Latest news with #U.S.AgencyforInternationalDevelopment
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The US says 'little to show‘ for six-decade aid agency. Supporters point to millions of lives saved
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development raced against the moment their computer access would be shut off, before the Trump administration's dismantling of the six-decade-old foreign assistance agency took near-final effect Tuesday. With only a tiny fraction of the 13,000 staffers and institutional contractors who ran U.S. aid and development slated to keep their jobs by Tuesday's latest round of cuts, some described laboring to push out what promised funding they could before Tuesday, to the small slice of programs worldwide that have survived the administration's purge of foreign assistance. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's government-cutting Department of Government Efficiency dismantled USAID within weeks of Trump's taking office, accusing the agency, with little evidence, of waste and fraud and supporting a liberal agenda. 'That ends today,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a social media posting Tuesday. American taxpayers would no longer 'pay taxes to fund failed governments in faraway lands," Rubio vowed. Supporters say USAID has fundamentally improved health systems and humanitarian networks around the world, promoted democracy and boosted countries and people out of poverty in a way that has saved lives, stemmed refugee crises and wars, and built markets and trading partners for the United States. In a Lancet medical study published Monday, USAID's last day as an independent agency, researchers credited USAID programs with preventing 91 million deaths in the first two decades of this century alone. Staffers sign off with tributes, solidarity — and some anger Globally, some staffers planned online meetups for their last hours, where they would simultaneously cut up their government IDs as they said the Trump administration had demanded. In a show of support and gratitude, rock star Bono, Republican former President George W. Bush and Democratic former President Barack Obama filmed video tributes to staffers. 'They called you crooks. When you were the best of us,' Bono said. In the days before staffers lost their log-in access, State Department official Kenneth Jackson sent an email, obtained by The Associated Press, thanking them for their 'professionalism' in a 'successful transition" amid 'challenges.' Staffers shared emails some colleagues sent back, calling their firings illegal and the elimination of U.S. foreign assistance a threat to national security. They wrote that the lives they had saved would be their legacy. The change was hitting a hospital in central Liberia where USAID over decades had built up maternal and child care and funded out-of-reach HIV medication, until the Trump administration slashed funding without warning earlier this year. The hospital had no advanced notice that 'after five months or a year or so, you say we'll no longer be able to be funding the health care services in Liberia," said Dr. Minnie Sankawulo Ricks, a pediatrician, of the cuts to USAID programs. "We just woke up one day and boom." 'No one ever saw it coming." Rubio says USAID created a bureaucracy with 'little to show' Secretary of State Marco Rubio had ordered USAID and its remaining programs absorbed into the State Department by Tuesday. 'Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,' The Trump administration's new slimmed-down aid system would cut bureaucracy to respond more quickly to crises, empower diplomats out in the field at a reduced number of regional bureaus, and emphasize U.S. trade, not aid, Rubio wrote. The Trump administration has asked Congress for $17 billion for foreign assistance for next year, less than half the previous amount. Asked for comment about the last days of USAID as an independent agency, the State Department said it would be introducing this week its foreign assistance successor, America First. 'The new process will ensure there is proper oversight and that every tax dollar spent will help advance our national interests,' the department said. Objections by USAID and State Department staffers to the slashing of foreign assistance and other changes resulted in an unprecedented 700 dissent cables, a traditional internal way of registering concerns to secretaries of state, said Andrew Natsios, a former USAID administrator who still has ties to both agencies. The State Department did not immediately respond when asked if the figure was correct or to provide details on its new foreign aid plans. In South Africa, dread is building as the world's largest HIV program begins resorting to cutting doses, dragging out waiting time for appointments and missing testing targets. The USAID cuts have stripped more than $400 million a year from South Africa's program through the President's Emergency Relief Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative started by the George W. Bush administration credited with saving more than 25 million lives in Africa and beyond. A complex system — that works President John F. Kennedy and Congress started USAID in the early 1960s. It was part of an emphasis on foreign aid as a tool of diplomacy and a belief that helping other countries become more stable and prosperous benefited the United States in kind. Kennedy had complained that State Department diplomats weren't nimble enough at that. He wanted operations experts. A study published in the Lancet medical journal on Monday gave an idea of its impact more recently: USAID helped prevent 91 million deaths worldwide between 2001 and 2021, researchers based in Spain, the U.S. and elsewhere estimated. That was led by more than halving of the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria and tropical diseases. The study projected that USAID's dismantling and deep funding cuts would lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children. Natsios, the USAID administrator under Bush, ticks off a list of fundamental, systematic, and measurable improvements made by USAID around the world: USAID support played a vital role for agriculture's Green Revolution, credited with saving 1 billion lives around the world, including by developing and providing improved crops. USAID's building of a famine early warning system and other developments have sharply reduced the number and severity of famines. USAID rapid response teams have scrambled to shut down epidemics before they spread, including in a 2014 Ebola outbreak that killed thousands in Africa. USAID work with other global partners has strengthened health systems around the world, contributing to reducing deaths among children under 5 by 69% since 1990. Funding for many of those programs has been cut off or reduced under Trump. USAID and U.S. foreign assistance had been 'a massive and very complex system, that works. That works,' Natsios said. 