“They’re trying to eliminate the agency,” Konyndyk said.
“They have announced no plan and given no rationale — they’re just taking everything down,” Konyndyk said. “They’re trying to do it behind the scenes rather than openly,” he said, so they don’t have to “defend what they’re doing” in announcements to the public.
The consequences of a diminished or erased USAID would be dire, Konyndyk said, noting that one key component of its programs is keeping outbreaks and epidemics from reaching U.S. shores.
USAID is “enduring an unlawful shutdown, purge, and dismantling,” wrote Dr. Atul Gawande, former assistant administrator for global health at USAID, said on Bluesky on Sunday.
The dissolution would extend beyond “the unlawful destruction of USAID’s life-saving work,” Gawande told NPR. “USAID has become the place where the administration is demonstrating and developing its playbook for eviscerating other targeted agencies.”
The web shutdown comes in the wake of both the stop-work order and the furloughing or laying off of hundreds of USAID employees. In his first two weeks in office, the Trump administration placed senior leadership at USAID on leave and laid off or furloughed more than 400 contractors in the agency’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and also laid off hundreds more in its Global Health Bureau.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress are decrying these actions. The dissolution of USAID would be “illegal and against our national interests,” Sen. Chuck Schumer posted on Bluesky Friday evening.
Sen. Chris Murphy said in a post on X on Saturday that the “total destruction” of USAID was “happening as we speak” and would be “cataclysmic.”
A question of legality
The question of the legality of any attempt to change the status of USAID is connected to its origins. The agency was created in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order after Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act, which mandated the creation of an independent agency to focus on development separate from politics and the military.
That means “it cannot just be undone, at this point, by an executive order,” Konyndyk said. “To actually disestablish the agency and dissolve it into the State Department will take an act of Congress.”
In the past, USAID has enjoyed bipartisan support, including from lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Mitch McConnell, he noted.
Melody Schreiber is a journalist and editor of What We Didn’t Expect: Personal Stories About Premature Birth.
NPR’s Luke Garrett contributed reporting.
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