The U.S. foreign aid apparatus is being dismantled at breakneck speed — projects slashed, people fired, bills unpaid, courts stepping in, and even classified documents at one point headed for the shredder and burn bags.
Meanwhile, nonprofits and U.N. agencies are facing what critics call ideological loyalty tests to qualify for funding. It's a crisis of accountability, survival, and the future of global aid — all unfolding in real time.
The chaos deepened when USAID staffers were asked to review — postmortem — some of the nearly 10,000 canceled foreign aid awards. Their task? Retroactively justify terminations to match the numbers U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a social media post on X. Programs were scored on a political loyalty scale — points for countering China or securing rare earth minerals, deductions for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, and environmental justice. “Why should I make up a justification for why you've already terminated an award?” one USAID staffer told Devex. “I don’t know what your justification was, and I'm not going to do your work retroactively, backwards, to give you a reason.”