Summary
Trump is withdrawing nearly all USAID workers worldwide, effectively dismantling the agency.
Staff must return within 30 days unless deemed essential, while foreign aid programs, including security assistance and disease response, are halted.
Critics warn the move undermines U.S. influence and violates congressional authority. The American Foreign Service Association is preparing legal action.
The shutdown leaves billions in aid stranded, disrupts global projects, and forces employees into abrupt relocations with limited support.
This is probably the most idiotic take I’ve seen on this. USAID is a huge soft power in geopolitics for the U.S., and puts out a lot of essential services that peoplearound the world rely on now… But more importantly, the issue at hand is that the president doesn’t have the power to just shutter institutions in the government willy nilly. This is a constitutional crisis, and you’re acting like it’s a genius move on his part.
I would’ve given kudos to Bush, Obama, Trump(1), or Biden if they did this. The only one calling this a “genius move” is you, it’s just logical.
America should not be the world police. We never should’ve been in the international situation we are now. A literally uncountable amount of money spend over the past few decades for what? American poverty is higher than ever, our infrastructure is worse than ever, and American perception abroad is worse than ever. All this dispite bankrupting ourselves to help countries that don’t like us and topple regimes that we don’t like. Humanitarianism.
“Soft power,” fuck off, I don’t want hundreds of billions of black dollars being spent to undermine the sovereignty and merit of foreign countries.
Do you actually think they’re shutting down USAID because they’re going to redirect those funds to fixing American poverty or infrastructure?
Your take on soft power is as ignorant as Trump/Musk’s. The game is being played no matter what. Russia and China are always playing. We just walked away from the table and any chips we have will quickly be stolen. As a rich, powerful county, we don’t have the option not to play (and stay powerful anyway).
The USAID is a humanitarian aid department. The fuck do you think they do, shoot people? It’s staffed entirely by people trying to do good in the world. If you want to advocate for shuttering an agency, maybe look at the CIA…
“Do good around the world” by creating a fake social media app to sow civil unrest in Cuba? We’ve got different ideas of “good,” I think.
I read through the entire source you linked. Nothing in the interview says anything about it being fake.