'And now that system has been destroyed." ___ Pronczuk reported from Dakar. Evelyne Musambi in Nairobi and Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg contributed.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tuesday's Mini-Report, 7.1.25
Today's edition of quick hits. * The White House won't care for these comments, but Powell had a point: 'The Federal Reserve would have cut interest rates by now if President Donald Trump's tariffs weren't so substantial, central bank chief Jerome Powell said Tuesday.' * The administration's latest court defeat: 'A federal judge has ruled that recent mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services were likely unlawful and ordered the Trump administration to halt plans to downsize and reorganize the nation's health workforce.' * A case worth watching: 'Sixteen states are suing the Trump administration for 'unconstitutionally' ending more than $1 billion in mental-health-related grants created to help after mass school shootings, the states' attorneys general said Tuesday.' * The deteriorating dollar: 'The dollar is off to its worst start to a year in more than half a century. The United States' currency has weakened more than 10 percent over the past six months when compared with a basket of currencies from the country's major trading partners. The last time the dollar weakened so much at the start of the year was 1973, after the United States had made a seismic shift that had ended the linking of the dollar to the price of gold.' * A gut-wrenching figure: 'More than 14 million people could die over the next five years because of the Trump administration's dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to an analysis published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet.' * Acting suspiciously tends to heighten suspicions: 'The Department of Homeland Security has formally instituted a new requirement that members of Congress and their staff provide a week of notice before they visit immigration detention facilities, a policy that is at odds with a federal law that allows lawmakers to make unannounced oversight trips.' * I guess they're fighting again? 'President Donald Trump threatened to have the Department of Government Efficiency re-examine government support for Elon Musk's businesses, saying in a Truth Social post shortly after midnight that there was 'big money to be saved.'' See you tomorrow. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
FBI headquarters will remain in downtown DC, roiling Washington-area Democrats
The FBI will move its headquarters to a building complex blocks away from its current home in Washington, the agency announced on Tuesday, setting up an end to a drawn-out battle over the agency's new home. The announcement officially scraps a plan approved in 2023 to move the FBI to Greenbelt, Maryland after lawmakers from Virginia and Maryland battled intensely to host the bureau. President Donald Trump signaled earlier this year his intent to keep the new headquarters in Washington, even as the agency abandons the iconic but run-down J. Edgar Hoover Building. The agency's new home, the Ronald Reagan Building complex, previously included the U.S. Agency for International Development among its tenants before the administration gutted the agency earlier this year. The building also houses the U.S. Customs and Border Protection along with other government agencies and private businesses. 'We are ushering FBI Headquarters into a new era and providing our agents of justice a safer place to work. Moving to the Ronald Reagan Building is the most cost effective and resource efficient way to carry out our mission to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution,' FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement. It's not yet clear when the FBI would move into its new headquarters. The fate of the new FBI headquarters was the subject of acrimony between the two states surrounding Washington. Virginia lawmakers fought to bring the new headquarters closer to the FBI's Quantico training site, but lost out to a strong push from Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and other Maryland lawmakers to bring the FBI to Greenbelt, which is just north of Washington proper. Shortly after Trump returned to the White House, he pledged to block the FBI's proposed move to Maryland, which he called 'a liberal state,' during a speech at the Department of Justice. 'We're going to build another big FBI building right where it is, which would have been the right place, because the FBI and the DOJ have to be near each other,' Trump said in March. Virginia's Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine — who seemingly lost out on the headquarters sweepstakes in 2023 — condemned Tuesday's announcement, saying it 'isn't a plan, it's a punt.' And Maryland Gov. Wes Moore joined the Maryland Democratic congressional delegation in issuing a statement condemning the decision to pull the new headquarters out of their home state, committing to 'fighting back against this proposal with every tool we have.' 'The FBI deserves a headquarters that meets their security and mission needs — and following an extensive, thorough, and transparent process, Greenbelt, Maryland, was selected as the site that best meets those requirements,' the statement said. 'Not only was this decision final, the Congress appropriated funds specifically for the purpose of the new, consolidated campus to be built in Maryland.'
