How ending foreign aid could damage U.S. national security
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The U.S. Agency for International Development is an independent agency of the United States government, created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. For 64 years, its mission has been to shore up American national security by fighting starvation, working to end epidemics, and funding education worldwide. The presence of the United States as a...

leading power in the free world is involved in your work directly. President Kennedy speaking to a group of USAID overseas mission directors at the White House June 8, 1962. The people who are opposed to aid should realize that this is a very powerful source of strength for us. It permits us to exert influence for the maintenance of freedom. If we did not, were not so heavily involved,

Our voice would not speak with such vigor. And as we do not want to send American troops to a great many areas where freedom may be under attack, we send you. And you working with the people in those countries to try to work with them in developing the economic thrust of their country so that they can make a determination that they can solve their problems without resorting to totalitarian control and becoming part of the bloc.

Those last words are key. Resist becoming part of the bloc, meaning the Soviet bloc, which in 1962 was the greatest national security threat to the United States. As Kennedy states, American well-being was ingrained into USAID's mission from the start. But yesterday...

People who are opposed to aid, the Trump administration, announced that it is pulling almost all USAID workers off the job and out of the field worldwide, all but ending the agency's six-decade mission. There are an estimated 10,000 USAID employees stationed around the world.

Unelected, never confirmed by the Senate, Trump adviser Elon Musk is openly and aggressively determined to, in one of his favorite words about government, delete USAID. To be clear, in shutting down, which we're in the process of doing, shutting down USAID, the reason for that, as opposed to simply trying to do some minor housecleaning is...

is that as we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. And so at the point at which you don't really, like if you've got an apple that's got a worm in it, maybe you can take the worm out. But if you've got actually just a ball of worms, it's hopeless. And Musk says he's doing it with President Trump's approval.

So really, none of this could be done without the full support of the president. And with regard to the USAID stuff, I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down.

And what are those supposed worms that Musk gleefully talks about? Well, on January 28th, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told CNN that USAID had been in the administration's sights for a very specific reason. We looked at USAID as an example. That's 98 percent, 98 percent of the workforce either donated to Kamala Harris or another left wing candidate.

Trump himself has derided the employees that make up USAID's workforce. He said this in the Oval Office. I love the concept, but they turn out to be radical left lunatics. And the concept of it is good, but it's all about the people.

Critics of the administration, such as Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, say shutting down USAID is unconstitutional. He spoke at a protest outside USAID headquarters on Monday. This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let's call it what it is.

The people get to decide how we defend the United States of America. The people get to decide how their taxpayer money is spent. Elon Musk does not get to decide. A source within USAID tells On Point today, quote, a lot of the aid is literally shipping grain, rice, corn grown in America, put on ships in a port in Texas and shipped around the world, end quote.

The source adds, this is going to impact American farmers, the shipping industry, and commerce, end quote. And the source also reports to us that USAID workers have received, quote, a tidal wave of malice and nastiness, including threatening emails. But the source says, quote, we're not going down without a fight, end quote.

Returning back to President Kennedy's 1962 remarks for a moment, what will the broader impact be of shutting down USAID, not just on its aid recipients, but on what was its core mission, contributing to the protection of American national security?

Well, Jonathan Geyer joins us today. He's a reporter focused on foreign policy, national security, and the Middle East. And he recently wrote a New York Magazine article titled, "Inside Elon Musk's Killing of USAID." Jonathan, welcome. Thank you. So tell us first what you've been hearing from USAID workers stationed around the world. They've all been reported to come back to the United States by Friday. Is that correct?

Exactly. I mean, the website is basically a notice that this is over right now. You know, you have staff in places like Mogadishu, Somalia, who cannot, you know, reach people with secure communications. This huge staff, thousands of people are just being directed to go home. And this has been a kind of drip, drip, death by a thousand cuts throughout the past two weeks. And

And a really stunning turnaround because this agency was a core pillar of U.S. statecraft under both parties. It's been a tool for Democrats and Republicans. We have quotes from Marco Rubio when he was in the Senate talking about how essential it is to advancing U.S. interests in the world.

Democrats have made international development a really core principle in the post-Cold War order as part of its war on terrorism. Development was really key in advancing U.S. interests. And suddenly, like poof, Doge, Elon Musk, the Trump administration has made the USA Agency for International Development dead on arrival. Yeah. So we're going to talk a little bit later about the

Yeah.

