What MAGA has planned for USAID — and the world

Rescind policies to mitigate climate change. Make “deep cuts” to humanitarian responses in the Middle East. Slash diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Elevate pro-life, anti-abortion policies as a “core objective.” Those are just some of the ways a Trump administration could change United States foreign aid, according to one chapter of a nearly 1,000-page policy blueprint published by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. “The next conservative Administration will have a unique opportunity to realign U.S. foreign assistance with American national interests,” stated the report. “However, this will require that bold steps are taken on Day One to undo the gross misuse of foreign aid by the current Administration.” The Heritage Foundation expects its proposals to be taken seriously. One year after Trump took office for the first time, the foundation stated, “Trump and his administration [had] embraced nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations” from Heritage’s “Mandate for Leadership,” a publication that had 334 policy recommendations for the then-incoming president. And by 2018, the foundation said, 70 former Heritage employees were either part of the Trump transition team or folded into his administration. Opinions differ among aid policy experts about how much weight to give the proposals, but there are plenty who are taking them seriously. “Could the Trump administration implement these ideas mentioned in Project 2025? Yes, many are possible but a lot more detail is needed,” Tom Hart, the president of InterAction, told Devex. “Should they? That is an entirely different question.” The Heritage paper is part of the foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, which is known to be backed by several well-known, deep-pocketed conservative funders. It includes a combination of familiar, partisan broadsides against Biden’s policies, along with a string of proposals that read like campaign promises. It also includes highly technocratic specifics about reforming aid contracting and priorities, all written by former U.S. Agency for International Development official Max Primorac, who served as chief assistant to the Trump-appointed acting deputy administrator, John Barsa, before he left the agency in early 2021. “The Biden Administration has deformed the agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived and systemic racism,” wrote Primorac in the chapter. “U.S. foreign aid has been transformed into a massive and openended global entitlement program captured by — and enriching — the progressive Left.” In Heritage’s chapter on U.S. foreign aid, Primorac outlined how a Trump administration might change that, including through striking cuts to the agency’s budget. A conservative administration should, he wrote, reduce USAID’s budget to “at a minimum” its levels prior to the COVID-19 pandemic — slashes would occur during a period where more people are facing hunger and displacement than ever before. And though such funding cuts underlie much of the chapter, there are proposals that touch on nearly everything USAID does, from elevating political appointees to countering China. Here are some of the most consequential proposals in the 24-page document. Cuts, cuts, and more cuts Money isn’t the only thing that should be on the foreign aid chopping block, according to The Heritage Foundation. There is also USAID’s work on mitigating, preventing, and responding to climate change, which the report stated has been influenced by the Biden administration’s “extreme climate policies” and “anti-fossil fuel agenda.” In the document, Heritage recommended the next conservative administration should “rescind all climate policies from its foreign aid programs,” “shut down the agency’s offices, programs, and directives designed to advance the Paris Climate Agreement,” and “narrowly limit funding to traditional climate mitigation efforts.” “USAID should cease its war on fossil fuels in the developing world and support the responsible management of oil and gas reserves as the quickest way to end wrenching poverty and the need for open-ended foreign aid,” stated the report. There’s also the agency’s diversity, equity, and inclusion — or DEI — work, which Heritage claimed has racialized USAID and created a “hostile work environment for anyone who disagrees with the Biden Administration’s identity politics.” Instead, the report recommended dismantling the agency’s “DEI apparatus” by eliminating the role of the chief diversity officer, slashing DEI advisers and committees, and removing DEI requirements from contract and grant tenders and awards, among other changes. Heritage also recommended slicing down USAID’s humanitarian budget, the growth of which, the paper said, “distorts humanitarian responses, worsens corruption in the countries we support, and exacerbates the misery of those we intend to help.” “Humanitarian aid is sustaining war economies, creating financial incentives for warring parties to continue fighting, discouraging governments from reforming, and propping up malign regimes,” it stated. To combat those challenges, the proposal recommended making “deep cuts … in places controlled by malign actors, such as Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan, where our aid is consumed by fraud, diversion, and partner overhead costs.” Heritage also recommended creating exit strategies that shorten the duration of humanitarian projects, including transitioning from large awards to local — especially faith-based — entities, and requiring stricter vetting processes to prevent aid diversion. Shifting the focus Gender — which has