Whether or not you agree or disagree with the merits of USAID is beside the point. A single unelected and unqualified person must not be given the authority to dismantle a massive US government program.
elections have consequences. We have a representative democracy and administrative employees serve at the pleasure of the head of the administration. "shoulds" and "musts" only go as far as the political will to enforce them. The overwhelming majority of the electorate seems to care about how expensive their personal lifestyle is with various takes on individual liberty vs enforced morality used as wedge issues (neither party is consistently on one side or the other of this balance, fwiw.)
as an institutionalist myself, I agree with you that this is terrible governance.
They could have passed a law to shut down USAID, that would have been the proper, legal way to do this. They didn't. The executive legally can't do whatever they want, but the Republicans in the legislative simply stood by and cheered while the administration trampled over their legislative responsibilities and powers.
When it comes to government spending programs, according to our constitution the elections that have consequences are those for seats in Congress. The executive doesn’t have the authority to cancel USAIDs funding, nor the funding of specific programs within it.
On top of that, the executive has a responsibility to plan its work ahead of time and make such plans known before enacting them.
There are many cases currently in litigation regarding these failures.
i for one am pretty exhausted by "elections have consequences" being codeword for all previous rules systems norms obligations and institutions are totally ok to be thrown in the hopper. it's an exhausting and ridiculous shrug of the shoulder that in no way meets the moment, that is just the laziest "what can you do" nothing.
you'd hope that an internal insurrection against the United States would not be so ragingly popular. and part of the reason it's let slide, is so poorly seen as what it is is because of "elections have consequences". it's bad.
Seems unlikely to me. We even gave up on Trump's tax returns, and gave up the emoluments clause given that he is the CEO of a publicly traded company and has multiple cryptocurrency scams. This administration has plot armor. Feel free to fill in the reason as to "why"; my opinions would likely get me banned.
We’ll be reading about the crimes of dodge for years, similar to secrets of the CIA coming out in the 1970s. Wish politicians in US weren’t so spineless about going after them.
Its the curse of the two-party system. Politicians are not risking splitting from their party, because that would mean the end of their political career.
Hopefully the midterms results in massive investigations of Trump and everyone in his orbit, but if we get “we all need to come together” faux-centrism I wouldn’t be surprised.
We need to fully destroy the notion the DOJ isn’t independent, and make a number of changes that bring us back to having a modern country.
USAID was a vehicle for US intelligence. That said, it also helped a lot where it operated. Especially helped logistics and local administration tasks for NGOs which could be extremely bad at those two tasks.
Also USAID existing prevented NGOs to have too much local political power and the corruption that goes with it.
My opinion is that overall, USAID was a net positive, although in some specific cases it wasn't.
USAID was absolutely a net positive and if nothing else its elimination has completely ceded almost all soft power to China and Russia, something that will have repercussions for decades to come.
> A rise in instability abroad also creates a national-security risk for the U.S., Wright adds. Yemen—once a major USAID recipient, with $768 million worth of aid flowing into the country in 2024—is also home to the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that controls much of the country’s north and has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. As USAID funding disappears, support for the rebels is only likely to grow, he says. “Iran can continue to finance rebellions like the Houthis,” says Wright. “These second- and third-order effects might be even more consequential to the U.S. than the direct effects.”
I would be interested in reading some reporting about USAID's role in support of the CIA (or DoD intelligence?). Please recommend some that helped form your opinion.
I have, luckily, read a personal account of the logistical assistance that a USAID contractor had [0]. Doug Muir wrote about improving customs practices in Rwanda and training locals to take over for him. Improving, in this case, means standardizing inspections of trade goods to decrease holding time.
NY Times has done no reporting substantiating the claim the hundreds of thousands have died. They have published an OpEd piece and have reported a memo by a USAID employee how was upset about being fired. It is all models and unsubstantiated claims.
If you judge everything by the worst thing it ever did, you will come to the conclusion that most things do not deserve to exist. Yourself included.
If you judge things based on whether they have had a net positive effect on the world, you'll find that both yourself and USAID are in the same category.
USAID was a soft power tool of the US to further foreign policy goals with international development programs. How do you accomplish that without sending money abroad?
This type of strategy is almost the only way to get rid of these kinds of agencies. You'd end up with a million raodblocks being tossed up if you tried it any other way.
Right, because there shouldn't be any roadblocks when you're taking an action that has a high probability of resulting in hundreds of thousands of people dying.
I'd honestly rather have someone hired for the purpose of doing such tasks than to have the result of any election doing it.
When undocumented temporary-employee friends of Trump allies do whatever they want: This is fine.
as an institutionalist myself, I agree with you that this is terrible governance.
On top of that, the executive has a responsibility to plan its work ahead of time and make such plans known before enacting them.
There are many cases currently in litigation regarding these failures.
you'd hope that an internal insurrection against the United States would not be so ragingly popular. and part of the reason it's let slide, is so poorly seen as what it is is because of "elections have consequences". it's bad.
Elections (and referenda) do indeed have consequences.
It is however perfectly reasonable to look further up the causal chain and say "propaganda influences elections".
We need to fully destroy the notion the DOJ isn’t independent, and make a number of changes that bring us back to having a modern country.
such a bummer /s
Also USAID existing prevented NGOs to have too much local political power and the corruption that goes with it.
My opinion is that overall, USAID was a net positive, although in some specific cases it wasn't.
> A rise in instability abroad also creates a national-security risk for the U.S., Wright adds. Yemen—once a major USAID recipient, with $768 million worth of aid flowing into the country in 2024—is also home to the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that controls much of the country’s north and has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. As USAID funding disappears, support for the rebels is only likely to grow, he says. “Iran can continue to finance rebellions like the Houthis,” says Wright. “These second- and third-order effects might be even more consequential to the U.S. than the direct effects.”
* https://time.com/article/2026/05/15/usaid-shutdown-rise-glob...
* Analysis: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeh7122
Or: Iran was supporting them already, but more people joined up because they were more desperate because the alternative (aid) had gone away.
The quality/quantity of support from Iran may not even have changed, but rather people's willingness to accept it.
I have, luckily, read a personal account of the logistical assistance that a USAID contractor had [0]. Doug Muir wrote about improving customs practices in Rwanda and training locals to take over for him. Improving, in this case, means standardizing inspections of trade goods to decrease holding time.
[0] https://crookedtimber.org/2025/03/08/usaid-my-next-to-last-p...
This reminds me of the standard USA tech startup model, where you do something useful to get the users, while secretly exploiting them.
was purposely left to rot in warehouses instead of being distributed
six months ago the NY Times documented half a million deaths attributable to the destruction of USAID
by now it's easily a million, slow-motion murdered
may you never suffer to death like those million that could have been spared
NYT has no such reporting because it was reporting from ProPublica. In a series of (Pulitzer-prize finalist) articles they estimated about 700,000:
* https://www.propublica.org/series/the-end-of-aid
* https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/brett-murphy-and-anna-mar...
An analysis in The Lancet estimates that by 2030 as many as 14 million people could die, including 4.5 million children under age 5:
* https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
A recent article in Science found that after aid was shutdown there was an increase in violence in various regions where it was previously present:
* https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeh7122
https://programme.aids2026.org/Abstract/Abstract/?abstractid...
this seems to have a lot of pretty concrete data. Which do you disagree with in particular?
I guess someone should look into that
If you judge things based on whether they have had a net positive effect on the world, you'll find that both yourself and USAID are in the same category.
"Quick, quick change the focus to right wing politicians and make a crazy comparison"
Even you, deep down should have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge this