USAid shutdown has ripple effects on aid around the world and cedes ground to China – analysts
Donald Trump’s shutdown of USAid has already had disastrous effects on humanitarian aid and development programmes around the world, but it has also ceded ground to the US’s chief rival, China, analysts have said.
The result of the sudden 90-day suspension of USAid funding – which accounts for 40% of global foreign aid – has been chaos: employees locked out of offices, humanitarian shipments left to rot, and lifesaving assistance stopped.
Around the world, development programmes previously assisted by the USAid are panicking, warning of disastrous risks of escalating famine, death and disease.
Trump’s plan involves the merger of the more than 60-year-old USAid into the state department, shrinking its workforce and aligning its spending with his priorities. But analysts say it is working against one key priority – countering China.
“(The US is handing) on a silver platter to China the perfect opportunity to expand its influence, at a time when China’s economy is not doing very well,” said Prof Huang Yanzhong, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
What Trump is doing is basically providing China a perfect opportunity to rethink, to renew soft power projects, and get back on track to transglobal leadership.
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Updated at 15.36 GMT
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Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has invited House speaker Mike Johnson to visit Jerusalem this year.
“I know you’re busy but find space to do that. You’ll be welcomed with a red carpet,” Netanyahu told Johnson during a press conference following their meeting at the Capitol.
Netanyahu said he had developed a “close personal bond” with Johnson, and noted Donald Trump’s executive order on Thursday sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC) over its arrest warrants for him and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
Johnson thanked the Israeli leader for his “unrelenting commitment to making the region and the world a safer place”, adding:
What Israel has done in the past seven months really is a testament to what can be accomplished when we do not let the enemy set the rules.
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Updated at 16.53 GMT
Ben Makuch
Some extremists who were recently the targets of the FBI are applauding Donald Trump’s appointment of Maga loyalist Kash Patel as its new director.
Experts are warning their support is a sign of an emboldened far right now seen as a diminishing existential threat inside the nation’s top law enforcement agency.
In what was a fraught and contentious Senate confirmation hearing last week, Patel, Trump’s pick to head the FBI, made a point to describe some of the racism he has faced in the US as the son of Indian Gujarati immigrants.
But Patel is garnering some unlikely fans among the racist and xenophobic far right.
“I like Kash fr, he is based af,” wrote one Telegram user on a post about Patel from a neo-Nazi account with thousands of followers. “I’d buy him curry anytime.”
Patel is known for peddling various conspiracy theories on podcasts popular among Maga followers, and he is a polarizing figure. He’s not expected to garner any Democratic votes on the way to a likely confirmation as the new head of the FBI.
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Updated at 16.34 GMT
Donald Trump said he will sign an executive order to end federal support for paper straws, a Biden-era policy that was part of a broader plan to phase out single-plastics.
In a Truth Social post this morning, Trump wrote:
I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!
Trump has previously railed against paper straws, selling thousands of Trump-branded plastic straws during his 2020 presidential campaign as an alternative to “liberal” paper straws.
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Job creation across the US has slowed at the start of Donald Trump’s second term, after a blistering finish to 2024.
New data from the labor department released on Friday showed 143,000 jobs added to the economy in January, short of the 168,000 expected by economists.
It is also a sharp slowdown on December, where the Bureau of Labor Statistics has revised up its estimates and now says payrolls rose by 307,000, 51,000 more than its initial estimate of 256,000.
The White House’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, blamed the pace of hiring on Joe Biden’s administration in a statement.
“Today’s jobs report reveals the Biden economy was far worse than anyone thought, and underscores the necessity of President Trump’s pro-growth policies,” she wrote.
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Michael Sainato
Elon Musk’s blitz through the federal government has triggered a “constitutional emergency”, a senior Democrat has warned, demanding the launch of an impartial investigation into billionaire tycoon’s access to sensitive data.
Robert C “Bobby” Scott, ranking member of the House committee on education and workforce and the Democratic leader on the committee, sounded the alarm over a “void of oversight” as the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), led by the world’s richest man, accesses information within a string of agencies including the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services.