There's food, grain, commodities that are probably at international ports right now. What's going to happen to all that? From what I'm hearing, they're stuck. And I just want to say this is not global meals on wheels. This is, you know, working to get necessary calories. People whose diets in sub-Saharan Africa or other crisis and conflict zones really depend on this agency.

So what we're seeing is just an absolute shutdown. And that has real implications for the ceasefire in Gaza. I spoke with USAID staffers currently working in the agency who told me about some of the last pieces of U.S. development aid.

that are going to go to field hospitals in Gaza, rushing on Sunday night to get that through. Maybe the last dollars in USAID history that will make it to some of these NGOs that are part of the ceasefire that President Trump, Steve Witkoff, his envoy negotiated between Hamas and Israel that led to this hostage deal. So really, U.S. interests are on the line with some of these NGOs.

development assistance projects as we see them. And some of the last ones will probably be for Palestinians in Gaza. Jonathan, things have happened so quickly, right? I mean, I think it's been, what, two weeks maximum? Can you just take us back to the beginning after there was an executive order that was issued about USAID? Like, did Elon Musk and his workers just like physically enter USAID headquarters? What happened? Yeah.

It's been a kind of titanic moment for the staffers I've spoke to within this agency. I mean, from the first day that President Trump was inaugurated, he's talking about an American first foreign policy, puts down an executive order. And most of the staffers are thinking, OK, every administration comes in, shakes things up. This was a pretty quiet agency during Trump 45. No one expected radical changes beyond budget cuts.

But I guess most people hadn't read Project 2025, which talked about really scaling this down. So we saw an executive order four days later that basically put all assistance to a halt. Then there were some waivers and exemptions that came from Secretary Rubio. But by then, a lot of staff had already been fired, laid off. In a way, some say sabotage, couldn't do their jobs, couldn't interpret these waivers.

There was the diversity and inclusion executive order. And so much of this work involves, you know, stopping gender violence, dealing with pregnant women and pregnant people. And it's very difficult to do that work if you can't talk about gender, if you can't talk about some of these concepts and words. So basically throughout that first week, all these impediments are happening and

By Monday, about 50, last Monday, excuse me, about 50 of the top bureau chiefs, lawyers were let go. And we have representatives apparently from Doge entering USAID, removing art from the walls, removing signs. By Friday, the rumor mill was just churning that these were the last days of USAID. Who was running all this? Was it Elon Musk?

Well, it's really hard to say. There are some fingerprints. There was an email from a gentleman named Gavin Klieger, who is reportedly one of his engineers, who sent out an email on Sunday night saying the offices would be closed at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, the USAID headquarters.

And clearly, as his ex-fied has shown, Elon Musk has really strong feelings about this agency and is calling them a Marxist den of vipers, which, by the way, one USAID staffer told me that would be a very cool T-shirt to have. Gavin Kleger, by the way, I understand, is 25 years old and his only other work experience prior to working for Doge is at an AI company called Databricks.

I mean, you know, there are valid criticisms of USAID. I know we're going to get into that today. But it's been a real shock to the 10,000 people whose work is really about advancing disaster relief, public health, all these really crucial services. And the way that this has been just so drastically ramped down not only puts Americans at risk, you know, a lot of people argue it puts American interests at risk.

Jonathan Geier, hang on for just a minute. Obviously, there's so much more to talk about. We're going to talk about people who formerly worked, talk with people who formerly worked at USAID as well, and dig into those national security issues that come with the rapid dismantling of a six-decade-old independent American agency. This is On Point. On Point.

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You're back with On Point. I'm Magna Chakrabarty. And today we are talking about the rapid dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and how over the past two weeks and effectively yesterday, the Trump administration brought its USAID's six-decade mission to shore up U.S. national security using soft power abroad.

brought that mission to an end. I'm joined today by Jonathan Geyer. He's a reporter who's focused on foreign policy, national security in the Middle East, and he recently wrote an article titled Inside Elon Musk's Killing of USAID. It appeared in New York Magazine. Jonathan, hang on for just a second because I want to bring Dr. Atul Gawande into the program now. He's

He's done many things in his vaunted career, most notably for this conversation, former assistant administrator for global health at USAID. He served in that position from 2022 to 2025. Dr. Gawande, welcome back to On Point. Great to see you, hear you, Meghna. So can you describe to me or actually describe to our listeners, what is the work that USAID does?

