Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Project 2025: U.S. Agency for International Development

USAID flag outside a building
J. David Ake/Getty Images

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.”

This is part of a series offering a nonpartisan counter to Project 2025, a conservative guideline to reforming government and policymaking during the first 180 days of a second Trump administration. The Fulcrum's cross partisan analysis of Project 2025 relies on unbiased critical thinking, reexamines outdated assumptions, and uses reason, scientific evidence, and data in analyzing and critiquing Project 2025.

South African divestment is the most famous, and likely most successful, global pressure campaign in recent memory. The enemy was the minority white elites who conceived, implemented and perpetuated apartheid, the incomprehensibly malevolent scheme of legally sanctioned racial separation. These racists got their just desserts when company after company, government after government, and individual after individual pulled their resources. Eventually, the South African economy strained, leaders were toppled and the country began its long march toward moral reclamation.


Except for one problem: Black South Africans, the very souls who were supposedly rescued by the international effort, also suffered. When industries fell, Blacks people were the first to lose their jobs. When the economy teetered, money for education, health care, public services and the like diminished. Even today, almost 40 years after Little Steven refused to play Sun City ” Black South Africans are still trying to catch up.

Many of my generation, me included, participated in the boycotts. I would do so again; apartheid was that deplorable. But now I go into any international development conversation with my eyes wide open. And that is what troubles me about Max Primorac’s discussion of international development assistance in “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” (aka Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump administration). His conservative ideas, if realized, will cost local jobs, much-needed public services and, yes, even real lives.

There are two basic problems with Project 2025’s plan for future foreign aid:

  1. It will result in a significant decrease in assistance to global south countries (especially if the spigot is turned down overnight), will have a devastating impact on the fragile economies of these regions, peoples’ overall health and well-being, and, in the most resource-scarce parts of the world, the very lives of the vulnerable.
  2. The qualification that aid is contingent on some sort of commitment to American conservative values — anti-abortion, a single conception of family, Christian-based religiosity, rejection of gender identity and so on — will have precisely the opposite effect from what Primorac and his Republican colleagues intend.

Let’s consider each in turn.

First, Project 2025 aims to reduce America’s investment abroad. Primorac refers to it as “streamlining” but it basically amounts to a neo-isolationist approach designed to whittle down budget of the U.S. Agency for International Development. “The next conservative Administration,” he writes, “should scale back USAID’s global footprint by, at a minimum, returning to the agency’s 2019 pre-COVID budget level.”

There is so much waste out there, Primorac says, that a Trump administration can refund billions of dollars to the American taxpayer just by holding non-governmental organizations accountable. The Trump administration can further reduce the USAID budget, Primorac continues, by making conservative cultural values a condition for sponsorship. The implication is that not all assistance programs will abide by right wing musts, and thus dollars will stay home.

That’s reasonable … in theory. Sure, we can all agree that reducing waste and stamping out corruption are good things. But understanding where the waste resides and the corruption plagues are not always apparent, and, in the meantime, the heavy burden of diminished aid rests squarely on local personnel whose employment options are already limited.

Don’t misunderstand me: I am not advocating for continued waste and corruption. What I am advocating for is the local nurse in Burkina Faso whose job it is to administer vaccines as part of the Gavi program, or the Turkmen engineer who is a critical partner in USAID’s Regional Water and Vulnerable Environment Project, or the thousands of native aid workers in the roughly 75 humanitarian emergency areas USAID supports each year. These people inevitably become the casualties of a decreased foreign aid budget. They just do.

Trouble also brews when the U.S. government puts too many conditions on foreign assistance. Primorac talks of the need to “deradicalize” USAID’s programs and structures, by which he means eliminate the Biden era measures intended to expand reproductive rights and improve women’s health, combat climate change, acknowledge different identities and foster democracy.

Ironically, though, the author insists on replacing the radical liberal agenda with an equally sweeping conservative one. Primorac encourages a future Trump administration to withhold aid to any government or non-government actor who “promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systemic racism.” Gone then are all DEI initiatives, conceptions of family other the traditional nuclear one, support for religions that snub the New Testament, prescriptions for a healthier planet and, yes, even possibly life-saving vaccines (against measles, TB, meningitis, yellow fever, COVID-19, HIV, diphtheria, hepatitis, etc.). Vaccines, after all, are a favorite conservative scapegoat.

