On January 20th, president Donald Trump declared a 90 day freeze for the workers and funding to 90% of foreign aid contracts. The freeze is cutting $60 billion from the funds, with around 10,000 contracts ended.
USAID (United States Agency for International Development) is an agency of the U.S government funded by Congress that administers civilian foreign aid and development assistance. It helps countries around the world with global health, economic growth, better education, and much more. The shutdown of USAID creates problems with international security, health, along with other impacting conflicts.
President Trump and Elon Musk are dissatisfied with the program and want to be rid of it. There are many conflicting problems within the program that are identified as “waste and abuse.” Starting on February 2nd, 2025, the USAID website has been taken down.
According to an anonymous source, the programs are being defunded due to the “convenience and the interests of the U.S government.”
On March 10th, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that after the State Department’s review of foreign aid programming, around 83% of USAID programs will be shut down and the surviving few will be set within the State Department.
Secretary Rubio has said that “USAID has conflicting, overlapping and duplicative functions.”
With the budget cut and work freeze,there are now as many as 110 million children in South Africa due to receive polio vaccines that will now go unprotected. In Myanmar, where malaria cases have increased over four years, the transportation of malaria tests and drugs have stopped.
“We are being pushed off a cliff,” says Dr. Kate Rees, a health specialist who works at the biggest NGOs fighting HIV in South Africa, where the disease is currently the worst.
In Rubio’s recent social media post, he thanked many, including his “hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform” in foreign aid.