Last spring and summer, The Fulcrum published a 30-part series on Project 2025. Now that Donald Trump’s second term has commenced, The Fulcrum has started Part 2 of the series.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is on life support, which is ironic given how much support for life the agency has historically provided. Absent a dramatic save by the federal courts, its days are probably numbered.
What is going on? How did we get to the point where the premier governmental aid organization in the world is now vilified by the leader of the very country that practically invented humanitarian assistance? Not that long ago, both Democrats and Republicans sang USAID’s praises. It represented the rare meeting of the partisan minds. Not any longer, it seems.
President Trump signed an Executive Order titled "Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid"on his first day in office, January 20, 2025. This order initiated a 90-day pause on all U.S. foreign development assistance to assess the efficiency and alignment of these programs with U.S. foreign policy. The order also called for reviews of each foreign assistance program to determine whether to continue, modify, or cease them.
The executive order was followed by some notable statements by Trump and his unofficial Secretary of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk. Musk stated on social media that "USAID is a criminal organization"and Trump echoed Musk’s sentiments by saying, "The agency is run by a bunch of radical lunatics."
Given Trump's statements while campaigning for President, none of this should be surprising. What is astonishing is that even the playbook that most Americans believed was President Trump’s roadmap—Project 2025—underestimated the stampede. We can now say, with some confidence, that Project 2025 represents a more moderate and gradual dismantling of “inside the beltway” customs compared to the President’s actual intentions.
In just the past three weeks, the White House has issued a dizzying array of executive orders, many of which target longstanding organizations with honorable and critical missions. Halting USAID’s work has been breathtakingly bold. Foreign assistance projects have been shuttered overnight. Civil servants by the thousands have been told to stay home, their jobs in jeopardy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, abruptly, and possibly illegally, assumed control of the independent agency. Local partners in global south countries have been left to fend for themselves.
The reaction has been equally swift. Democrats launched warnings—“watch out FEMA; you’re next”—while Republicans heralded the isolationist, “America First” attitude. The result? The political fissure between the left and the right has only widened.
The swiftness of action and the laser focus on foreign aid fit the Trump agenda. USAID is an easy scapegoat for Trump’s “ America First ” platform. To be sure, the accounts of “ waste and abuse ” in foreign assistance—DEI projects in Serbia and Ireland, transgender artistry in Colombia and Peru, for example—rankle those on the right. Never mind that most of the “abuses” cited by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt are not USAID-funded, these expenditures still represent the type of taxpayer-backed initiatives that galvanize the Republican base. Mentioning them with disdain and exasperation is good for the GOP brand. Campaigns will now be won and lost on whether a candidate believes “USAID is [or was] a criminal organization.”
This is not to say that none of the practices at USAID warrant examination. Some should be reformed and others eliminated. Indeed, there are reasonable examples of misused or mismanaged funding. There are examples of foreign aid being used as a tool for political leverage that results in the support of regimes that do not align with U.S. values. Corruption in assistance programs does happen. But, what is needed is a non-political, unbiased analysis of the problems and how best to correct them. Not the hatchet and elimination approach that Trump’s and Musk’s rhetoric implies will occur.
The political circus that this debate about USAID has become raises a bigger concern, one that transcends partisan bickering. I’ll call it the “whiplash effect” of dramatic and swift executive action. In short, citizens on both sides of the aisle should be aware of the long-term damage done to America’s reputation when the president acts unilaterally and with an abruptness not seen before.
The damage can be described in three parts:
1. The credibility of the American political brand across the globe suffers. A new administration has earned the right to change the direction of the political ship. But a frenzied, sudden, and dramatic change in policy sends a message to foreign adversaries and allies alike that they should be skeptical of any promises made in the past. In contrast, the gradual evolution of those partnerships, even if they differ from administration to administration, strengthens American credibility.
2. Partisanship remains the only coin of the realm. When partisanship completely trumps everything else in politics—institutions, elections, justice, reason, equality, decency—the American citizen is the big loser. USAID programs were funded by Congress. For Congressmembers to collectively shrug at the instantaneous halting of, say, vaccine distribution abroad is deeply troubling. A majority of Americans, even those on the right, believe in most vaccines…and most humanitarian efforts.
3. America is losing its moral standing. In an otherwise bleak report on America’s moral compass, one finding remains hopeful: one in five Americans (by far the highest percentage) believe that “consideration of others” is the most important moral indicator. I will assume that such generosity also applies to the entire human race and not just those residing between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Pulling up our foreign assistance tents will erode any moral currency we still possess.
Much has been written about the noble mission of USAID, of its life-saving programs, and its capacity to build alliances and friends around the world. Even so, it seems hard to imagine that Democrats and Republicans will now agree on what exactly to do with USAID. What I hope we all can agree on is that the whiplash effect evidenced by the sudden dismantling of America’s foreign assistance arm will have long-term consequences. The soul of America should not be so easily sacrificed.
Now is a critical moment. Congress and other political actors must assert their voices during this 90-day pause to ensure that we have a non-partisan assessment of USAID programs, one that results in much-needed improvements and not wholesale elimination.
Samples of Phase 1 articles about Project 2025
- A cross-partisan approach
- An Introduction
- Rumors of Project 2025’s Demise are Greatly Exaggerated
- Department of Education
- Managing the bureaucracy
- Department of Defense
- Department of Energy
- The Environmental Protection Agency
- Education Savings Accounts
- Department of Veterans Affairs
- The Department of Homeland Security
- U.S. Agency for International Development
- Affirmative action
- A federal Parents' Bill of Rights
- Department of Labor
- Intelligence community
- Department of State
- Department of the Interior
- Federal Communications Commission
- A perspective from Europe
- Department of Health and Human Services
- Voting Rights Act
- Another look at the Federal Communications Commission
- A Christo-fascist manifesto designing a theocracy
- Voters oppose the far-right playbook
- The Schedule F threat to democracy
- The Department of Justice
- A blueprint for Christian nationalist regime change
- How anti-trans proposals could impact all families
- The Federal Reserve
- A threat to equitable education
Beau Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair of Political Science at Skidmore College and author of “A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law.”