Enter China. Primorac is adamant that “countering China’s development challenge” is a top Trump priority. China has spent tens of billions of dollars on global south development projects in the last five years alone. They won’t stop. In fact, the People’s Republic will likely invest more heavily in Latin America, Africa and Asia over the next decade. Which leads us to ask: Which government does Primorac think will step in when the United States refuses to sponsor green energy initiatives on these continents? Which regime will pounce in Muslim-majority regions when America launches its conservative crusade? Which global power does he imagine will fill the void when the significantly reduced USAID budget forces program closures? I think the answer is pretty obvious.

In the end, a segment of the American population on both the left and the right regularly complains that we can’t do everything around the world, that our resources are finite and our altruism underappreciated. True. But the answer is not to retreat; it’s not to hibernate. Primorac is correct: We should remain vigilant and ruthless about waste and corruption. But we should also maintain and even slightly increase current funding levels. And we should certainly sheath righteous moralism. Indeed, in moments like these it helps to recall the plight of our Black South African brethren.

More articles about Project 2025

    Read More

    The politics of Donald Trump’s war on cities

    An armed law enforcement agent sits in an armored vehicle as residents of Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood confront law enforcement at a gas station after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents allegedly detained an unidentified man riding in his car, in Chicago, Illinois, on Oct. 4, 2025.

    (AFP via Getty Images)

    The politics of Donald Trump’s war on cities

    A masked, federal agent in combat uniform leans out the passenger window of a Jeep and points a military rifle directly at the face of a U.S. citizen in Chicago, simply for recording him.

    It should send a chill down every American’s spine. President Trump’s revenge on America’s liberal cities is an authoritarian abuse of power. Americans in 2025 should not have to live in police states or with the National Guard patrolling their streets or pointing weapons at them.

    Keep ReadingShow less
    Trump Declares War on Democratic Cities

    People rally around a group of interfaith clergy members as they hold a press conference downtown to denounce the Trump administration's proposed immigration sweeps in the city on Sept. 8, 2025 in Chicago.

    Scott Olson, Getty Images

    Trump Declares War on Democratic Cities

    When presidents deploy the National Guard, it’s usually to handle hurricanes, riots, or disasters. Donald Trump has found a darker use for it: punishing political opponents.

    Over recent months, Trump has sent federalized Guard units into Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and now Chicago—where roughly 300 Illinois Guardsmen have been federalized and another 400 troops brought in from Texas. He calls it “law and order,” but the pattern is clear: Democratic-led cities are being targeted as enemy territory. Governors and mayors have objected, but Trump is testing how far he can stretch Title 10, the section of U.S. law that allows the president to federalize the National Guard in limited cases of invasion or rebellion—a law meant for national crisis, not political theater.

    Keep ReadingShow less
    We Are Chicago

    Thousands of protesters packed Daley Plaza and marched through the streets of Chicago, April 05, 2025.

    Photo by Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images for Community Change Action

    We Are Chicago

    Just after 1 a.m. on Chicago’s South Side, residents woke to pounding on doors, smoke in the hallways, and armed federal agents flooding their building. The raid was part of a broader immigration crackdown that has brought Border Patrol and ICE teams into the city using SWAT-style tactics. Journalists documented door breaches and dozens detained; federal officials confirmed at least 37 arrests on immigration charges. Residents described chaos, kids in shock, and damaged apartments. As of this writing, none of the 37 arrested have been charged with violent crimes or proven ties to the Tren de Aragua gang—the stated target. (Reuters, Chicago Sun-Times)

    City and state leaders are pushing back. Chicago’s mayor created “ICE-free zones” on city property, limiting access without a warrant. Illinois and Chicago then sued to block the administration’s plan to add National Guard troops to “protect federal assets” and support federal operations, calling the move unlawful and escalatory. The legal fight is active; the state has asked courts to stop what it calls an “invasion.” (AP News, TIME)

    Keep ReadingShow less
    Laredo at the Crossroads of Border Policy

    Laredo police car

    Credit: Ashley Soriano

    Laredo at the Crossroads of Border Policy

    LAREDO, Texas — The United States Border Patrol has deployed military Stryker combat tanks along the Rio Grande River in Laredo, Texas. The Laredo Police Department reports that human stash houses — once a common sight during the Biden administration — have largely disappeared. And the Webb County medical examiner reports fewer migrant deaths.

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection data show illegal crossings have dropped to a five-year low under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policies. What’s happening on the ground at the border supports the numbers, and the decline is palpable at Dr. Corinne Stern’s office, as migrant deaths are also falling.

    Keep ReadingShow less