OPINION: From the American People — In Defense of USAID
USAID relief supplies delivered to Haiti in 2010 (Flickr).
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” wrote Elon Musk on February 3. In the past month, the Special Government Employee, appointed by President Donald Trump to head the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency, has made sweeping changes to effectively dismantle the United States Agency for International Development. Through his decisions, Mr. Musk has destroyed USAID in what seems to be a larger test of the Executive Branch’s ability to change the way American bureaucracy operates, without oversight from Americans or the legislators chosen to represent them.
USAID has spent decades representing the goodwill of America to vulnerable populations, serving as a voice for marginalized groups and defending those who cannot defend themselves. Yet, with USAID employees, contractors, and volunteers forced to stop their work, with the future of their jobs and projects left uncertain, Mr. Musk has rewritten America’s identity, without consultation from the American people.
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USAID provides essential humanitarian aid and development assistance to the world. From coordinating responses to natural disasters, providing funding for essential medication, and sending food to relieve hunger internationally, USAID’s work is not only critical for cultivating positive images of the United States, but also for saving lives around the world. Former USAID Administrator and Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times about the devastating consequences of the destruction of USAID, stating that “Many of the hungry and sick people who depend on U.S.A.I.D. are at risk of dying.” Author John Green, who also serves on the Board of Trustees for Partners in Health, posted a poignant photo on Instagram, showing a supply room filled with boxes of tuberculosis medication that has already been paid for, but cannot be distributed due to USAID’s stop work order. Furthermore, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that without funding from USAID, and the subsequent end of PEPFAR (the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), 2.8 million children will be orphaned by AIDS.
But gutting USAID doesn’t just harm the people who depend on the agency for food, medicine, and educational resources—it also harms the United States’s strategic position. Since 1961, USAID has served as a lynchpin in American soft-power strategy. It has received bipartisan support for six decades, since it was founded by President John F. Kennedy during the Cold War. While receiving a minimal budget, USAID promotes American interests, protects Americans from disease, and disseminates positive American messaging. Without it, the narratives of American enemies are left unchecked. With no visual representation of American goodwill, without confirmation of American support for those who need it most, the international reputation of the United States is irrevocably damaged. By presuming he can speak for the American people, Mr. Musk’s unilateral decisions have utterly changed the way they are perceived around the world.
Foreign aid accounts for just over one percent of annual federal government spending. USAID delivers two-thirds of those funds. As Mr. Musk’s cheerful attitude continues to demonstrate, dismantling USAID isn’t about getting rid of inefficiencies in the government; it’s about a powerful man trying to figure out how powerful he really is.
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For the past four months, I have been working as an intern with USAID. My work was unpaid. Like everyone I encountered in my time at USAID, I was there because I believed, and continue to believe in, the value of the Agency’s work.
As with any presidential transition, we were cautious but optimistic as the new term started. The recent success of the First Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children had created a momentum within the United States and our global partners which we hoped to carry into the new year. Already, team leaders were rethinking frameworks to appeal to the Administration and its objectives, demonstrating that our goals were in accordance with the “America First” ideology so often repeated during the campaign. We believed that USAID would continue to function, probably shifted by new policies and directives, but ultimately unchanged in its broader scale and purpose.
At the beginning of February, we were warned that the situation might unravel faster than anticipated. Shortly thereafter, contracted employees, including our intern cohort supervisor, were ordered to stop work. My mentor was furloughed indefinitely. In a matter of days, the momentum that had been built so carefully for months and years was erased.
I was part of the Children in Adversity team at USAID, specifically working to prevent violence against children. Our objectives and interventions were nonpartisan, research-backed, and in collaboration with hundreds of domestic and international partners, including the CDC, WHO, Save the Children, and the United Nations. They were dedicated to fighting violence against children—a cause that is apolitical and indispensable.
“We cannot fail these children,” said Bama Athreya, Deputy Assistant Administrator, USG Special Advisor for Children in Adversity, at a meeting of USAID’s civil society partners in Washington, D.C. in December, just months before the shutdown. Yet, with USAID’s rapid, unscheduled disassembly, Mr. Musk has done just that. He is failing the children around the world who need USAID’s support, who need the resources, the strategies, the medicines, and the food that USAID provides. As USAID is dismantled, America is failing these children.
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USAID isn’t a perfect organization. But America is not a perfect country. Rather than reform USAID, embodying the American principles of hard work and grit so often found in our national mythology, Mr. Musk’s actions take the easy way out. In eliminating USAID, in severing it from the employees who give life to its missions, in preventing it from achieving a mandate given by the American people and their elected leaders, Mr. Musk and his allies not only weaken America’s strategic position, but also its moral values.
Despite this—despite the fact that Doctors without Borders and other organizations have warned of crisis, despite the fact that a project to shrink government spending is targeting an Agency that accounts for just one percent of these expenses—you may still be unconvinced that eliminating USAID has significant consequences. Maybe you’re unbothered because the crises that strike the developing world aren’t hurting you (yet). Maybe you believe that the strategic position of the United States should be isolationist or protectionist, so cutting off the world’s largest source of international Official Development Assistance is acceptable.
And maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ve been blinded by my own experiences, by my own work with USAID, by my own belief in an international community that is strongest when those with the most give support to those with the least. But that doesn’t change the fundamental fact that you and I—not an unelected, unconfirmed, billionaire presidential appointee—should have had the right to make that decision.
America has long viewed itself as a protector nation—a country that chooses the side of right, even when its actions don’t always produce their intended result. The eradication of USAID destroys this image, forcing countries to rewrite their perceptions of the United States and compelling Americans to reconsider their own impressions of their nation. This weakening of the foundational principles of what it means to be America in the twenty-first century could prove disastrous. If America can no longer defend its own principles—of democracy, of freedom, of working for good—it can no longer give even their hope to the rest of the world.
For decades, aid packages and relief supplies delivered by USAID have been marked by four simple words: “from the American people.” It seems that now, the American people have nothing to offer.
Josephine Balistreri (SFS ‘26) has previously served as the Opinion Editor at the Caravel. The views expressed in this article belong solely to the author.