https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/09/15/18879883.php
by Detlef Umbach
The Winding Up of the Aid Organization USAID
[This article posted on 7/29/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.sozialismus.de/kommentare_analysen/detail/artikel/usa-bloss-kein-mitgefuehl/.]The Agency for Effectiveness DOGE, led by Elon Musk until his departure, was investigating USAID for wasting public funds because Musk was convinced that it was “a criminal organization” [1]. Donald Trump had declared that this agency was run by “a group of insane radicals” [2].
On the day of his inauguration, the US president issued an executive order to halt “new commitments and disbursements of development funds for 90 days.” The global aid organization USAID, founded by President Kennedy, had distributed over $35 billion in aid worldwide in 2024. The presidential decree left it in an uncertain situation with regard to the financing of its long-term programs.
This led to a dispute between DOGE and USAID employees, which ended with the closure of the agency. By early February 2025, USAID had been largely shut down and almost the entire workforce laid off. “The idea was to destroy everything,” said a global health security expert at USAID who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
DOGE explicitly sought out “viral waste,” i.e., media-friendly examples of government waste. In doing so, Musk and DOGE were successful in a way that exposed their complete incompetence. On “January 28, Karoline Leavitt […] took the podium for her first press conference as Trump’s press secretary [… She stated:] ‘It was nearly $50 million in taxpayer money spent on funding condoms in Gaza […] an absurd waste.’” [5] Trump followed up by talking about condoms for Hamas and making jokes about it. USAID staff tried unsuccessfully to set the record straight: it wasn’t just condoms, but a family planning program, and the funds went to the province of Gaza, which is in Mozambique. [6]
USAID had been the world’s largest aid organization until it was dismantled by the Trump administration. Its tasks “included the prevention and treatment of diseases such as HIV and malaria, the provision of emergency food aid […] and support for communities in coping with climate shocks such as storms and droughts.” [7]
There had been repeated criticism of USAID, especially from the left, because the agency purchased almost all of its aid supplies in the US. As a result, USAID was always a factor in demand for American agriculture. And, of course, the aid was not entirely “selfless”; it was always also a means of stabilizing American influence worldwide.
Medical aid and food aid in particular were very popular among the American population. As a result, around 45% of the American population opposed the closure of USAID, while around 35% were in favor of it.[8] Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush Jr. had advocated for the continued preservation of USAID. The current US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had repeatedly praised USAID during his time as a senator. However, he remained silent when USAID was shut down.
“When the US Agency for International Development was dissolved in early February, aid workers and officials in Washington, D.C., and around the world set out to salvage what they could.”[9] To this day, the battle continues over which programs will be continued and to what extent. It will likely become clear in the fall which programs the State Department will actually continue. Currently, only about one-sixth of the original programs remain. However, these are often the programs with large volumes. [10]
A particular disaster unfolded with regard to medicines and nutritional supplements that had already been paid for or donated. Nicholas Kristof reported on warehouses in West Africa containing millions of doses of medicines for diseases that are widespread in Africa, such as malaria, river blindness, worm disease, schistosomiasis, and others. These medicines are stored and guarded, but they cannot be distributed. Due to the closure of USAID, the organization responsible for distribution no longer exists.
From the US, Kristof reported on almost 700,000 boxes of paid-for peanut butter bars, whose manufacturers do not know where to deliver them. In Africa, peanut paste is a lifesaver for malnourished children. Kristof reported from his travels that both the medicines and the peanut paste are often urgently needed in the villages he visited. There, hunger and death due to lack of aid have already begun. Kristof has reported on this scandal repeatedly for months, without any response from the US government.
There is little hope that the lack of American aid could be replaced by other nations. Great Britain has reduced its aid to developing countries by 40%, France is aiming to cut its aid by a third, and Germany is holding back. [12]
A study published in The Lancet magazine shows that the closure of USAID could lead to approximately 14 million additional deaths over the next five years, including approximately 4.5 million deaths among children under the age of five.[13]
Alongside Trump, Musk was primarily responsible for the humanitarian disaster triggered by the closure of USAID. Musk counts himself among the powerful in the world who are not impressed by such disasters. As he explained years ago, “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is compassion […] Liberals and progressives exploit a bug in Western civilization, namely the response of compassion.” For right-wing Republicans, the rejection of compassion becomes a problem because they also see themselves as good Christians. Compassion and charity are indeed core tenets of the Christian faith. The apparent solution to this contradiction is offered by the concept of “toxic empathy.”[15] ” In this sense, the rhetorical framework of toxic empathy, which is intended to give conservatives peace of mind, threatens to make Christians insensitive to the moral demands of Christianity.”[16]
Detlef Umbach is a retiree and lives in Hamburg. All translations from American English without references are by the author. The text was completed on July 25, 2025.
Notes
[1] The death of foreign aid, The Economist, March 6, 2025.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Christopher Flavelle et al., Misssteps, Confusion and ‘Viral Waste’: The 14 Days That Doomed U.S.A.I.D., New York Times, quoted in NYT, June 22, 2025.
[4] Amy Schoenfeld Walker et al., What Remains of USAID? NYT 22.6.25.
[5] Flavelle et al., ibid.
[6] Cf. ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Cf. Richard Wieke and Gar Meng Leong, Majorities of American Support …, PEW, May 1, 2025.
[9] Amy Schoenfeld Walker et al., op. cit.
[10] Cf. ibid.
[11] Cf. Nicholas Kristof, Really Secretary Rubio? I’m Lying About the Kids Dying Under Trump? NYT May 31, 2025; Ibid., The Waste Musk Created, NYT June 21, 2025; Ibid., The U.S. Cannot Solve All the World’s Problems, NYT June 25, 2025; Ibid. and Kristina Samuelewski, U.S.A.I.D. Might Be Dead, but the Waste is Alive and Well, NYT July 2, 2025.
[12] Cf. The death of foreign aid, op. cit.
[13] Cf. Daniella Medeiros Cavalcanti et al., Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis, The Lancet, Vol. 406, pp. 283-294.
[14] Quoted from Robert Reich, Trump, Musk, Republicans, and the Empathy Bug, substrack.com, July 1, 2025.
[15] See Allie Beth Stuckey, Toxic Empathy, How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion, Sentinel, 2024.
[16] Elisabeth Bruenig, The Conservative Attack on Empathy, The Atlantic, June 30, 2025.