A popular hypothesis before U.S. President Donald Trump’s election was that faith-based aid groups might benefit from his victory — or at the least be spared from any slash-and-burn cuts. But it seems that even Trump’s “beautiful Christians” have been left out in the cold.
Also in today’s edition: One official blames disobedience at USAID for the widespread administrative leave policy.
Losing faith
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It appeared as if faith-based groups, especially conservative Christian evangelicals, would enjoy a leg up over their secular counterparts in a second Trump administration. After all, Republicans have long lamented that the development sector tends to marginalize religious aid groups.
However, it appears religion has offered no safe harbor for faith-based groups that have found themselves ensnared in Trump’s foreign aid freeze.
The first Trump administration sought to champion the priorities of religious charities, establishing a $50 million program at USAID to promote religious freedom and diversify the agency’s aid recipients. It also heralded programs that helped religious minorities, such as Christian and Yazidi communities in northern Iraq.
Furthermore, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook, from which Trump has borrowed several pages, singled out faith-based groups, arguing that: “The next conservative Administration must champion the core American value of religious freedom, which correlates significantly with poverty reduction, economic growth, and peace.”
Yet today, some of the largest Christian aid organizations, including World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, and Samaritan’s Purse, have been subject to the same cuts as other secular aid agencies and are competing for the same waivers, my colleague Colum Lynch writes.
“I initially thought this was a misunderstanding,” Noah Gottschalk of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society tells Colum. “We all wanted to believe that, oh, if we can just explain that actually a pause is really harmful people would say oh, okay, oops that wasn’t our intention, let's fix it. That point has been made and it’s not being heard.”
In fact, it’s having some cruelly ironic consequences.
“In May 2024, then-Sen. [Marco] Rubio spoke at an International Republican Institute (IRI) event honoring exiled Catholic Bishop Rolando Álvarez for his advocacy of religious freedom in Nicaragua,” Samah Alrayyes Norquist, who served as the first Trump administration’s religious freedom envoy at USAID, wrote in Newsmax. “What Rubio likely didn’t know is that IRI’s work on religious freedom in Nicaragua was funded by USAID.”
Ironically, she added, the State Department’s stop-work order prevented IRI from participating in this month's International Religious Freedom Summit, where U.S. Vice President JD Vance delivered a speech underscoring Washington’s commitment to persecuted religious minorities.
Read: Trump’s 'beautiful Christians' left knocking on White House’s door
+ It’s not just faith-based groups facing a funding crisis. Organizations of all stripes are getting battered by the aid freeze, which has triggered a tsunami of furloughs and firings. To help you keep up, we’ve created a tracker of the organizations that have made cuts across their workforces so far — which we will continuously update with the latest developments.
Pete the reaper
Peter Marocco, a once-relatively-unknown Republican political appointee who cycled through multiple jobs at the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the State Department, and USAID during Trump’s first term, has emerged as the dominant arbiter of who does and doesn’t get U.S. foreign assistance in the president’s second term.
As such, he’s been named in one of the main lawsuits contesting the administration decision to pull thousands of USAID employees from their jobs, and in a recent legal rebuttal, he accused some of those employees of disobeying Trump’s directives to halt and review foreign assistance programs.
“The placement of a substantial number of USAID personnel on paid administration leave was the only way to pause operations, faithfully implement the pause, and conduct a full and unimpeded audit of USAID’s operations,” Marocco wrote in response to a lawsuit filed by a pair of unions representing USAID staffers.
In that lawsuit, the administration persuaded the judge that it had the right to place thousands of staff on administrative leave and recall employees stationed overseas.
Shortly after that ruling, on Sunday night, USAID began removing nearly everyone left at what was once a 10,000-person agency. Thousands were placed on administrative leave, and more — between 1,600 to 2,000 staffers — have been told they will be eliminated entirely.
In the recent court filing, Marocco laid out which staff he expects to survive the Trump administration’s widespread culling, and which of these 611 employees have been deemed “essential.”
He mentioned staffers in the travel office, stating they were needed to help other USAID employees being recalled to the United States. Also on the list: Those with “subject matter expertise,” including staff from USAID’s regional bureaus; employees overseeing emergency humanitarian, food, and medical assistance, along with information, security, and legal issues; and the agency’s human resources team, even though USAID’s chief human resources officer was previously severed from the agency after refusing to fire more staff.
Read: Why are thousands being culled from USAID, and who will be left standing?
+ On March 4, we’ll be giving Devex Pro members a congressional perspective on the dismantling of USAID, in an exclusive conversation with U.S. Rep. Ami Bera of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Save your spot now.
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Collateral damage
Trump’s foreign aid freeze has pummelled organizations, large and small, around the world — and each has a story to tell. My colleague Sara Jerving chronicles one group’s up-and-down-and-still-uncertain journey.
Nairobi-based Amref Health Africa initially had to put 692 of its staff members on unpaid leave for at least three months and halt 20 of its initiatives across multiple countries after the aid freeze went into effect.
However, it received waivers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to continue some work covering five programs largely related to HIV. This will bring about 300 of the 692 Amref staffers placed on unpaid leave back to work.
However, 15 of its programs are still paused and the waivers are only temporary. Because of this, Amref Health Africa could lose about $30 million it receives from the U.S. this year, Dr. Githinji Gitahi, the group’s CEO, tells Sara.
The ripple effects are real. In Malawi, 108,443 babies and children will go without full immunizations if funding doesn’t resume. In Kenya, the organization needs funding to provide nutrition support for 175,995 children.
Across five countries under Amref’s programs, nearly half a million children won’t be treated for common childhood diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and measles. The organization also trains over 6,000 health workers in the public sector across multiple countries in skills ranging from delivering babies to detecting and containing Ebola.
Gitahi told colleagues that while the organization anticipated a future where foreign assistance was reduced and domestic resources from African countries increased, “it’s just coming sooner than we expected and therefore we have to take urgent and significant measures for resilience.”
Still, Amref may be in a better position than most. Some 80% of its work across Africa — worth over $200 million — remains unhindered “due to diversified resources in light of shifting aid dynamics,” he says.
Read: US aid freeze could cost Amref $30M amid some work stoppages and furloughs
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In other news
Nepal said seven more U.S.-funded projects across education, health, agriculture, climate, and biodiversity have been suspended due to the U.S. aid freeze. [Reuters]
Former Japanese diplomat Masato Kanda became the Asian Development Bank’s 11th president, pledging to promote sustainable development. [Nikkei Asia]
Médecins Sans Frontières suspended operations in Sudan’s famine-stricken Zamzam camp in North Darfur, citing increased violence that has made providing medical assistance impossible. [Al Jazeera]
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About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