taken center stage in America’s culture wars — was high on Heritage’s priority list for what needs to change. Under a conservative administration, the foundation recommended reshaping USAID’s policies, resources, and programs within the existing Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, and transforming it into the Office of Women, Children, and Families. Under the rebrand, the office’s senior leadership should be replaced with “an unapologetically pro-life” political appointee, while slashing more than 180 gender advisers throughout the entire agency. Also suggested was a battle on nomenclature, including removing “all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, in agency publications and policies, and in all agency contracts and grants” that include the terms gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender diverse individuals, gender-aware, and gender-sensitive, along with any references to abortion, reproductive health, and sexual and reproductive rights. In the same breath, Heritage recommended that “protecting life should be among the core objectives of United States foreign assistance.” Abortion has been a flip-flop issue for the United States for several decades, especially since the Mexico City Policy — which blocks funding to foreign organizations that perform or promote abortions — was instituted under former President Ronald Reagan in 1984. The policy has been consistently rescinded by Democrats and reinstated by Republicans, but Heritage is keen to go further than before. That includes blocking funding to the United Nations Population Fund and boosting oversight of family planning and reproductive health work overall. Though funding abortion services is restricted by U.S. law, the Heritage paper asserted the Biden administration has promoted “abortion on demand” around the world, including through work with USAID. The paper also called out several international organizations, including Population Services International, Pathfinder, PATH, and the Population Council, for contributing to “the global abortion industry” and benefitting from loopholes that funneled “tens of millions” of U.S. funding toward their work. Doubling down? Despite its criticism of the Biden administration, the paper emphasized a number of priorities already at work at USAID — from private sector engagement to localization. While the paper didn’t recognize ongoing work at the agency in either regard, it pointed to a number of strategies today’s USAID is working toward, such as lowering barriers to entry for smaller, local organizations and businesses; and putting decision-making in the hands of local nongovernmental organizations. In 2021, USAID Administrator Samantha Power pledged that halfway through the decade, 25% of the agency’s eligible funds would be directed toward local entities, and that by 2030, half of all USAID programs would be locally led. In March, a bipartisan bill was introduced and passed in the House Foreign Affairs Committee to make those goals easier. And late last year, a proposal from the Biden administration attempted to do the same across the federal government. Though the Heritage paper stated that “foot-dragging” progressives view local organizations “as obstacles to promoting abortion, gender radicalism, climate extremism, and other woke ideas,” its localization recommendations seem to ring true to many of those put forward by today’s USAID — though perhaps, in different vernacular. Another priority emphasized in the paper is the need to improve hiring, staffing, and recruitment practices. For years, USAID has been sounding the alarm on its internal staffing crisis, particularly amidst its contracting officers — and it’s something Jami Rodgers, USAID’s new director of the Office of Acquisitions and Assistance, recently told Devex is a top priority. One difference is that for Heritage, much of new hiring should be tied to political appointees who can drive the agency’s leadership in new directions. Does it matter? Now that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have secured enough support to claim their parties’ nominations, the U.S. development community faces two starkly different realities for 2025. During the Biden administration, America’s foreign assistance budget climbed to record highs, largely driven by the war in Ukraine and the ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under Trump, the administration tried to shrink federal aid spending almost ceaselessly — attempting to cut it by around one-third in 2018 alone. While Biden has framed his reelection bid with a pledge to “finish the job,” a Trump administration would create a much different landscape for U.S. foreign aid — especially if The Heritage Foundation’s proposals are taken into account. “A Trump administration [US]AID won't have someone as mainstream as [former Administrator] Mark Green again,” said George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a former principal deputy assistant administrator at USAID. “It will have somebody who is closer to the Trump camp. It will de-emphasize and change the names and policies on gender and DEI. And it will bring that cultural war lens into how the agency and policies are managed.” Despite varying opinions across the sector — from dismissing the Heritage paper to, already, gearing up to counter it — the consensus from many experts Devex spoke with was that the foreign aid world will continue to march forward, though perhaps, from different angles. “Members of both parties would — and should — look skeptically at the dismantling of America's foreign aid infrastructure, which has been built over time with support from both sides,” Hart said.