Elon Musk has put the U.S. Agency for International Development through the woodchipper of his de facto department this week in the name of “efficiency.” The move — which began with a Day One executive order by President Trump demanding a review of all U.S. foreign aid that was subsequently handed off to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — has resulted in the layoff or furloughing of hundreds of USAID employees, as well as imperiled the health of babies and toddlers receiving medical care in Sudan, the operations of independent media outlets working in or near despotic regimes, and longtime AIDS and malaria prevention campaigns credited with saving some 35 million lives. (The State Department, which has assumed control of the formerly independent agency, has since announced a “confounding waiver process … [to] get lifesaving programs back online,” ProPublica reports.) Chaos and panic reign among USAID employees and the agency’s partner organizations around the globe.
The alarming shifts have also cast enormous uncertainty over the future of USAID’s many clean energy programs, threatening to leave U.S. allies quite literally in the dark. “There are other sources of foreign assistance — the State Department and the Defense Department have different programs — but USAID, this is what they do,” Tom Ellison, the deputy director for the Center for Climate and Security, a nonpartisan think tank, told me. “It is central and not easily replaced.”