Well, the critical, first of all, you got to understand this is the range of life-saving programs. You can't dismantle an airplane and fire a crew in mid-flight, but that's what this oligarch with unchecked power is doing with life-saving foreign assistance programs. The biggest areas of work are disaster relief.

and global health work. There's additional work. You know, this is about... It was created to win the battle for hearts and minds around the world. It gives us influence in Africa, in Asia, in Eastern Europe. It does work to save lives and to work against the adversaries of freedom.

And so, you know, specifically, we can talk about the work I oversaw. This is stopping disease outbreaks around the world. 21 serious disease outbreaks that occurred in my tenure, teams responding to vaccines.

thousands of notifications about outbreaks at any given moment, and it's all stopped. That includes 49 countries where we had surveillance for bird flu, which has already killed one American on home soil. A outbreak in Uganda that has exposed already more than 250 people in Kampala, the heart of the capital of Uganda. And I could go on down the list. Then there are 20 million people

HIV patients, the global HIV program where there are 20 million people whose lives depend on medicines that are supplied by this program. They are running out of medicines as we speak. That includes 6.5 million orphans and vulnerable children and their caregivers who are losing services and access.

I could go, I mean, the list is long. The claim that it's just a bowl of worms is insanity. To throw this away, to break it, this world-class expertise, you know, it's demolishing U.S. standing, our world-leading capacity, a key pillar of our national security, and doing it with impunity. I can't tell if it's

ignorance or indifference, and I fear it's both.

Dr. Gawande, USAID's 2024 budget was some $40 billion. And it sounds like a lot, but that's less than 1% of the federal budget overall. In comparison, the Defense Department gets, what, 14, a little more than 14%, or around 14% of the entire United States budget. So we are talking about a fraction of the overall spending, like a fraction of a fraction of the overall spending that the United States has.

Nevertheless, many Americans right now are actually looking upon the dismantling of USAID and saying, great, because they don't see the work that you just described as contributing at all to their well-being. I mean, what is the impact on Americans for stopping bird flu in Asia or working to stop bird flu in Asia or providing medicines for HIV AIDS in Africa?

Yeah. Well, first, let me talk about the money. $8 billion I oversaw for global health programming. That is a lot of money. On the other hand, it's half the budget of the hospital system that I worked in in Boston. And it has reached hundreds of millions of people. It has curbed the AIDS epidemic around the world. It is nearly eradicating polio.

from existence. This is the agency that was the operational capacity, the largest operational capacity behind the ending of smallpox, a disease that killed half a billion people around the world in the previous century and was a dire threat to the United States. And so, you know, just on the disease front alone, this is a critical organization.

You can extend that further to TB. We have an outbreak in Kansas now of drug-resistant TB, and this critical program has now been shuttered. All of these programs were shut down a week ago. We already are seeing the cost. Children with drug-resistant TB who are now turned away from clinics, not just going to die, they're going to continue to transmit the disease. Almost, you know, within weeks, people with HIV off their medicine

will go from being unable to transmit because the medicine stops the disease to transmitting around the world. That alone puts us at risk. The larger picture is I'm talking to ministers of health just today where they are calling up our adversaries, calling up China.

for example. Russia is celebrating openly, by the way, on social media, the demise of this agency that they've despised for decades because of what it stands for and what it does. But, you know, now, abandoning medicines at the ports, abandoning people in clinics and hospitals desperately, governments are desperately calling around the world in

in saying the U.S. is leaving us behind, is abandoning us, and we need you. That soft power of hearts and minds being seen as a moral leader in the world and an agent of a better world and humanity is we benefit from that and the world benefits from it.

So you mentioned TB, tuberculosis. By the way, even though Marco Rubio is now Secretary of State in the Trump administration, back in 2019 as senator, he said, "...tuberculosis is now one of the world's leading infectious disease killers. As we celebrate the incredible strides made in the fight against TB, we must recommit to supporting critical programs through USAID and the Global Fund until we end tuberculosis for good."

End quote. That was now Secretary of State Marco Rubio in 2019. Jonathan Geyer, you've been listening patiently here, and I really appreciate that. Just want to hear what your thoughts on some of the things that Dr. Gawande has been saying.

