When billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) swept through government in the first months of 2025, there was one agency that felt the full force of the group’s desire to move fast and break things: the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
DOGE’s mandate was to cut contracts and government spending in a futile quest to reduce the federal deficit by $2 trillion. On January 28, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver for “lifesaving humanitarian assistance,” which should have allowed money for critical projects to continue to flow. But according to Nicholas Enrich, who was then the acting assistant administrator for global health, that’s not what happened.
By early February, the group had taken over the agency, shut down its emails, and left tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid funding in limbo. Within days, the agency’s staff had been cut from 10,000 to 300, and by July the agency had been merged with the State Department. According to estimates from Boston University, more than 700,000 people died in the first year following the funding cuts, and congressional Democrats have announced an investigation into the deaths.
