United News of Bangladesh

The Trump administration said it is eliminating more than 90 per cent of the US Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall US assistance around the world, putting numbers on its plans to eliminate the majority of US development and humanitarian help abroad. The cuts detailed by the administration would leave few surviving USAID projects for advocates to try to save in what are ongoing court battles with the administration. The Trump administration outlined its plans in both an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press and filings in one of those federal lawsuits Wednesday. The Supreme Court intervened in that case late Wednesday and temporarily blocked a court order requiring the administration to release billions of dollars in foreign aid by midnight. Why Trump administration may want Ukraine’s minerals Wednesday’s disclosures also give an idea of the scale of the administration’s retreat from US aid and development assistance overseas, and from decades of US policy that foreign aid helps US interests by stabilising other countries and economies and building alliances. The memo said officials were “clearing significant waste stemming from decades of institutional drift.” More changes are planned in how USAID and the State Department deliver foreign assistance, it said, “to use taxpayer dollars wisely to advance American interests.”

Forced leaves began in Washington and worldwide Friday for most employees of the US Agency for International Development, as federal workers associations turned to the courts to try to roll back Trump administration orders that have dismantled most of the agency and US- funded aid programs around the world. Under a Trump administration plan, the agency is to be left with fewer than 300 workers out of thousands. Two current USAID employees and one former senior USAID official told The Associated Press of the administration's plan, presented to remaining senior officials of the agency Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to a Trump administration order barring USAID staffers from talking to anyone outside their agency. The agency is being slashed back from more than 8,000 direct hires and contractors. They, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired employees abroad, would run the few life-saving programs that the administration says it intends to keep going for now. It was not immediately clear whether the reduction to 300 would be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing more workers to return after what the Trump administration says is a review of which aid and development programs it wants to resume. Trump's Gaza plan shocks the world but finds support in Israel The administration this week gave almost all USAID staffers posted overseas 30 days, starting Friday, to return to the US, with the government paying for their travel and moving costs. Workers who choose to stay longer, unless they received a specific hardship waiver, might have to cover their own expenses, a notice on the USAID website said late Thursday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a trip to the Dominican Republic on Thursday that the US government will continue providing foreign aid. “But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest,” he told reporters. The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have targeted USAID hardest so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programs. Since President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, a sweeping funding freeze has shut most of the agency’s programs worldwide, and almost all of its workers have been placed on administrative leave or furloughed. Musk and Trump have spoken of eliminating USAID as an independent agency and moving surviving programs under the State Department. Democratic lawmakers and others call the move illegal without congressional approval. The same argument was made by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees in their lawsuit, which asks the federal court in Washington to compel the reopening of USAID’s buildings, return its staffers to work and restore funding. Government officials “failed to acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of their actions, both as they pertain to American workers, the lives of millions around the world, and to US national interests," the suit says.