United States Agency for International Development

Based on Wikipedia: United States Agency for International Development

The Agency That Saved 92 Million Lives—Then Got Shut Down in a Weekend

In the span of twenty years, one American government agency saved an estimated 92 million human lives. That's roughly the population of Germany. Among those saved were 30 million children under the age of five—kids who would have died from preventable diseases, malnutrition, or lack of basic medical care.

In February 2025, Elon Musk called that agency a "criminal organization" and announced he was shutting it down.

This is the story of the United States Agency for International Development, known as USAID—how it came to exist, what it actually did, and how it was dismantled in a matter of weeks despite congressional laws saying it couldn't be.

Born from Cold War Competition

To understand USAID, you have to understand the world of 1961. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union wasn't just about nuclear missiles and spy satellites. It was a battle for hearts and minds across the developing world. Both superpowers understood that newly independent nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America would shape the future of global politics.

The Soviets had a playbook: send engineers, build infrastructure, train local leaders, and create economic dependencies that would pull countries into their orbit. The Americans needed their own approach.

Enter John F. Kennedy, inaugurated as president on January 20, 1961. Within weeks, he was moving fast. On March 1st, he created the Peace Corps by executive order. Three weeks later, he sent a message to Congress declaring that the 1960s should be a "Decade of Development." His vision was ambitious: unify all American development assistance under a single agency that could compete with Soviet influence through what we now call "soft power."

Soft power is the ability to attract and persuade rather than coerce. Instead of threatening countries with military force, you win them over by building schools, training doctors, and helping farmers grow more food. When a nation's children learn to read using American-funded textbooks, when its hospitals run on American-supplied medicine, that creates goodwill that lasts generations.

Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act in September 1961, and Kennedy signed it into law that November. The Agency for International Development was born—initially styled as A.I.D., later rebranded as USAID.

What Development Aid Actually Looks Like

When people hear "foreign aid," they often imagine cargo planes dropping pallets of cash into distant countries. The reality is far more complex and, frankly, more interesting.

USAID operated missions in over 100 countries. These weren't just offices pushing paper. They were operational hubs staffed by specialists in public health, agriculture, education, environmental science, and democratic governance. By 2001 to 2024, the agency was running on an average budget of $23 billion annually—substantial, but less than 1% of the federal budget.

Consider the health programs alone. USAID was a primary funder of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR. Launched under George W. Bush in 2003, PEPFAR became the largest health initiative ever undertaken by one country to address a single disease. Before PEPFAR, an HIV diagnosis in sub-Saharan Africa was essentially a death sentence. The program changed that, providing antiretroviral medications to millions who would otherwise have died.

By 2025, roughly 20 million people worldwide depended on PEPFAR-funded treatment to stay alive. Among them were 500,000 children.

Beyond HIV, USAID supported vaccination campaigns, maternal health programs, and efforts to eradicate diseases that Americans rarely think about but that kill millions in developing countries—things like cholera, tuberculosis, and malaria. The agency helped eliminate smallpox, one of humanity's greatest public health achievements.

The Numbers Are Staggering

Let's return to that 92 million figure, because it deserves closer examination.

Researchers estimated that from 2001 to 2021—just twenty years—USAID funding saved between 86 and 98 million people. The midpoint is 92 million. That works out to somewhere between 4.1 and 4.7 million lives saved every single year.

Think about that for a moment. Every year, the equivalent of the entire population of Los Angeles and Chicago combined didn't die because of programs this agency funded.

Among those saved were between 26 and 35 million children under five—the most vulnerable human beings on the planet. Children who would have died from diarrheal diseases, respiratory infections, or simple lack of nutrition instead grew up, went to school, and built lives.

This wasn't charity in the condescending sense. It was strategic investment with humanitarian benefits. A child who survives childhood is a future farmer, teacher, entrepreneur, or government official. Healthy populations build stable economies. Stable economies make better trading partners. Countries that aren't wracked by famine and disease are less likely to descend into civil wars that create refugee crises and terrorist breeding grounds.

The Bureaucratic Complexity

USAID's organizational status was always somewhat peculiar, and that peculiarity would matter enormously in 2025.

When Kennedy created the agency in 1961, it was established within the State Department but with "administrative autonomy." Think of it like a subsidiary company—technically owned by a parent corporation but running its own operations day to day.

Then came 1998. Congress passed the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, which did something legally significant: it established USAID as an "independent executive agency." The act gave the president 60 days to either abolish or reorganize the agency. President Bill Clinton chose reorganization. USAID kept its independence, though its administrator had to "report to and be under the direct authority and foreign policy guidance of the Secretary of State."

Here's the crucial legal point: after that 1998 reorganization, USAID could only be closed down by an act of Congress. The executive branch alone couldn't do it.

