea of the scale of the administration\u2019s retreat from US aid and development assistance overseas, and from decades of US policy that foreign aid helps US interests by stabilizing other countries and economies and building alliances.
\nThe memo said officials were \u201cclearing significant waste stemming from decades of institutional drift.\u201d More changes are planned in how USAID and the State Department deliver foreign assistance, it said.
\nPresident Donald Trump and ally Elon Musk have hit foreign aid harder and faster than almost any other target in their push to cut the size of the federal government. Both men say USAID projects advance a liberal agenda and are a waste of money.
\nTrump on Jan. 20 ordered what he said would be a 90-day program-by-program review of which foreign assistance programs deserved to continue, and cut off all foreign assistance funds almost overnight.
\nThe funding freeze has stopped thousands of US-funded programs abroad, and the administration and Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency teams have pulled the majority of USAID staff off the job through forced leave and firings.
\nIn the federal court filings Wednesday, nonprofits owed money on contracts with USAID describe both Trump political appointees and members of Musk\u2019s teams terminating USAID\u2019s contracts around the world at breakneck speed, without time for any meaningful review, they say.
\n\u201c\u2019There are MANY more terminations coming, so please gear up!\u201c\u2019 a USAID official wrote staff Monday, in an email quoted by lawyers for the nonprofits in the filings.
\nThe nonprofits, among thousands of contractors, owed billions of dollars in payment since the freeze began, called the en masse contract terminations a maneuver to get around complying with the order to lift the funding freeze temporarily.
\nSo did a Democratic lawmaker.
\n\u201cThe administration is brazenly attempting to blow through Congress and the courts by announcing the completion of their sham \u2018review\u2019 of foreign aid and the immediate termination of thousands of aid programs all over the world,\u201d said Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
\nThe State Department said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had reviewed the terminations.
\nIn all, the Trump administration said it will eliminate 5,800 of 6,200 multiyear USAID contract awards, for a cut of $54 billion. Another 4,100 of 9,100 State Department grants were being eliminated, for a cut of $4.4 billion.
\nThe State Department memo, which was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, described the administration as spurred by a federal court order that gave officials until the end of the day Wednesday to lift the Trump administration\u2019s monthlong block on foreign aid funding.
\n\u201cIn response, State and USAID moved rapidly,\u201d targeting USAID and State Department foreign aid programs in vast numbers for contract terminations, the memo said.
\nThe Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene Wednesday night as an appeals court refused to lift the midnight deadline.
\nTrump administration officials \u2014 after repeated warnings from the federal judge in the case \u2014 also said Wednesday they were finally beginning to send out their first or any payments after more than a month with no known spending. Officials were processing a few million dollars of back payments, officials said, of billions of dollars owed to US and international organizations and companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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