WASHINGTON (AP) — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the Trump administration had finished its six-week purge of programs of the six-decade-old US Agency for International Development, cutting 83 per cent of its them, and said he would move the remaining aid programs under the State Department.
Hours later, a federal judge said President Donald Trump had overstepped his authority in shutting down most foreign assistance, saying the administration could no longer simply sit on the billions of dollars that Congress had provided for foreign aid. But Judge Amir H. Ali stopped short of ordering Trump officials to use the money to revive the thousands of terminated program contracts.
Rubio made his announcement Monday in a post on X, in one of his few public comments on what has been a historic shift away from US foreign aid and development, executed by Trump political appointees at State and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams.
Rubio in the post thanked DOGE and “our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform” in foreign aid.
Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all US aid and development work abroad. Trump charged that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.
Rubio’s social media post Monday said that review was now “officially ending,” with some 5,200 of USAID’s 6,200 programs eliminated. Those programs “spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,” Rubio wrote.
“In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18 per cent of programs we are keeping … to be administered more effectively under the State Department,” he said.
Democratic lawmakers and others call the shutdown of congressionally funded programs illegal, saying such a move requires Congress’ approval.
In his preliminary injunction Monday, Ali said Trump could not simply ignore most of what is roughly $60 billion in foreign assistance funding that was given to USAID and State by Congress, which under the US Constitution has authority to spend money.
“The constitutional power over whether to spend foreign aid is not the President’s own — and it is Congress’s own,” Ali wrote.
But Ali declined the request from nonprofit groups and businesses to revive the canceled contracts for foreign assistance work around the world, saying it was up to the administration to make decisions on specific contracts.
Ali also ordered Trump officials to keep paying all of the billions of dollars it owed to aid groups and businesses up to mid-February, and ordered them to do it at a pace of at least 300 back payments a day.
Ali’s ruling came after the Supreme Court had rejected the Trump administration’s appeal in the case.
USAID supporters said the sweep of the cuts made it difficult to tell what US efforts abroad the Trump administration actually supports.
“The patterns that are emerging is the administration does not support democracy programs, they don’t support civil society … they don’t support NGO programs,” or health or emergency response, said Andrew Natsios, the USAID administrator for Republican former President George W. Bush.
“So what’s left”?” Natsios asked.
The Trump administration gave almost no details on which aid and development efforts abroad it spared as it mass-emailed contract terminations to aid groups and other USAID partners by the thousands within days earlier this month. The rapid pace, and the steps skipped in ending contracts, left USAID supporters challenging whether any actual program-by-program reviews had taken place.
Aid groups say even some life-saving programs that Rubio and others had promised to spare are in limbo or terminated, such as those providing emergency nutritional support for starving children and drinking water for sprawling camps for families uprooted by war in Sudan.
Republicans broadly have made clear they want foreign assistance that would promote a far narrower interpretation of US national interests going forward.
The State Department in one of multiple lawsuits it is battling over its rapid shutdown of USAID had said earlier this month it was killing more than 90 per cent of USAID programs. Rubio gave no explanation for why his number was lower.
The dismantling of USAID that followed Trump’s order upended decades of policy that humanitarian and development aid abroad advanced US national security by stabilising regions and economies, strengthening alliances and building goodwill.
In the weeks after Trump’s order, one of his appointees and transition team members, Pete Marocco, and Musk pulled USAID staff around the world off the job through forced leaves and firings, shut down USAID payments overnight and terminated aid and development contracts by the thousands.
Contractors and staffers running efforts ranging from epidemic control to famine prevention to job and democracy training stopped work. Aid groups and other USAID partners laid off tens of thousands of their workers in the US and abroad.
The shutdown has left many USAID staffers and contractors and their families still overseas, many of them awaiting back payments and travel expenses to return home.
The Trump administration on Monday gave USAID staffers abroad until April 6 to move back to the United States if they want to do so on the government’s tab, according to a USAID email sent to staffers and seen by The Associated Press. Staffers say the deadline gives them scant time to pull children from school, sell homes or break leases, and, for many, find somewhere to live after years away from the United States.
In Washington, the sometimes contradictory orders issued by the three men — Rubio, Musk and Marocco — overseeing the USAID cuts have left many uncertain who was calling the shots, and fueled talk of power struggles.
Musk and Rubio on Monday, as Trump had last week, insisted relations between the two of them were smooth.
“Good working with you,” Musk tweeted in response to Rubio’s announcement.
“Tough, but necessary,” Musk wrote of Rubio’s announcement on the cuts.