In a letter seen by the Guardian, Scott demanded that the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan federal watchdog agency, launch an immediate investigation into “interventions” by Musk and his team into the departments’ IT systems, the legality of such moves and what it means “for children and vulnerable workers”.
Scott calls for the agency to provide answers into the legality and impacts of Doge infiltrating private and sensitive data at these federal departments. It comes after senior Democrats on the House oversight committee demanded an investigation into potential national security breaches by the unit.
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As we reported earlier, the largest US government workers’ union and an association of foreign service workers sued the Trump administration on Thursday over “catastrophic” cuts to USAid.
Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are among the named defendants, but the text of the suit focuses extensively on actions, and statements on social media, by Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” initiative.
Among the actions called illegal are Trump’s order on 20 January, the day he was inaugurated, pausing all US foreign aid. That was followed by orders from the state department halting USAid projects around the world, agency computer systems going offline and staff abruptly laid off or placed on leave.
The gutting of the agency has largely been overseen by Musk, the world’s richest man and a close Trump ally spearheading the president’s effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy and replace career civil servants with politically loyal appointees.
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USAid shutdown has ripple effects on aid around the world and cedes ground to China – analysts
Donald Trump’s shutdown of USAid has already had disastrous effects on humanitarian aid and development programmes around the world, but it has also ceded ground to the US’s chief rival, China, analysts have said.
The result of the sudden 90-day suspension of USAid funding – which accounts for 40% of global foreign aid – has been chaos: employees locked out of offices, humanitarian shipments left to rot, and lifesaving assistance stopped.
Around the world, development programmes previously assisted by the USAid are panicking, warning of disastrous risks of escalating famine, death and disease.
Trump’s plan involves the merger of the more than 60-year-old USAid into the state department, shrinking its workforce and aligning its spending with his priorities. But analysts say it is working against one key priority – countering China.
“(The US is handing) on a silver platter to China the perfect opportunity to expand its influence, at a time when China’s economy is not doing very well,” said Prof Huang Yanzhong, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
What Trump is doing is basically providing China a perfect opportunity to rethink, to renew soft power projects, and get back on track to transglobal leadership.
Share
Updated at 15.36 GMT
Alleging corruption at USAid, Trump says: ‘CLOSE IT DOWN!’
Donald Trump has renewed his assault on USAid this morning, accusing the US government foreign assistance facilitator of corruption and saying “CLOSE IT DOWN”.
The Trump administration is doing just that, with the firing of all but a few hundred of its staff, a move that has prompted a lawsuit to stop it and fears that the United States is undermining critical humanitarian and health programs worldwide while ceding influence to rivals like China.
Trump appears unbothered, writing on Truth Social:
USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE. THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!
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Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is reported to have also gained access to the Treasury’s payment system, which Democrats view as an alarming development because it contains data on millions of Americans.
In an interview with Bloomberg News yesterday, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent downplayed the risks of Doge’s access.
“These are highly trained professionals, this is not some roving band running around doing things,” he said.
Bessent described Doge’s investigation into Treasury operations as “an operational review. It’s not an ideological review … At Treasury, we move deliberately and we fix things. That’s the way we work. So everyone should know that all the payments are going to be made. They’re going to be in good order.”
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Student association sues over Doge accessing education department database
An association of university students has filed a lawsuit over Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reported access of a department of education database containing information about student loan program enrollees.
“The Department of Education has tens of millions of Americans’ sensitive personal information – everything from income history to Social Security numbers to banking information,” said Alex Elson, vice president of Student Defense, which is representing the University of California Student Association in the lawsuit filed along with Public Citizen, a progressive advocacy group.
“They collect that data with a promise to keep it safe and use it to help students secure financial aid and make informed decisions about their future. Turning around and handing it over to political operatives with an axe to grind is a fundamental violation of both Americans’ trust and federal law. We urge the Court to quickly stop it.”
The lawsuit comes after the Washington Post this week reported accessed the database at the education department, even as the Trump administration considers shutting down the federal agency.
