Marco Rubio Announces Cancellation of Most USAID Programs

The USAID will cancel the majority of its programs, while the rest will be folded into the State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Monday. “After a 6-week review, we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID. The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed) the core national interests of the United States,” Rubio wrote in a post on X, The Guardian reported.

“In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department. Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform,” he added.

Last week, a divided Supreme Court of the US rejected the Trump administration’s request to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid approved by Congress frozen, CNN reported.

The court did not immediately say when the funds must be released, allowing the White House to continue to dispute the issue in lower courts. The ruling was 5-4, according to the CNN report.

The majority noted that given a court-ordered deadline to spend the money last week had already passed, the lower courts should “clarify what obligations the government must fulfil to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order.”

In a strongly worded dissent, a conservative judge wrote that he was “stunned” by the court’s decision to permit the lower-court judge to order the administration to unfreeze the foreign aid at issue in the case.

At the center of the case is billions in foreign aid from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development that Trump froze in January as he sought to clamp down spending and bring those agencies in line with his agenda.

Several non-profit groups that rely on the funding for global health and other programs sued, asserting that the administration’s moves usurped the power of Congress to control government spending and violated a federal law that dictates how agencies make decisions, the report said.

ALSO READ: Greenland Goes to Polls Amid Renewed US Interest: All You Need to Know