Devex Pro Insider: The end of foreign aid bipartisanship

This is a free version of Devex Pro Insider from Senior Reporter Michael Igoe. Usually reserved for Pro members, we're opening it up to all readers this week as a preview of what you’re missing. Over the next few months, this special Saturday newsletter will tackle some of the biggest questions about the future of U.S. foreign aid. Not yet a Devex Pro member? Get full access to our Pro newsletters, exclusive events, and expert analysis with a 15-day free trial of Devex Pro. If you hoped the pace might begin to slow as we approach August, I have some bad news: It has been a whirlwind week for U.S. foreign aid, with no sign of letting up. It began with a Friday news dump: The dismissal of 1,300 civil servants from the U.S. State Department — part of a “reduction in force” that will eliminate 15% of the department’s personnel. The Trump administration has pitched this plan as an overdue reckoning with mission creep and bureaucratic bloat. Its detractors see an unprecedented act of diplomatic self-sabotage. More on that below. This week, U.S. lawmakers got their chance to question the wisdom of eliminating entire offices and bureaus inside the State Department at a time of escalating “great power competition” with China. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s second-in-command, Michael Rigas, was handed the hot seat in a pair of congressional hearings covering the massive ongoing reorganization of America’s foreign assistance and diplomatic institutions. To cap it all off, the long-awaited rescissions vote — a $9 billion White House budget cut proposal that has been a litmus test for Congress’ willingness and ability to protect lifesaving foreign aid programs and defend its own constitutional budget authority. Here we’ve got a little bit of good news for PEPFAR advocates — or at least what qualifies as good news in the current environment — as the flagship HIV/AIDS initiative was partially spared. In last week’s edition of this newsletter, I looked at the network of Silicon Valley and Wall Street power players who are exerting growing influence over U.S. foreign policy and where they might be taking global development. This week, the focus shifts back to Washington, D.C., where the battle is still raging. ‘It has been cruelty’ It takes a certain kind of chutzpah — or poor scheduling — to announce the termination of 1,300 public servants the Friday before you’re scheduled to testify in front of Congress. But that’s where Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources at the State Department, found himself this week. Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees grilled Rigas over the dismissals; the removal of experts on issues such as human trafficking, women’s empowerment, and global fragility; and the lack of congressional consultation throughout. Rigas defended a “merit system process” and repeatedly emphasized that the United States will remain the world’s leading aid donor. It was a far cry from the so-called bipartisan consensus that often characterized U.S. foreign aid policymaking prior to President Donald Trump’s rise to power. What was until very recently a rare bright spot of across-the-aisle cooperation has devolved into acrimony — with both Republicans and Democrats blaming the other for the rift. The most heated exchange Wednesday came courtesy of Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey. “I cannot tell you how frustrated I am listening to the answers that you've given here, that to me, are utterly unacceptable,” Booker said. “This has been chaos. It has been cruelty, and your answers, frankly, have just lacked decency, as if you don't care about a lot of the employees whose lives have been destroyed after years, if not decades, of service,” he said, before listing specific cases affected by the layoffs. One of them was a State Department human trafficking expert whose wife was also recently fired from USAID, Booker said. “She’s pregnant, and now he just got fired as well. Two people trying to start their family with no income, and now even their health insurance in limbo, who gave years of service to this country.” Rigas responded that he was “deeply distressed” by Booker’s accusations, leading to a fiery back-and-forth that required intervention by the committee’s chair. “Look, no one wants to lay someone off. I don't think we take any joy in laying people off or any kind of reduction in force, but we have to do what's best for the mission. We have to do what's best for the organization,” Rigas said. Read: Democrats demand answers on how US State Department firings went down (Pro) Into the void But what’s best for the mission, and what’s best for the organization? I spoke to two State Department officials whose jobs were eliminated by Friday’s reduction in force, or RIF, and they do not share Rigas’ view. I’m withholding their names and former positions to protect them against further career fallout. For both officials, Friday’s notice that their positions had been terminated came as a surprise, and for both, that surprise quickly gave way to anger. One of them was candid about feeling the personal impact of being told their skills and expertise were no longer of use to the State Department after years of government service. “I'm angry,” they said. “I have to set that aside and say — ‘what would have been in the best interest of the office?’ And even if it wasn't keeping me, it was ensuring that someone who had my knowledge base … was there.” But, they added, that did not happen. Both officials described a process that lacked transparency and forethought, removing some people without plans for transferring their responsibilities, and giving others five days to accept demotions without explaining where they would be reassigned. One shared that they received the RIF notice at 11:30 a.m., instructing them to leave by 4:00 p.m. and provide their supervisor with a summary of their projects. “We didn't have time to do that,” they said. The other official described being in the middle of a project at the time their position was eliminated. “It's just an incomplete document, and nobody has that information but me,” they said. “We didn't have an opportunity to transition or inform anyone. And that means that there are whole projects and aspects of projects that are going to fall apart, quite simply, because the knowledge base is not being transferred.” ICYMI: State Department fires thousands in mass reduction-in-force What’s your function? In his congressional testimony this week, this is how Rigas explained the thinking behind the mass terminations and overall reorganization in the State Department: “We want to empower our ambassadors and diplomats in the field and our regional bureaus in Washington to push forward the president's ‘America First’ foreign policy agenda and deliver results for the American people,” he said. “The priorities of the reorganization were to consolidate offices that had similar, duplicated or overlapping functions, eliminate offices and bureaus whose functions were no longer relevant or not aligned with the administration's policy priorities, and to focus the work of the department on making sure that everything we did was for the benefit of making America stronger, safer, and more prosperous.” One of the officials I spoke with expressed doubt that the State Department’s regional bureaus and the foreign service officers who rotate in and out of countries every few years will be able to develop and maintain the expertise that was housed in subject matter-specific offices. “To expect the regionals to have the depth of knowledge that has been housed in the functionals is, I think, blind,” they said. Both officials shared that a key aspect of their jobs was to take a broad global view of the issue they focused on and use that to share solutions from one country to another. They worry that knowledge sharing will disappear. “It’s not something you can learn on a rotation as a foreign service officer within two years,” they said. Stay tuned for more reporting on what all of this might mean for the future of long-standing U.S. foreign assistance priorities that have been hit hard by the reorganization. Refining the Trump 1.0 playbook Finally, the week culminated in a $9 billion budget battle seven years in the making — which marks a turning point in the politics of U.S. foreign aid, and which could reshape the balance of power between Congress and the White House. Many U.S. development insiders learned about the budget “rescissions” process for the first time back in 2018, during Trump’s first administration. At the time, this was an obscure budgetary procedure put in place by something called the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which was a response to alleged executive overreach by former President Richard Nixon’s administration. But Trump — and his then-budget director Russell Vought, who serves in the same position in this administration — saw a solution to a problem they kept running into: The White House kept proposing deep cuts to U.S. foreign aid, and Congress kept overruling them. Through a rescission, the president can propose returning funds to the U.S. Treasury that lawmakers already approved. During Trump’s first administration, the White House floated multiple foreign aid rescissions plans, and even toyed with the idea of issuing them so late in the fiscal year that lawmakers would not be able to stop them. But ultimately they did not follow through. It’s clear that Trump’s allies spent much of their time out of office refining and building political support for techniques that were not fully successful during his first term. In the meantime, many of the lawmakers who previously stood up to Trump have either left office or given up their opposition and embraced his “America First” policies. Which brings us to the end of this week. In an all-night “vota-a-rama” that stretched into the early hours of Thursday morning, the Senate approved a White House rescissions proposal that strips more than $8 billion in funding for U.S. foreign assistance programs that Congress already approved. The package claws back funding for international peacekeeping, long-term development assistance, democracy programs, global health, and more. Just after midnight Friday, the House of Representatives followed suit, voting 216-213 in favor of the rescissions, and sending it to the Oval Office for Trump’s signature. In the process, a bipartisan group of lawmakers succeeded in removing $400 million in cuts to PEPFAR, the flagship international AIDS initiative that has saved an estimated 26 million lives since 2003. While that is an important carveout — and a rare, important win for U.S. global health advocates — it also shows just how narrow the space for bipartisan foreign assistance support has become. During the first Trump administration, lawmakers rejected the White House’s proposals to slash foreign aid spending and kept a firm grip on their constitutional budget authority. During Trump’s second term, even the most storied programs have needed last-minute heroics. The “bipartisan consensus” on foreign aid has been cracking under pressure for years. This week, it buckled. Read: How the Senate saved PEPFAR — but still greenlit billions in aid cuts Plus: US Congress clears Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package + The Trump effect: Explore our dedicated page to catch up on all the latest news, in-depth analysis, and exclusive insights on how the Trump administration’s policies are reshaping U.S. aid and global development.