Winnipeg Free Press
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
The US says ‘little to show‘ for six-decade aid agency. Supporters point to millions of lives saved
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development raced against the moment their computer access would be shut off, before the Trump administration's dismantling of the six-decade-old foreign assistance agency took near-final effect Tuesday. With only a tiny fraction of the 13,000 staffers and institutional contractors who ran U.S. aid and development slated to keep their jobs by Tuesday's latest round of cuts, some described laboring to push out what promised funding they could before Tuesday, to the small slice of programs worldwide that have survived the administration's purge of foreign assistance. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's government-cutting Department of Government Efficiency dismantled USAID within weeks of Trump's taking office, accusing the agency, with little evidence, of waste and fraud and supporting a liberal agenda. 'That ends today,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a social media posting Tuesday. American taxpayers would no longer 'pay taxes to fund failed governments in faraway lands,' Rubio vowed. Supporters say USAID has fundamentally improved health systems and humanitarian networks around the world, promoted democracy and boosted countries and people out of poverty in a way that has saved lives, stemmed refugee crises and wars, and built markets and trading partners for the United States. In a Lancet medical study published Monday, USAID's last day as an independent agency, researchers credited USAID programs with preventing 91 million deaths in the first two decades of this century alone. Staffers sign off with tributes, solidarity — and some anger Globally, some staffers planned online meetups for their last hours, where they would simultaneously cut up their government IDs as they said the Trump administration had demanded. In a show of support and gratitude, rock star Bono, Republican former President George W. Bush and Democratic former President Barack Obama filmed video tributes to staffers. 'They called you crooks. When you were the best of us,' Bono said. In the days before staffers lost their log-in access, State Department official Kenneth Jackson sent an email, obtained by The Associated Press, thanking them for their 'professionalism' in a 'successful transition' amid 'challenges.' Staffers shared emails some colleagues sent back, calling their firings illegal and the elimination of U.S. foreign assistance a threat to national security. They wrote that the lives they had saved would be their legacy. The change was hitting a hospital in central Liberia where USAID over decades had built up maternal and child care and funded out-of-reach HIV medication, until the Trump administration slashed funding without warning earlier this year. The hospital had no advanced notice that 'after five months or a year or so, you say we'll no longer be able to be funding the health care services in Liberia,' said Dr. Minnie Sankawulo Ricks, a pediatrician, of the cuts to USAID programs. 'We just woke up one day and boom.' 'No one ever saw it coming.' Rubio says USAID created a bureaucracy with 'little to show' Secretary of State Marco Rubio had ordered USAID and its remaining programs absorbed into the State Department by Tuesday. 'Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,' Rubio said in a Substack post Tuesday. The Trump administration's new slimmed-down aid system would cut bureaucracy to respond more quickly to crises, empower diplomats out in the field at a reduced number of regional bureaus, and emphasize U.S. trade, not aid, Rubio wrote. The Trump administration has asked Congress for $17 billion for foreign assistance for next year, less than half the previous amount. Asked for comment about the last days of USAID as an independent agency, the State Department said it would be introducing this week its foreign assistance successor, America First. 'The new process will ensure there is proper oversight and that every tax dollar spent will help advance our national interests,' the department said. Objections by USAID and State Department staffers to the slashing of foreign assistance and other changes resulted in an unprecedented 700 dissent cables, a traditional internal way of registering concerns to secretaries of state, said Andrew Natsios, a former USAID administrator who still has ties to both agencies. The State Department did not immediately respond when asked if the figure was correct or to provide details on its new foreign aid plans. In South Africa, dread is building as the world's largest HIV program begins resorting to cutting doses, dragging out waiting time for appointments and missing testing targets. The USAID cuts have stripped more than $400 million a year from South Africa's program through the President's Emergency Relief Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative started by the George W. Bush administration credited with saving more than 25 million lives in Africa and