This distinction between what a president can do and what requires congressional action is fundamental to American governance. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse and the authority to create and dissolve agencies. Presidents can reorganize, redirect, and reshape—but there are limits.

Those limits were about to be tested.

January 2025: The Freeze

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as president. Four days later, on January 24th, he ordered a near-total freeze on all foreign aid.

Three days after that, the USAID website went dark. The official government website, containing decades of reports, data, and program information, simply stopped working.

On January 30th, Elon Musk—who had been tasked with leading government cost-cutting efforts through something called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—made a demand. He wanted Jason Gray, the acting administrator of USAID at the time, to shut off email and cellphone access for USAID workers around the world.

This wasn't just about cutting costs. USAID staff were deployed globally, including in conflict zones and unstable regions. Cutting their communications could literally endanger their lives. Gray refused, saying exactly that.

By the next day, Gray was removed from his post.

The Man with the Conflict of Interest

On February 3rd, Musk announced via social media that he and Trump were "in the process of shutting down USAID." He called the agency a "criminal organization" that was "beyond repair."

There was a problem with Musk leading this charge, and it wasn't subtle. USAID's Inspector General—the internal watchdog responsible for investigating waste, fraud, and abuse—had previously launched a probe into Starlink, Musk's satellite internet company. Having Musk decide the fate of an agency that was investigating his own company was, critics pointed out, a textbook conflict of interest.

Andrew Natsios, who had served as USAID administrator under George W. Bush, didn't mince words when speaking to PBS:

"With all due respect, none of these people know anything about AID. What does Musk know about international development? Absolutely nothing. He has a bunch of young kids in their 20s. They don't know. They're techies. They don't know anything about international development. They don't know anything about the Global South."

Also on February 3rd, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Trump had appointed him as Acting Administrator of USAID and that the agency would be merged into the State Department.

The legality of this was immediately disputed. Remember that 1998 law? Congress had established USAID as an independent agency. Could the president simply absorb it into another department without congressional approval?

The Human Cost Begins

On February 6th, 2025, at 11:59 PM Eastern time, virtually all USAID employees were placed on administrative leave. Out of more than 10,000 staff members, only 294 would be retained.

Trump declared that agency leaders were "radical left lunatics." The State Department ordered a halt to virtually all projects—even programs that had helped eradicate smallpox and prevented millions of HIV cases.

The freeze on PEPFAR and other HIV relief programs threatened treatment access for 20 million people. Without their medications, many of those people would develop AIDS and die.

Clinical trials ground to a halt. Over 30 medical studies were suddenly paused—research into HIV, malaria, cholera, cervical cancer, and tuberculosis. Some participants had medical devices implanted in their bodies for the trials. They were now cut off from the researchers who had put them there, a likely violation of the Declaration of Helsinki, the foundational document of medical research ethics that requires investigators to protect their subjects.

The effects rippled outward. Wartime assistance in Ukraine stopped. Hospital support in Syria ceased. Education programs in Mali went dark. Conservation efforts in the Amazon rainforest halted.

The Forgotten War Gets Worse

Sudan was already experiencing what journalists call the "Forgotten War"—a brutal civil conflict that receives far less international attention than Ukraine or Gaza. By early 2025, an estimated 3 million children under age five were suffering from acute malnutrition.

In September 2024, the Biden administration had planned $424 million in new humanitarian assistance for Sudan, with $276 million flowing through USAID. The 90-day freeze interrupted all of that.

When you stop feeding malnourished children, they don't politely wait for bureaucratic disputes to resolve themselves. They starve.

The Early Warning Systems Go Blind

One of USAID's less visible but critically important functions was funding early warning systems for famines. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, known as FEWS NET, had been operating since the 1980s. It was considered the "gold standard" of famine prediction, providing projections up to eight months into the future.

In early March, CNN reported that FEWS NET had stopped operating. Its data was pulled offline.

Famines don't appear overnight. They develop over months as crops fail, food prices rise, and vulnerable populations exhaust their coping mechanisms. Early warning systems allow humanitarian organizations to pre-position supplies and begin interventions before people start dying in large numbers. Without them, the international community flies blind—responding only after famine conditions have already taken hold and mass death has begun.

The Legal Battles

Multiple lawsuits challenged the administration's actions. The central argument: the president was violating separation of powers, the Constitution's Take Care Clause (which requires the president to faithfully execute the laws), and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Initially, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols—whom Trump himself had nominated in 2019—seemed receptive. He indicated he would issue a temporary restraining order to pause the mass layoffs and prevent the removal of workers from overseas posts.