Well, Dr. Gawande was part of an administration, the Biden administration, that really made development assistance crucial to U.S. foreign policy writ large. It played a huge role, the administrator, Samantha Power, as a kind of visionary leader in conflict zones like Ukraine, in Gaza, in Sudan, incredible anti-corruption efforts. I mean, perhaps the most robust this agency has ever been under President Biden and building on, you know, some major successes in

really high profile. So it's pretty stunning to see the gutting happen so quickly. All these programs just grind to a halt and all these people left in the lurch. I want to talk about not just the tens of millions of people who will be impacted overseas, but this 10,000 personnel of the agency who have to pay mortgages, who have children, who are totally left in the lurch. And there's even a bigger implication here that I think Dr. Gawande is alluding to, which is

This international aid sector is going to be totally demolished in the process, is totally going to be broken. And it's not clear if the U.S. will be there to save it in its current form. We might be witnessing the entire destruction of what we know as development and humanitarian aid assistance as we know it. Yeah.

So I want to get to what the thrust is of the actions of the administration right now, because, of course, we've talked about just the overall –

I don't even know what the word I'm looking for is, disbelief by members of the administration and a lot of their supporters in terms of voters in the American public that foreign aid through USAID does any good for the United States. That's just a belief they have. It's a core driving belief. But then there's also been essentially just many, many allegations of not just inefficiencies, but...

but perhaps even corruption in the way that USAID uses its $40 billion budget. So, for example, here's House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Representative Brian Mast. He's defended merging the organization with the State Department. He appeared on CBS's Face the Nation last Sunday saying,

to say the move would improve financial accountability within USAID. 10 to 30 cents on the dollar is what actually goes to aid. So there's not the right amount of command and control that's going on with the way that it's set up currently. Dr. Gawande, I really want to dig into this now. First of all, your response to the 10 to 30 cents only on the dollar that actually goes to aid.

It's a deliberate misreading of a set of data showing that only about 10% of the dollars go to foreign organizations. The overhead for U.S. government costs is about 10% of the costs.

The rest of it goes through American companies and nonprofits, through international organizations, and then that 10% through foreign organizations in the countries where we work. And they reach the people. It is one of many slew of...

false and just plain absurd descriptions of what USAID does. Okay. Just yesterday, I believe, Dr. Gawande, you tweeted a chart that was created by the Center for Global Development that really sort of broke down in detail USAID spending.

And I'm looking at it right now. And you're right. I mean, the chart clearly shows that it's about 11 percent that's direct transfer to foreign organizations. But then in terms of the kinds of criticisms, perhaps less flagrantly ideological and more just purely financial that have been

levied against USAID, the Center for Global Development shows that 46% of USAID's budget goes to contributions to multilateral agencies. Now, there could be an argument made, and I think it has been made before now, that is that the best use of USAID funds? Then there's the, as you mentioned, the 31% that's channeled via American companies and non-profits.

Lots of critics of USAID and actually very recently especially have said have called that, quote, a slush fund. Right. And Republicans are calling it a source of corruption because Democrats are essentially paying their own friends in the humanitarian industrial complex through this 31 percent. I mean, that is we're talking about 70 percent of the overall funds for USAID not going directly to foreign aid organizations. Right.

So there's a, let's break this down. So the multilateral organizations like that take take an example, one of the biggest recipients of funds is the Global Vaccine Alliance called Gavi. Gavi enables the purchase of

vaccines for the poorest countries in the world. It creates a market that dramatically lowers the prices of vaccines so that countries can access them at prices that the companies wouldn't pay. They're simply not markets for the latest, you know, HPV, human papillomavirus, the anti-cervical cancer vaccine, for example.

In low-income countries, that vaccine is one of the best buys. It is for every 70 girls who are vaccinated, one life is saved. And Gavi is purchasing the vaccines and lowering the prices by 80 or 90 percent for what they otherwise pay.

They have saved in the last 20 years the lives of a billion children. Vaccines are account for 60 percent of the reduction in life in mortality that's been achieved over the last half century. And Gavi in.

has plans to be able to achieve the next billion in half the time. But now that kind of funding is getting potentially pulled away. Professor, Dr. Gawande, hang on for just a second. I just have to say, I'm Magna Chakrabarty. This is on point. I promise I'm going to come back to you here, but I don't want to forget that Jonathan is still there because you had mentioned earlier, Jonathan, that you had some thoughts on these sort of financial inefficiencies criticisms of USAID. Yeah.

