Today’s biggest news story is the Trump administration’s assault on the Agency for International Development. USAID is the agency that dispenses foreign aid. Headlines have been breathless: USAID is being “shut down,” “dismantled,” and, in a stunning move, employees reportedly were locked out of their building.
Is is reported that AID “will be merged into the State Department.” I always thought AID was part of the State Department. I interned at USAID one summer, many years ago, and as I recall I went to work every day in the State Department building. It never occurred to me that AID was somehow “independent.”
But that apparently is what the agency’s employees have come to believe. Traveling in El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio talked to reporters about the AID situation, among other things. Listening to Marco is a reminder of what a tremendous upgrade he is over the pitiful Anthony Blinken:
No one can argue with what Rubio says: obviously, USAID should only carry out activities in accordance with the president’s foreign policy. That we even have to point this out is a marker of how far the Deep State–call it what you will–has penetrated the thinking of Washington insiders. For Democrats, insubordination is the order of the day if the President is a Republican.
These are the kinds of things that USAID has been funding:
Margaret Brennan, who recently got humiliated in her interview with VP Vance, gets humiliated again when she asks for examples of DEI waste in foreign aid the US gives.
Rep. Mast came with the receipts and owned Brennan.pic.twitter.com/7LBWGbKmdT
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) February 2, 2025
The President of El Salvador agrees that Trump is right:
Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, offered a foreign perspective.
He said on social media “Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up.
“While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.
“At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.”
Of course liberals love such politicized expenditures, so earlier today, Democratic politicians joined AID employees in a demonstration outside of AID headquarters. I won’t bother to put up the video of Ilhan Omar, outside the USAID office, saying that Donald Trump is setting himself up as a totalitarian dictator because he expects agencies of the executive branch, which he runs under Article II of the Constitution, to follow his orders.
This sums up very well our current political divide. Democrats think it is “fascism” for a democratically elected president to be able to carry out the policies that Americans voted for. Republicans think that, having won office, President Trump should be able to direct the executive branch to implement his policies. One of these positions is democratic. The other isn’t.
What is not so clear is how the current scrutiny of USAID activities will play out legally. The agency was established by Congress, and can’t be “shut down” by the administration. Moreover, Congress has authorized a substantial amount of spending for the agency in the current budget. President Nixon tried to “impound” monies that he thought Congress had foolishly appropriated, but was shot down by the Supreme Court. Unlike many (I believe most) governors, the President doesn’t have a line-item veto. So if Congress appropriates money to an agency, the executive branch has to spend it.
What I don’t know is how detailed Congress’s AID appropriation is, and how much latitude the administration has to shift dollars away from counter-productive, left-wing ideological fantasies and toward spending that advances American foreign policy, or at least does some charitable good.
That battle will play out in the coming weeks and months. What is clear, for now, is that the Trump administration is serious about taking on the Washington establishment and bringing the executive branch to heel.
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