Republican who ran USAID under Bush calls dismantling it ‘madness’ as Trump, Musk cut nearly all staff

WASHINGTON – Since the end of World War II, the United States has remained a global power through foreign policy defined by what retired Ambassador Ryan Crocker calls a “three-legged stool” of defense, diplomacy and development.

On Thursday, the Trump administration effectively chopped off one of those legs, said Crocker, a decorated diplomat and Spokane Valley native, when it placed nearly all staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development on administrative leave. According to multiple news reports and an internal email shared on social media, fewer than 300 of USAID’s nearly 14,000 employees will remain on the job.

“There’s always been a recognition by Democratic and Republican administrations alike that targeted development assistance was a key element of projecting American power and strength abroad, in defense of America’s national security,” Crocker said. “The notion that USAID is some autonomous agency that does whatever it wants has never been true.”

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man whom President Donald Trump has empowered to dramatically cut the federal workforce, has set his sights on USAID in recent days while calling the foreign assistance agency an “evil” and “criminal organization” and “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”

Andrew Natsios, a self-described conservative Republican who ran the agency in the George W. Bush administration, said Musk’s claims about USAID are “a bold-faced lie.” He added that USAID is “the most private-sector-oriented, pro-business, pro-market” agency in the world of international development, citing partnerships that have boosted income for people in poor countries while improving supply chains for U.S. companies and strengthening America’s alliances at the same time.

Trump has said that USAID is “run by a bunch of radical lunatics,” painting it as an agency that has become divorced from U.S. national interests, but Natsios said the notion that the government’s foreign assistance arm doesn’t do what the State Department wants is “nonsense.”

USAID, he said, “cannot spend $1” without the approval of the State Department. “We do what they tell us to do, so if it’s not consistent with American foreign policy, it’s because the State Department is not running properly.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has taken control of the agency and moved it under the State Department, tempering the inflammatory language used by Musk while backing Trump’s plan to dramatically downsize its workforce.

In a document purporting to give examples of “waste and abuse” at USAID, the White House cited several programs started under the Biden administration to support gay, lesbian and transgender people around the world. Trump has taken a clear stance against transgender rights and has sought to root out what he calls “woke” progressive policies throughout the federal government.

The administration also pointed to a USAID program to “increase educational opportunities and strengthen the livelihoods of the people of North Sinai,” calling it “$6 million to fund tourism in Egypt.” Yet that program began in December 2019, well into Trump’s first administration, and Natsios said it’s a classic example of the value USAID provides.

A “stable and relatively prosperous Egypt,” Natsios said, is in the United States’ interest because it protects Israel, a key U.S. ally, and ensures that the Suez Canal remains open as a vital conduit for global trade. He criticized an earlier decision by the U.S. government to close the USAID mission in Panama, a country that controls the other major “choke point on the high seas,” which he said has allowed China to gain a foothold in that country.

Mark Ward, who ran USAID’s disaster assistance office until 2017, said it’s common for a new administration to change the agency’s priorities. But what Trump and Musk are doing, he said, is something else entirely.

“When you’ve promised in your campaign that you’re going to slash government, get rid of agencies, get rid of people, there’s nothing easier than USAID,” Ward said. “Because for the most part, the American people don’t know about foreign aid and they really don’t support it. Nobody can believe when they hear that it’s actually less than 1% of the budget.”

In fiscal year 2023, the most recent year for which complete data is available, Congress appropriated more than $40 billion for USAID, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That represented a small fraction of the total federal budget of $6.2 trillion, but the administration argues that money would be better spent at home.

Ward, now an instructor at Oregon State University and the University of Washington, said in an interview before the jobs cuts were reported that he sees a need for real reform at USAID, including to make the agency more nimble and less intertwined with the large federal contractors that run many of its long-term development programs.

“I genuinely wish Secretary Rubio well if what he really wants to do is make USAID better,” Ward said. “I hope that he has the time and the resources and the good people that are going to be needed to do some deep thinking about what can be fixed, because it’s very, very hard. There have been changes on the margins over the years, but more needs to be done and I hope now is the time to do it.”

Sen. Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has backed the idea of folding USAID into the State Department. In response to written questions, Risch named some of the same examples cited by the White House, including the $6 million in economic assistance to Egypt, and asked, “Who on earth thought that was a good idea?”

“As I’ve said before, the greatest national security threat Americans face is our skyrocketing national debt,” Risch said in a statement. “I’m supportive of the Trump Administration’s efforts to reform and restructure the agency in a way that better serves U.S. national security interests.”

Asked if he was aware of any evidence of the criminality alleged by Musk, Risch said, “There is no doubt that USAID has been fraught with reckless waste that has significantly degraded the American taxpayer’s trust in this organization.”

The Idaho senator acknowledged that some USAID projects “are valuable for America’s security interests and standing around the world,” but he said he is “confident that the Trump Administration will ensure that those programs remain intact under the State Department.”

“Secretary Rubio and I have been in touch regarding this reorganization of USAID,” Risch said. “I am sure that the actions the Administration takes will put America and American taxpayer’s interest first.”

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Spokane Republican who worked for the State Department in Iraq and sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Congress wasn’t informed in advance of the administration’s moves to “kill” USAID, as Musk described their goal, but the congressman said he supports Trump’s effort to reform U.S. foreign aid.

“Foreign assistance, done properly, is an important piece of America’s arsenal when it comes to our national security,” Baumgartner said, citing the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II and development efforts to compete with the Soviet Union for influence during the Cold War.

“While that’s the goal, I think USAID and some of our foreign policy has strayed from that,” he said, before the extent of job cuts were reported on Thursday. “In the big picture, I support the president’s goal and what he’s seeking to achieve, to take a pause to assess how well USAID is functioning.”

Baumgartner said he would have preferred that the administration involve Congress in its effort to transform the government’s foreign assistance strategy and said he was concerned about the USAID employees, including many working in the midst of conflict and famine, who suddenly lost access to email with no warning.

The USAID website was also taken down amid Musk’s swift assault on the agency, which Crocker compared to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. When senior USAID security officials objected to Musk’s team accessing classified information for which they didn’t have the proper security clearances, the officials were abruptly removed from their positions.

At Gonzaga University, Albana Dwonch, a lecturer and long-time foreign aid worker, was teaching her class on international development when her students suddenly realized that they could no longer access the data from the USAID website they were using for an assignment.

“The irony is the fact that an individual that’s unelected, such as Elon Musk, who is also the world’s richest man, starts to restructure the federal government by cutting aid to the world’s most vulnerable,” said Dwonch, who began her career in her native Albania before working in the Middle East.

The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID was met with enthusiasm by top officials in authoritarian states that have been at odds with U.S. development assistance in the past.

Former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who kicked USAID out of Russia in 2012, called Musk’s effort to shutter the agency a “smart move” in a post on X.

Musk shared a post by Balázs Orbán – political director for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to whom he is not related – that called USAID a “corrupt foreign interference machine.”

Democrats, aware that supporting foreign assistance isn’t a winning political issue, have been conflicted over whether to make the dismantling of USAID the hill to die on. But Natsios, a former state legislator and chairman of the Massachusetts GOP, said his fellow Republicans have a responsibility to stand up for the agency.

“At some point, you have to make a decision,” he said. “Are you going to do the right thing or do the political thing?”