WASHINGTON (AP) — Frustration boiled over Wednesday among supporters of the United States’ lead aid agency at a Washington rally, and anxious aid workers abroad scrambled to pack up households after the Trump administration abruptly pulled almost all agency staffers off the job and out of the field.
The order issued Tuesday followed 2 1/2 weeks that have seen the Trump administration and teams led by billionaire ally Elon Musk dismantle much of the U.S. Agency for International Development, shutting down a six-decade mission intended to shore up U.S. security by educating children, fighting epidemics and advancing other development abroad.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been touring Central America on his first visit in office, defended the administration’s broad shutdown of aid funding and other actions while saying, “Our preference would have been to do this in a more orderly fashion.”
But, Rubio said, the administration faced a lack of cooperation in an attempt to review the worth of each agency program. He gave no evidence, and agency staffers deny his and Musk’s claims of obstruction. As a result, Rubio said, the administration would now “work from the bottom up” to determine which U.S. aid and development missions abroad were in the national interest and would be allowed to resume.
“This is not about ending foreign aid. It is about structuring it in a way that furthers the national interest of the United States,” he said in the Guatemalan capital of Guatemala City.