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Donald Trump may order the dismantling of the education department after its secretary, Linda McMahon, is confirmed by the Senate, Axios reports.
McMahon will have her confirmation hearing next week. Doing away with the department of education is a longtime goal of the political right, and one Donald Trump endorsed this week when he said that he hopes McMahon puts herself out of a job.
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Trump administration considering mass layoffs at health and human services department – report
The Trump administration is planning an executive order that will lead to mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Thousands of federal workers at the department and agencies it oversees, including the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, could be let go by the order, the Journal reports. Here’s more:
The order could come as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter said, after workers have an opportunity to take a buyout. The terms of the order haven’t been finalized, however, and the White House could still decide against going forward with the plans.
The job cuts under consideration would affect the Department of Health and Human Services, which employs more than 80,000 people and includes the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in addition to the FDA and CDC.
The agencies are responsible for a range of functions, from approving new drugs to tracing bird-flu outbreaks and researching cancer. A loss of staff could affect the efforts depending on which workers are cut and whether they are concentrated in particular areas.
The White House on Thursday denied that there is an executive order related to HHS coming.
Agency officials have been told to prepare lists of probationary workers who have essential roles and must be retained, and of employees who don’t, according to people familiar with the instructions. Generally, probationary employees have served less than one year, or two years for “excepted service” and can be let go more easily than other workers.
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Updated at 13.40 GMT
Donald Trump will today welcome Japan’s prime minister Shigeru Ishiba to the White House, with his arrival due at 11.30am.
In the afternoon, the president will make an unspecified “Faith Office” announcement, the White House says, and sign executive orders, before heading to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend.
Both events will provide reporters the opportunity to ask questions of the president, who will perhaps make news.
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A total of 611 essential workers will be kept on at USAID following cuts to the agency’s funding, according to an update sent to staff late on Thursday and shared with Reuters by a Trump administration official on Friday.
Under initial plans, fewer than 300 of the agency’s 10,000-strong worldwide workforce was reportedly to be kept on.
Trump has signed an executive order imposing a 90-day suspension on all US foreign assistance, with an exemption for life-saving treatment.
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UK will not follow US on ICC sanctions
The UK has no plans to sanction international criminal court (ICC) officials and supports the court’s independence, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesperson has said.
It follows an executive order issued by president Trump authorising sanctions against people who have worked on ICC investigations of US citizens or US allies such as Israel.
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Updated at 12.40 GMT
Donald Trump’s attempts to slash incentives for electric cars would cause sales of the vehicles to plummet, with this effort cheered on by a seemingly confounding supporter – Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and erstwhile champion for action on the climate crisis.
The US president, who previously suggested supporters of EVs “rot in hell” before somewhat tempering his rhetoric, has already ditched an aspirational goal for half of all car sales to be electric by the end of the decade, halted some funding for EV chargers and began reversing vehicle pollution standards that prod auto companies to shift away from gasoline models.
A key tax credit for Americans buying an EV, worth up to $7,500, is also a major target for elimination, although to overturn this Trump will require Republicans in Congress. Should he succeed, though, the impact would be significant, with a recent study finding that electric car sales could fall by 27% without the incentive.
Trump’s agenda has been enthusiastically backed by Musk, despite the world’s richest person heading Tesla, the market-leading EV company that also relies upon some parts made in China that may be targeted by tariffs imposed by Trump.
Read the full story here:
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More now on that lawsuit brought by two government workers’ unions to try to stop the Trump administration from dismantling USAID.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest such union, and the American Foreign Service Association argued in the suit that the administration’s actions were “unconstitutional and illegal”.
They said Congress was the “only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency” but that “not a single one of defendants’ actions” were taken with congressional approval.
The suit added that “the agency’s collapse has had disastrous humanitarian consequences”, including the disruption of services to treat malaria and HIV.
“Already, 300 babies that would not have had HIV, now do. Thousands of girls and women will die from pregnancy and childbirth,” it said.
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Updated at 11.50 GMT