Well, there are valid criticisms over time. I don't think closing the agency really addresses any of those. But there's a kind of inherent contradiction here that President Trump, we can criticize this, but he ran as an anti-war candidate. And there's this inherent contradiction that if you close down all these development workers across the world, you're going to end up leaning on the U.S. military more and have a more militaristic U.S. foreign policy. Mm-hmm.

I think there's been debates over the years. Should you fold U.S. aid under the State Department? Al Gore made the case for it at one point as vice president. But it's really the way that it's been done, the conspiracy-laden tweets from Elon Musk, the brazen attack on federal workers who were, you know, until two weeks ago, were part of a core mission of U.S. statecraft.

It's just been really shocking. And I think the other thing I'd add, just to reinforce what Dr. Guande said, this agency has been doing a lot on climate. It's been doing a lot on vaccines.

These are political hot potato issues. So it's really become partisan when in actual fact, I think a lot of USAID's mission is very much about advancing U.S. interests so far. Dr. Gawande, we have about a minute and a half before our next break here. And the Gavi example is very compelling. And I'm also looking at, you talked about malaria and TB programs, HIV, AIDS, direct humanitarian emergency relief, because there's been a

you know, an endless onslaught of humanitarian disasters. But this Center for Global Development chart also says it identifies 14% of contributions to multilateral agencies or 14% of the budget going to

contributions for multilateral agencies, that it doesn't identify what the use is of that money. Or in the portion channeled to American companies and nonprofits, there's 19% that it doesn't identify what the uses are. Now, it might be thousands of programs we're talking about here, but can you fill in some of those blanks?

Absolutely. First of all, I'll note that those were readily seen online on the website that USAID.gov had, and that website has been taken down. So the only source of information is the claims of Doge, which has cherry-picked and often been false about the findings there. But these are programs like the World Food Program.

that it's in the name, right? They are driving food security assistance around the world. It's Catholic Relief Services, which started as an organization in World War II helping refugees and a lot of their assistance is around refugee support. They're also a huge supporter of global health work, including HIV AIDS care. Save the Children is another one of the top

top 20 recipients. What they're calling slush funds for democratic money laundering is, you know, is this work. It's these organizations that are getting the funds and they're some of the most efficient and incredible organizations in the world. Dr. Atul Gawande, stand by for just a second. Jonathan Geyer, you too. When we come on the other side, out of the other side of the break, I have one more question for you, Jonathan. So hang in there. We'll be right back. This is On Point.

You're back with On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. And today we are talking about the systematic dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and why, since the agency's founding in 1961, its major mission has been to use American soft power to

to shore up American national security by helping develop countries abroad. So what is the potential impact on U.S. national security with the Trump administration's shutdown of USAID? And we're joined today by Dr. Atul Gawande. He has worked in many positions, including as former assistant administrator for global health at USAID. He served in that position from 2022 to

to just recently, 2025. And Jonathan Geyer is with us as well. He wrote a piece in New York Magazine entitled Inside Elon Musk's Killing of USAID. Jonathan, the last question I wanted to ask for you is the implications for U.S. national security, specifically vis-a-vis what's happening in Gaza, because you had mentioned some details about perhaps the last bit of funding and aid work that USAID is able to do will happen there.

This is happening alongside an announcement or a hope or an idea, I don't know what to call it, that President Donald Trump had yesterday during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump said he wants the U.S. to take over Gaza. And here's what he said.

"We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don't want to be cute, I don't want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so magnificent." Trump suggested removing all Palestinians from Gaza.

bulldozing what's left of it, redeveloping it, and sending U.S. troops there if necessary. Now, Jonathan, I mean, Donald Trump, if there's one thing that seemed he sincerely campaigned on was being an American isolationist. And yet now in the first month of his presidency, he seems to have fully and vigorously embraced the tradition of American imperial presidency, right? So

I mean, how does this announcement or desire and the dismantling of USAID, what are the impacts that it could have on, as you said, the ongoing negotiations for ceasefire between Israel and Hamas? So, Meghna, I want to focus on what Trump has done, not what he said. Together with Biden's team, he negotiated the ceasefire. We're in the first phase of

There needs to be 600 aid trucks going into Gaza for desperately needed necessities daily. And what I am most emboldened by or heartened by was talking with USAID staffers who told me

that they locked in this past week. They wanted to get that $78 million of aid to two field hospitals that have NICUs that need to keep operating. They were rushing and going through every procedure to get $300 million to the World Food Program so that they could keep operating for a couple months.

