Trump stands firm on USAID closure over widespread corruption

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday demanded the closure of USAID, intensifying his unprecedented efforts to dismantle the humanitarian agency. 

In a post on his Truth Social app, he accused the agency of widespread corruption, writing, “THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!” 

The move has caused turmoil within the agency’s global operations and raised concerns about the erosion of American influence worldwide.

In the three weeks since he began his new term, Trump has launched a crusade led by his top donor and the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, to downsize or dismantle swathes of the US government.

The most concentrated fire has been on the United States Agency for International Development, which distributes US humanitarian aid globally.

On Friday, Musk — who along with Trump has spread blatantly false information about USAID’s finances — reposted photos on social media of the agency’s signage being taken down from its Washington headquarters.

The Trump administration has already frozen foreign aid and ordered thousands of foreign-based staff to return to the United States, with reported impacts on the ground steadily growing.

On Thursday, a union official confirmed reports that the USAID headcount of 10,000 employees would be reduced to around only 300.

Labour unions are challenging the legality of the onslaught, including a separate government-wide offer of buyouts by Musk’s team.

Democrats in Congress say it would be unconstitutional for Trump — who has also expressed intent to close the Department of Education — to shut down government agencies without the legislature’s green light.

Soft power

The United States’ current budget allocates about $70 billion for international assistance.

However, while Washington is the biggest aid donor in the world, the money has only amounted to between 0.7 and 1.4 per cent of total US government spending in the last quarter century, according to the Pew Research Center.

USAID runs health and emergency programmes in around 120 countries, including the world’s poorest regions.

It is seen as a vital source of soft power for the United States in its struggle for influence with rivals including China.

Samantha Power, the USAID chief under former president Joe Biden, dubbed the agency “America’s superpower” in a scathing New York Times opinion piece on Friday.

“We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in US history,” said Power.

Unless the dismantling is halted, Power wrote, “future generations will marvel that it wasn’t China’s actions that eroded US standing and global security” but rather “an American president and the billionaire he unleashed to shoot first and aim later.”

Hard-right Republicans and libertarians have long questioned the need for USAID and criticised what they say is wasteful spending abroad.

Those criticisms have been supercharged since Trump’s return, with the administration demonising USAID employees and claiming — without evidence — that the aid agency is rife with fraud.

Racist social posts

Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have rampaged through agencies that most Americans have for decades taken for granted or ignored.

While Democrats have struggled to find footing to halt the moves, court challenges are slowly taking shape.

An attempt by Trump to overturn the constitutional guarantee to birthright citizenship has been blocked by a judge, and on Thursday another judge paused the federal worker buyouts programme, pending arguments on Monday.

Musk, the South African-born CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, ran into controversy last week with reports he and his team were accessing sensitive Treasury Department data and systems.

An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced,” US media reported.

Adding to the drama, one member of the DOGE team resigned after it emerged that he had advocated racism and eugenics on social media.

On Friday, following backing for the sacked 25-year-old from Trump, Musk said he would reinstate the staffer.

The staffer, according to posts uncovered by the Wall Street Journal, said just last year that he was “racist before it was cool.”

Vice President JD Vance weighed in on Friday, saying he did not think “stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” while criticising the reporter for trying to “destroy people.”

“So I say bring him back.”