Then, on February 21st, Nichols reversed himself. He cleared the way for the layoffs to proceed, though he did require that workers abroad be given 30 days to return to the United States at government expense. This was the same judge who had previously acknowledged that the administration's policies threatened the safety of USAID workers deployed in unstable regions.

Other legal actions produced different results. On February 13th, a district court ruled that the government must pay $2 billion for projects already completed. The case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 on March 5th that the federal government must indeed pay for completed work. The majority included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three Democratic appointees.

But there was a catch. According to reporting by the Associated Press, the payments weren't actually being made because DOGE had disabled the payment system. The court had ordered payment, but the executive branch had simply broken the mechanism for paying.

The Constitutional Questions Multiply

On March 18th, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled that Musk's and DOGE's actions in placing USAID employees on leave were likely unconstitutional. He issued a preliminary injunction against further employees being placed on leave, buildings being closed, or websites having their contents deleted.

Ten days later, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled Judge Chuang on the preliminary injunction—but without deciding the merits of the case. Judge Marvin Quattlebaum wrote that "none of this is to say that plaintiffs will not be able to develop evidence of unconstitutional conduct as the case progresses. Time will tell."

The courts were, in essence, allowing the dismantling to continue while reserving judgment on whether it was legal.

The Final Numbers

On March 10th, Secretary Rubio announced the results of the administration's review: 83% of USAID's programs would be cancelled, involving approximately 5,200 contracts.

Some aid was restored in April—food assistance to 14 nations including Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, and Jordan. But aid was not restored to Yemen or Afghanistan, with the State Department citing concerns that funding might benefit terrorist groups like the Houthis and Taliban.

On March 28th, Rubio formally notified Congress that USAID would be dissolved and absorbed into the State Department. He argued that "USAID strayed from its original mission long ago. As a result, the gains were too few and the costs were too high."

Since July 1, 2025, USAID has ceased operations as an independent agency. What remains of U.S. foreign assistance is now administered directly by the State Department.

The Geopolitical Vacuum

Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, offered a perspective that cut against his party's actions:

"I have felt for a long time that USAID is our way to combat the Belt and Road Initiative, which is China's effort to really gain influence around the world, including Africa and South America in the Western Hemisphere."

China's Belt and Road Initiative is a trillion-dollar program of infrastructure investment across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Since 2000, African countries alone have received over $182 billion in Chinese loans, with interest rates averaging about 3%. When China builds a port, a highway, or a power plant in a developing country, that country develops economic ties and political sympathies that serve Chinese interests.

In February 2025, as USAID was being shut down, China pledged an additional $4.4 million to de-mining efforts in Cambodia. It wasn't a large sum, but the symbolism was clear: America was retreating from the development space that China was eager to fill.

When a devastating earthquake struck Myanmar on March 28th, a former USAID mission head in that country offered a blunt assessment:

"This is the new normal. This is what it looks like when the United States sits on the international sidelines, when the United States is a weaker international player, when it cedes the space to other global players like China."

Michael Sobolik, a China analyst at the conservative Hudson Institute and a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz, put it more colorfully:

"Sure, USAID was doing some highly questionable stuff that's worthy of review. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Beijing is hoping we do exactly that."

The American Farmers

There's a constituency you might not expect to care about foreign aid: American farmers. But the American Farm Bureau Federation issued a statement noting that "USAID plays a critical role in reducing hunger around the world while sourcing markets for the surplus foods America's farmers and ranchers grow."

This is the less-discussed economic reality of food aid. When the United States sends food assistance abroad, much of that food is American-grown. Farmers in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa benefit from those purchases. Food aid isn't just charity—it's also agricultural policy, supporting American farm prices and rural economies.

What Remains

USAID still exists legally. Congress created it as an independent agency in 1998, and only Congress can dissolve it. The administration's actions reorganized it, defunded it, and absorbed its remaining functions into the State Department—but the legal entity persists, a kind of bureaucratic ghost.

Whether the courts will ultimately rule the administration's actions constitutional remains to be seen. The legal questions are genuinely complex, touching on presidential power, congressional authority, and the administrative state. These cases may take years to resolve.

What's not in dispute is the human impact. Twenty million people depended on PEPFAR for HIV treatment. Millions of children depended on food aid. Researchers conducting medical trials were cut off from their subjects. Early warning systems that predicted famines went dark.

In the span of two decades, USAID saved an estimated 92 million lives. In the span of two months, it was effectively destroyed.

The strategic consequences—China's growing influence, America's diminished soft power, the loss of goodwill built over generations—will unfold over years and decades. But for the children in Sudan who needed food, the HIV patients who needed medication, and the researchers who needed to complete their trials, the consequences arrived immediately.

This is what it looks like when the world's largest foreign aid agency goes away.