Yes, that's crucial for this ceasefire, for U.S. interests, for the lives of Palestinians and Israelis and for regional security. But it's also just where the rubber hits the road of how important the work of this agency. This is actually core to Trump's foreign policy of maintaining a ceasefire and a hostage deal for Israel and Hamas. So I think we've seen a ton of contradictions in the past two weeks.

weeks, as Elon Musk and his team and the Trump administration have totally stopped the work of this agency. But with the dozen or more conversations I've had with USAID staffers, I've really talked to heroes who said, we need to get this aid to Palestinians in Gaza pronto. Jonathan Geyer, he wrote an article for New York Magazine titled Inside Elon Musk's Killing of USAID. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. OK, so there's a lot of questions still unanswered about whether what the Trump administration is doing in terms of gutting USAID is legal or not. I mean, it is under the broad umbrella of the executive branch. But here's what Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, said.

is saying about the Trump administration's actions. On Monday, he attempted to enter USAID headquarters along with many others. There was a protest outside after it had been shuttered over the weekend. And Raskin challenged the constitutionality of President Trump's actions in shutting down the agency.

They don't have the right to be disciplining people for political reasons, and they don't have a right to usurp Congress's rightful role to appropriate money. We've appropriated money for USAID to render service around the world in fighting disease, in fighting corruption, in defending democracy. We know Elon Musk is not interested in that. Donald Trump is not interested in that. But that's what the American Congress has done, and we're going to stand up with the workers here.

All right. Let me bring in Alex Papachristou into the conversation. He's executive director of the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice. Alex, welcome to you. Thank you very much. Okay. So...

Broadly speaking, USAID is an independent agency, but it's under the executive branch. And we have a very powerful, legally powerful executive in this country now. So is not I mean, what is any legitimate argument against the Trump administration's gutting of USAID? There already have been two courts that have addressed this in Rhode Island and D.C.,

and other cases involving other aspects of the president's executive orders. And they have issued an order

preventing the freezing of foreign aid and other federal spending. And the Justice Department actually told the court, as it was required, that it was complying with these orders and that it had sent notices to all federal agencies that they should not freeze, pause, suspend or terminate federal aid. So the

USAID and State Department suspensions and terminations of aid appear now to be unlawful and presumably should be reversed. I think there will be litigation soon that will address this specifically. But even without that litigation, my view is that the freezing of foreign aid is unfrozen.

Is unfrozen. OK, well, but the Trump administration has yet to comply specifically regarding aid from USAID?

Well, there's chaos, of course. We see that. And the agency that would presumably unfreeze the aid, USAID, isn't there anymore. And the people at the State Department and the Democracy, Rights and Labor Bureau who would unfreeze the State Department assistance aren't there either. They were all laid off. So the administration effectively has cut off the hand that it has to follow the court's order and restore the aid.

Alex, what you've just described seems to be a very tactical set of moves, right? To defy a court order by not unfreezing aid, to ignore the power of the purse held by Congress, and then saying, well, even if we could, we can't anymore because the agencies that would unfreeze this aid simply do not exist or will not exist in the near future.

That's right. It is ultimately a challenge to the Congress. And the underlying violation here is to the core constitutional principle of the separation of powers and the Congress's power of the purse. As Representative Raskin said, and Senator Murphy before in your show,

It is Congress that decides what money to spend and how to spend it. And Congress has passed two laws, which presidents have signed. One, the Purpose Act, which says that the president must spend money appropriated by Congress for the purpose Congress set.

and the Impalement Act, which says that the president may not refuse to spend money that Congress appropriated unless the president goes to the Congress and asks permission not to spend the money. So these actions violate two laws and also the Constitution. And that's what the courts are starting to find. But you're absolutely right. It's...

Events are overtaking the law here. Events are overtaking the law. I mean, to your point, U.S. District Judge Lauren Ali Khan in Washington, D.C., said the administration's actions, quote, run roughshod over a bulwark of the Constitution by interfering with Congress's appropriation funds. One more question about this, Alex. It seems to be not just a challenge to Congress's power of the purse, but to the courts as well.

