The Trump administration has gutted USAID by canceling most programs and folding the rest into the State Department, a lasting blow conservatives sought for years without waiting on Congress.

President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14169 on Inauguration Day and froze foreign assistance for a 90-day assessment. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency then examined the contracts. By March 2025 the administration had terminated roughly 83% of the agency’s programs. On July 1, remaining functions moved into the State Department.

Congress never formally abolished the U.S. Agency for International Development. Yet the combination of freezes, cancellations, absorption, and later rescissions left the long-criticized foreign aid bureaucracy a shell of its former self, Just the News reported.

White House officials said a second-term review found spending that advanced DEI programs and other projects disconnected from core national interests. Taxpayers had footed bills that had little to do with American security or honest development work.

White House release lists the waste that fueled the purge

A White House release laid out concrete examples. It cited $1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbian workplaces and $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala. Millions went to EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit tied to Wuhan Institute of Virology research connected to COVID-19. Hundreds of thousands of meals reached al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria.

An August 2025 pocket rescission canceled additional billions the administration said had funded climate, DEI, and LGBTQ activities of no value to taxpayers. The pattern matched what conservatives had warned about for years: an agency drifting far from basic national interest.

Those choices fit a broader second-term push to cut waste and lock in America-first priorities, much like other executive moves that delivered direct results for families and workers, including the creation of Trump Accounts for every child under 18.

Inspector general findings and Cotton’s Gaza warning came first

Problems were not new. 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. Failed opium-eradication efforts and infrastructure projects that collapsed filled the final accounting.

USAID’s own Office of Inspector General reviewed fiscal years 2016 through 2021 and found the agency lacked complete systems to track or document indirect costs charged by contractors and grantees. Overhead charges were hard to verify.

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

"likely misuse of more than one billion dollars"

Cotton’s letter put the risk in plain terms months before the second Trump term began. The administration later treated those vulnerabilities as reasons to shrink the pipeline rather than keep writing checks.

Trump has also confronted hostile press narratives that distort his record and agenda, telling supporters that outlets such as the New York Times should face accountability over rally coverage.

Benz says the career machine took a lasting hit

Mike Benz, a former USAID special government employee who aided the Trump administration’s investigation of the agency, told Just the News the damage runs deeper than canceled line items. Even a future restart would face a slower climb.

"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,"

Benz described a second effect on the people who treated the agency as a permanent base for political influence work.

"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,"

That message matters. For decades the agency operated as if its budget and staffing were locked in regardless of election results. The freeze, the terminations, and the move into State changed the incentive structure.

Executive action of this scale matches other Trump orders that cut red tape and favor practical American industry, including the order allowing tax-free red-dye diesel on highways.

Congress still holds the statutory keys

President John F. Kennedy created USAID by executive order in 1961. Congress made it an independent agency permanently in 1998. Only Congress can fully dismantle it by statute, zero out its accounts in appropriations, or rescind spending.

H.R. 1029 would abolish USAID by barring funds for its functions and shifting assets to the State Department. The Rescissions Act of 2025 already cut billions from foreign aid. The administration did not wait for a final statutory funeral. It emptied most of the building first.

That sequence leaves a practical reality: remaining functions sit inside State, most programs are gone, and the old career track looks far less stable. A future administration could try to rebuild. Benz’s point is that the rebuild would be slower and less magnetic to the same permanent class.

Hard-power and technology priorities have received similar focus, including the decision to create a Super Intelligence Force to lock in the U.S. AI lead.

What the record now shows

The verified timeline is straightforward. Inauguration Day brought the freeze under Executive Order 14169. DOGE reviewed the contracts. By March 2025 roughly 83% of programs were terminated. July 1 brought absorption into the State Department. August 2025 brought the pocket rescission of additional billions tied to climate, DEI, and LGBTQ spending the White House called worthless to taxpayers.

Layer on the earlier record: $26 billion to $29 billion in Afghanistan reconstruction waste and fraud, incomplete tracking of contractor overhead from 2016 to 2021, and Cotton’s warning about more than a billion dollars in Gaza aid and weak partner vetting. The administration treated that history as justification for decisive cuts rather than another round of promises to do better.

Longer-term political stakes remain real for 2028 and beyond, a point raised in debates over foreign policy choices and voter coalitions, including warnings such as Rogan’s caution about Iran conflict fallout.

Conservatives spent years arguing that USAID had become a vehicle for ideological projects, weak oversight, and spending that did not serve the American people. Trump’s team used executive tools, contract power, and rescissions to shrink the agency without a single floor vote that erased it from the U.S. Code. The result is a smaller footprint, a relocated remainder, and a career service put on notice that permanent insulation is over.

Taxpayers finally saw an administration treat foreign-aid waste as a problem to cut, not a budget to protect.