What Is USAID? Why Trump and Musk are pushing to dismantle the U.S. foreign aid agency

How large is USAID’s budget and who has benefited from it?

In fiscal year 2023, USAID managed more than $40 billion in combined appropriations, according to the CRS, which notes that calculations of USAID’s budget can be imprecise. Forty billion dollars is less than 1% of the federal budget, according to The Washington Post.

USAID provided assistance to about 130 countries in fiscal year 2023. The CRS says the top 10 recipients were:

• Ukraine
• Ethiopia
• Jordan
• Congo
• Somalia
• Yemen
• Afghanistan
• Nigeria
• South Sudan
• Syria

In recent years, USAID “has also provided significant humanitarian, development and economic support” to Ukraine and countries affected by Russia’s invasion, as well as humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip, the CRS report adds.

What are the accusations against USAID?

Over the weekend and into Monday, Musk fired off a series of posts on X that accused the agency of corruption.

“Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people?” read one post, which cited a 2023 New York Post article about the origins of the pandemic. 

Without citing evidence, Musk also called the agency “a radical-left political psy op” and a “crazy waste of money” and claimed “USAID has been paying media organizations to publish their propaganda.”

In a conversation on X Spaces overnight, Musk said he discussed USAID several times with Trump, who “agreed that we should shut it down.” When asked about USAID on Sunday, Trump told reporters, “It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out.”

Konyndyk called Trump and Musk’s comments “an outrageous disinformation campaign” and said USAID works alongside various nongovernmental organizations and other private partners to properly address pressing global health issues.

“The way that the U.S. carries out relief and development programming overseas is in partnership,” he said. “It’s an incredibly capable ecosystem.”

What could happen next?

On Monday afternoon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that he is now the acting director of USAID amid questions over its future but said he would delegate tasks to someone else. He also said the Trump administration plan was not “about ending the programs that USAID does, per se.”

“There are things that it does that are good and there are things that it does that we have strong questions about. It’s about the way it operates as an entity. And they’re supposed to take direction from the State Department, policy direction. They do not now,” he said, later adding,  ”Their attitude is, we don’t have to answer to you because we are independent, we answer to no one. Well, that’s not true, and that will no longer be the case.”