beyond. A complex system — that works President John F. Kennedy and Congress started USAID in the early 1960s. It was part of an emphasis on foreign aid as a tool of diplomacy and a belief that helping other countries become more stable and prosperous benefited the United States in kind. Kennedy had complained that State Department diplomats weren't nimble enough at that. He wanted operations experts. A study published in the Lancet medical journal on Monday gave an idea of its impact more recently: USAID helped prevent 91 million deaths worldwide between 2001 and 2021, researchers based in Spain, the U.S. and elsewhere estimated. That was led by more than halving of the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria and tropical diseases. The study projected that USAID's dismantling and deep funding cuts would lead to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children. Natsios, the USAID administrator under Bush, ticks off a list of fundamental, systematic, and measurable improvements made by USAID around the world: USAID support played a vital role for agriculture's Green Revolution, credited with saving 1 billion lives around the world, including by developing and providing improved crops. USAID's building of a famine early warning system and other developments have sharply reduced the number and severity of famines. USAID rapid response teams have scrambled to shut down epidemics before they spread, including in a 2014 Ebola outbreak that killed thousands in Africa. USAID work with other global partners has strengthened health systems around the world, contributing to reducing deaths among children under 5 by 69% since 1990. Funding for many of those programs has been cut off or reduced under Trump. USAID and U.S. foreign assistance had been 'a massive and very complex system, that works. That works,' Natsios said. 'And now that system has been destroyed.' ___ Pronczuk reported from Dakar. Evelyne Musambi in Nairobi and Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg contributed.
The Hill
6 hours ago
- Health
- The Hill
USAID cuts could result in 14M additional deaths: Research
A study published Monday found that the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) could result in more than 14 million additional deaths globally by 2030, including 4.5 million deaths of children younger than 5 years. The findings were released hours before Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency would officially shut down following President Trump's executive order earlier this year aiming to dismantle the agency. Many of the deaths are expected to occur in the African countries of Nigeria and Uganda due to the loss of funding for maternal and child health aid, in addition to epidemic and emerging disease surveillance. Researchers found that those two countries would contribute to 107,000 additional deaths globally in just one year of a disrupted malaria-control supply chain. The end of USAID pulls funding from non-governmental organizations including the UN World Food Programme, which closed its southern Africa office, placing 27 million people at risk of hunger amid the country's worst drought in decades, the study says. Former Presidents Obama and Bush have been critical of the Trump administration for the USAID closure, which also threatens to scale back America's role in the global fight against HIV and AIDS. 'Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it's a tragedy. Because it's some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world,' Obama said, according to The Associated Press. Rubio on Tuesday defended the shuttering of USAID, arguing the agency's objectives were often left unmet. 'Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown,' Rubio wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. 'This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end.' The Monday study found that USAID-supported efforts have helped to prevent more than 91 million deaths across all age groups, including 30 million deaths among children. It said high levels of USAID funding were associated with a 15 percent reduction in mortality across all ages, a 65 percent reduction in mortality from HIV/AIDS, a 51 percent reduction from malaria, and a 50 percent reduction from neglected tropical diseases. In 2022, USAID was responsible for more than half of nutrition interventions, food distribution and agricultural interventions globally. 'Therefore, the impact of USAID on health and mortality reduction extends beyond its direct funding of health programmes and interventions,' the study's authors wrote. 'In particular, USAID's support for poverty alleviation, education, and water and sanitation interventions—among many others—might have had a substantial effect on health outcomes, also considering the broader spillover effects these interventions can have on entire communities,' it added. 'Indeed, poverty alleviation interventions alone have demonstrated important effects on reducing both adult and child mortality.' The research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, UK Medical Research Council and EU Horizon Europe.
