President Trump’s decision to clean house at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and initially freeze all foreign assistance is fueling chaos and uncertainty in Washington and across the world.
The entire scope of Trump’s freeze on foreign aid and “stop work” orders to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), issued in an executive order on Jan. 20, is hard to fully comprehend, and it left aid groups, grantee recipients and lawmakers with more questions than answers.
“We’re checking to see what the directive is, and what the response has been, and what’s included in that. We’re trying to get it clarified,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told The Hill, saying he was concerned about a halt in funding for PEPFAR.
The George W. Bush-era initiative to treat HIV/AIDS across Africa is credited with keeping 20 million people alive who are living with HIV. Advocates who work with clinics on the ground said the program’s funding is indefinitely on hold, leaving its future uncertain.
Amid the confusion and outrage, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver Tuesday night that exempted critical humanitarian assistance and life-saving medical work for U.S. aid recipients.
The situation is causing whiplash for NGOs across Africa, the Middle East, in Ukraine and southeast Asia, which began shutting doors, sending staff home and turning away their dependents.
Brian Honermann, deputy director of the Andelson Public Policy Office at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, told The Hill he was aware of clinics closing because of the stop work order.
“Some of those …. patients at those facilities have been able to get medications, but otherwise they are being sent to other places to hopefully be able to get access to services, but it is not clear that they will be able to,” he said.
The waiver came after Rubio met with Senate Democrats on Capitol Hill, with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) calling for him to reconsider the scope of the freeze and stop work orders.
“This is an alarming development that is putting at risk lives of vulnerable people around the world,” Coons said, adding that he is “gravely concerned that in the days and weeks to come it will have significant consequences for people around the world.”
Even with the waiver, Democrats are seething.
“Aid programs were told to apply for ‘waivers’. But it’s a joke – there is no waiver program, no one to review the waivers. It’s just cruel busy work to further overwhelm and punish aid agencies. Because cruelty is also the point,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) posted on social platform X.
The Trump administration also put on leave about 60 senior career officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Reuters reported, creating a leadership vacuum amid the confusion.
Murphy said he hasn’t been able to find out which programs have been impacted because of an administration-wide order instructing federal officials not to speak to any outside parties.
“[USAID officials] were told there’s a gag order, right? There’s a gag order that I assume applies across the government, Congress and senators too … They are not allowed to talk to any of us, so we have been unable to get any information about what’s happening there,” Murphy told reporters Tuesday.
U.S. foreign assistance represents about 1 percent of the federal budget, with about $63 billion obligated in 2023. The funding goes to a range of projects including global health initiatives and humanitarian assistance; good governance and anti-corruption; education and infrastructure development assistance.
The role of U.S. foreign assistance is a broad effort to promote stability; set standards based on American values and law; and foster closer ties with partners as part of bilateral and multilateral relationships. Diplomats and national security experts say these types of partnerships are key in pushing back against security threats posed by China, Russia or the rise of terrorism and extremism.
“China, which is already growing its soft power reach across the world, will fill that vacuum that the U.S. is leaving behind, and it is quite a large vacuum,” said Catherine Nzuki, associate fellow with the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, citing, in particular, Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization.
“But what the U.S. saves in foreign aid, it will lose in the goodwill that it has generated over the years with things like PEPFAR, the president’s emergency fund for AIDS in Africa.”
Senate Democrats are going to pursue that line of argument during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, which is examining the Chinese government’s “malign influence” in the U.S. and abroad.
“Foreign assistance is a vital national security tool that makes our nation safer and supports global stability,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Hill.
“The world needs America’s leadership, and when we withdraw vital support in these areas, we cede ground to competitors like the People’s Republic of China.”
And while Republicans and Democrats largely agree on the benefit of return on investment from U.S. assistance, Trump’s allies in Congress are giving him the benefit of the doubt.
“It’s a new administration, they’ll get the bugs worked out,” Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) said.
“It’s not unusual for an administration to review the policies of the last administration, I think that’s what’s happening right now, and we’ll see what happens as they go forward.”
Among the initial consequences of Trump’s order was an impact to U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria guarding some 10,000 Islamic State (ISIS) prisoners and their families. State Department officials scrambled to implement an exemption for Kurdish forces guarding the camp, Politico reported.
The State Department also reinstated funding that provided health care, education and food distribution in the prison camps, said Sinam Sherkany Mohamad, chief of mission of the Syrian Democratic Council to the U.S. She earlier told The Hill that a cut to that assistance would have grave dangers.
Stopping assistance to the camps could “exacerbate the desire for these ISIS terrorists to escape, which endangers the whole world,” she told The Hill.
She also warned that humanitarian organizations are not equipped to make up funding provided by the U.S. in helping displaced Syrians and those in refugee camps.
“There are no immediate alternative solutions to fill the void that will be created by the freeze decisions. This aid freeze greatly endangers all of us,” she told The Hill.
For experts focused on Ukraine, a stop in USAID funding that goes to civil society projects and energy infrastructure projects risks weakening Ukraine’s resilience as it prepares for Trump’s pursuit of negotiating a deal with Russia.
“The Trump administration’s suspension of broader aid to a nation under direct Russian attack — while claiming to be looking to increase leverage and pressure on Russia for negotiations — is a glaring contradiction,” said Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.
“With Russia relentlessly targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, U.S. support has been crucial for maintaining energy security.”
But Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the orders are working “exactly” as intended.
“And that is to examine all these expenditures and exempt ones as they came up, as they were looked at and needed to stay in place,” Risch said.
“That’s exactly what happened. Any other president would have come into office and say, ‘oh gee, I think we should look at spending, I’m going to appoint this committee’ — the committee would meet for two years, they’d propose a 1,000-page report, and then nothing would happen. There’s stuff happening right now, which is really good.”