Absolutely. I think we've seen Mr. Trump use and abuse the courts as a private citizen and as president with

various rope-a-dope efforts to delay or appeal to infinity decisions that go against him. And here I think we can anticipate that the courts in Rhode Island and D.C. and other courts, there's an action just filed yesterday in Maryland challenging the anti-DEI

executive order, these will be slow walked into irrelevance as the administration simply runs roughshod over the law. And ultimately the Congress will need to act.

Dr. Gawande, I want to turn back to you because, as Alex has put it so eloquently, ideology and politics have run – have overtaken the law or the carrying out of policy here. But in terms of how to respond, yes, we've seen Democrats stand outside the USAID and

Shout that this is unconstitutional. But there's also some kind of political calculus going on because I was just reading in Politico yesterday that some longtime Democratic operatives who've served in very high positions in previous administrations, I'm talking about David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, James Carville, they were all quoted in this Politico piece saying, yeah, no, what's happening at USAID is bad, but this is not the hill.

that Democrats should die on because they were saying right now there's an anti-institutionalist fervor in the United States and standing up for the institution of USAID is not going to help Democrats. They should wait. They should hold their fire until Trump goes after this after Social Security, for example, as a person who's done the work of USAID. What's your response to that?

Number one, USAID is the testing grounds for what Doge and the Trump administration is bringing to the rest of government. And we now know the playbook. First, pretend to uncover by accessing data the claims of stolen money or inappropriate uses of funds frees the entire organization from

and bring its activities to a halt, move to purge the staff to make recovery impossible, and then destroy it as an institution. Today, the Department of Education has now fallen into their sights. They also, DOGE has been trying to access Medicare payment systems.

Now, I think those Democratic operatives are probably right. The freeze across the entire budget of the government didn't work. And this is a team that probes and then goes away when they get pushed back hard. But then they come back again. And now they're picking off agencies one by one rather than swallowing them whole. But it is unconstitutional, constitutional.

Congress establishes the offices of government. USAID is just one of those independent ones. And Congress has abdicated that responsibility. And we are now in a process of a seizure. It started with one agency, but it's one by one seizures of fundamental institutions. Congress needs to stand up. The courts need to stand up. And we need to stand up.

So this brings me back to this core question again, which as we heard President John F. Kennedy at the top of the show saying that one of the founding missions of USAID was to protect American national security. And to that point, here's Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat. And he says shutting down USAID will harm U.S. national security. Here's what he said.

USAID fights terrorist groups all across this world, making sure that we address the underlying causes for a retreat to terrorism. USAID chases China all around the world, making sure that China doesn't monopolize contracts for critical minerals and port infrastructure all around the world.

It supports freedom fighters everywhere in this world. Up until yesterday, delivering firewood, for instance, to the brave Ukrainian defenders on the Eastern Front.

Alex Papachristou, to be perfectly frank, I think perhaps Senator Murphy there, while symbolically is talking about USAID's effectiveness in protecting U.S. national security, he's attributing a lot to USAID that I don't think it's accomplished regarding stopping China's very active efforts in international development, you know, in Africa, in Asia, etc. But to that point,

I mean, what does the China example show us? For a couple of decades now, Beijing has focused a lot on exercising its soft power. I'm thinking about the Belt and Road Project and how it's invested billions of dollars in Africa. Has it taken the soft power game? Is it winning the soft power game over the United States? No.

Well, first I would refer to Dr. Gawande's note that the cheerleaders for the axing of USAID are Putin, Bukele, Orban. That puts this, I think, in the right global context and shows that we're creating a vacuum of opposition to authoritarian leaders.

And those would include China, of course. And USAID has done so much good work fighting corruption through its funding of civil society organizations and governments that have determined to resist corruption. And of course, China exercises corruption as a way of doing business.

in its various initiatives, it actively tries to corrupt foreign governments, making them complicit in its interests. And USAID has been a bulwark against that Chinese corruption. Do you think the United States will be less safe with no USAID?

Absolutely. I travel a lot for my business, and I must say that I will feel less safe personally when I'm in some countries now, knowing that there is not the programming, the support of civil society, the support of independent courts. And colleagues of mine who live in these countries surely will feel much less safe.

as a result of this. Alex Papakristou at the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice and Dr. Atul Gawande, former assistant administrator for global health at USAID. Thank you both so very much. This is On Point.