Under President Donald Trump, Elon Musk's DOGE effort and the White House have accomplished what conservatives long dreamed to do but never achieved: substantially dismantling America's foreign aid agency.

The shrunken U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), while it hasn't been officially wiped out by Congress, will be difficult to revive under future administrations and will be "less attractive" for future bureaucrats, former USAID special government employee, Mike Benz told Just the News. 

"Even if you turn the apparatus back on, there will be a slower ramp-up simply because I think the precarious nature of it, knowing it might be turned off again four years after that, makes a career at USAID inherently less attractive because of the political thin ice that it now sits on," said Benz, who aided the Trump administration in investigating the agency.

"There has been a kind of shock and awe message sent to the class of electioneers and subversive influence types, insofar as many of them had spent 10, 20, 30 years at USAID and had built their careers around that being a permanent position," he added.

USAID gets stripped under Trump

Trump’s second-term review of USAID uncovered spending that officials said advanced diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and other projects disconnected from core national interests, prompting the cancellation of most of the agency’s work.

On Inauguration Day, Trump signed Executive Order 14169, freezing foreign assistance for a 90-day assessment. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) then examined USAID contracts. 

By March 2025 the administration had terminated roughly 83% of the agency’s programs, and on July 1 remaining functions were absorbed into the State Department, according to a KFF timeline of the reorganization.

A White House release cited $1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbian workplaces, $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala, millions directed to EcoHealth Alliance — the nonprofit tied to Wuhan Institute of Virology research of COVID-19 — and hundreds of thousands of meals that reached al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria. 

An August 2025 pocket rescission later canceled additional billions the administration said had funded climate, DEI and LGBTQ activities of no value to taxpayers.

Problems predated the review. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction documented between $26 billion and $29 billion in waste, fraud and abuse across two decades of reconstruction spending, including failed opium-eradication efforts and infrastructure projects that collapsed, in its final accounting. 

Problems with USAID predated Trump and Musk's efforts

Lawmakers had also raised repeated concerns about contractor overhead and diversion risks in conflict zones long before the 2025 freeze. 

In an October 2024 letter, Sen. Tom Cotton warned USAID Administrator Samantha Power of the “likely misuse of more than one billion dollars” in Gaza humanitarian aid and cited the agency inspector general’s findings of “shortcomings and vulnerabilities” in partner vetting that could let funds reach terrorists, urging an immediate suspension. 

A separate USAID Office of Inspector General review found the agency lacked complete systems to track or document indirect costs charged by contractors and grantees from fiscal 2016 to 2021, leaving overhead charges difficult to verify.

How USAID could be officially dismantled

Congress alone can dismantle USAID, which it created as an independent agency permanently in 1998, after President John F. Kennedy created it by executive order in 1961. 

Lawmakers could abolish it by statute, as H.R. 1029 would by barring funds for its functions and shifting assets to the State Department. 

They could also zero its accounts in annual foreign operations appropriations or cancel prior spending via rescissions, as in the Rescissions Act of 2025, which cut billions from foreign aid.

Amanda Head is White House Correspondent for Just the News. You can follow her here.