The dust is settling on the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, providing the first clear view of DOGE’s work product. The results are devastating for the mission of helping our allies become healthier and wealthier — a mission that benefits Americans by controlling disease, strengthening alliances and growing markets for our products.
The reckless destruction of USAID is in fact a travesty for those who want more efficiency in government, because DOGE’s methods and results discredited a rare opportunity to substantially cut red tape while improving services.
I’m a former USAID employee who worked with colleagues to improve the agency from within, including by filing a whistleblower lawsuit. I and many talented colleagues were then laid off in January as part of Elon Musk’s woodchipper assault on the agency.
After the ensuing two-month “review” — in which methods and criteria were kept hidden — the State Department released its list of 5,341 cancelled awards, totaling $28.8 billion in planned aid, and submitted to Congress plans to absorb USAID’s remaining portfolio. The abrupt stoppage of so much aid for the stated reason of “the convenience” of the government, rather than performance or strategic value, is causing well-documented damage to human lives and to America’s reputation, with disease outbreaks and hunger predictably increasing.
Worse, the inflicted pain comes with little gain; the savings total around two weeks of Pentagon spending. It is penny-wise and pound-foolish. When retired four-star Gen. James Mattis said, “If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition,” he could have been foreshadowing the consequences of DOGE’s destruction of USAID.
All government agencies need some reform, and my former USAID colleagues and I battled our fair share of bureaucracy to get the job done. But its valuable mission needed rehabilitation, not decapitation.
The unfolding damage can now only be mitigated if Congress adheres to its constitutional duty to check executive branch overreach. The courts are proving too slow. While the slim Republican congressional majority may feel pressure to rubberstamp the administration’s proposals at USAID and elsewhere, that would cement irreparable harm and set a dangerous precedent.
Around 60 percent of Americans once supported the idea of DOGE, but 60 percent now disapprove of its execution. While the administration apparently believed it needed to “move fast and break things,” an overhaul conducted so quickly has predictably proved inexact, with extensive collateral damage.
Chainsaws may have their purpose, but not in billion-dollar budgets. It takes work to distinguish good contracts from lesser ones, talented employees from ineffective ones. Thousands of gifted Americans, along with 10,000 foreign nationals who helped USAID do hard work in difficult countries, will be fired by August despite often stellar performance. Undeserved unemployment is cruel and bad policy.
The firing of Pete Marocco, a MAGA loyalist, as the acting USAID lead in April — his fifth departure from Trump administration jobs after only a few months — may signal quiet recognition that the overhaul went too far and needs to be reeled in. As Congress considers whether to intervene in USAID’s reform, it can begin with one of the least divisive of all issues: child survival.
The numbers reveal how problematic DOGE’s results are at USAID. Each year, around 5 million children under age five die globally from preventable causes, such as unsafe childbirth, malaria, malnutrition, dehydration after diarrhea or pneumonia preventable by vaccines or treatable by antibiotics. For example, over 100,000 children still die every year from measles, and around 2.5 million annual measles deaths globally are prevented by vaccination. Preventable child deaths are much larger than the 630,000 people globally who still die from HIV/AIDS every year.
Yet the Trump administration proposes to eliminate nearly $1.75 billion annual funding for maternal and child health programs, including its highly leveraged support for vaccines, and abruptly terminated over 90 percent of existing work for these vulnerable populations. Meanwhile, the proposed cuts to programs combating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are certainly damaging, with widespread disruptions and layoffs already reported that put at risk the tremendous gains made against these diseases, but are at least not complete.
Why the selective eliminations? Simple partisanship and inattention to detail are the most straightforward explanations, which again signal why Congress must step in. America’s current HIV, tuberculosis and malaria programs began during the second Bush administration, while our maternal and child health programs date to the 1980s. Since 2004, America’s HIV programs saved the lives of more than 25 million people living with the disease, and prevented at least 6 million children from being born with HIV. These are astonishing and cost-effective achievements worthy of continued taxpayer support.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has noted that America makes friends when we prevent people and their children from dying. Instead, DOGE almost literally threw the baby out with the bathwater at USAID.
The administration also canceled most of the awards that help developing countries protect endangered species. Supporting biodiversity and sustainable agriculture in poor countries is morally right, but it also benefits America. In the aftermath of the latest Ebola outbreak in Uganda, evidence is mounting that destroying wild habitats is associated with that disease’s emergence as a human pathogen. As we have learned from Ebola and COVID-19, thousands of viruses are circulating in wildlife that could suddenly upend human lives.
The Trump administration is running amok with a chainsaw, and the costs are becoming clear. Congress must reign in the executive branch’s overreach, not rubberstamp it.
Rob Cohen worked at USAID for eight years as an epidemiologist, including serving as acting deputy chief of staff of the USAID Global Health Bureau in 2020. He filed a successful whistleblower lawsuit against USAID in 2022.
