In the wake of USAID's dismantling and the mass termination of aid awards, this Center for Global Development analysis argues that U.S. foreign assistance remains essential to national security and lays out six reform principles for rebuilding a more effective and durable system. 

Elon Musk has doubled down on disputing that DOGE's dismantling of USAID caused deaths, even claiming deaths in Africa decreased after funding was cut. Forbes reports that U.S. humanitarian funding was slashed to $3.7 billion from $14 billion between 2024 and 2025, with modeling projecting anywhere from 780,000 deaths to more than 14 million total deaths by 2030.

After Elon Musk challenged critics to name a single person killed by his dismantling of USAID, columnist Nicholas Kristof responds with specific cases he documented arguing that the aid cuts under Musk and Trump, are unquestionably costing children's lives.

A year after the Trump administration dismantled USAID and slashed U.S. foreign aid disbursements from $72 billion to $47 billion, a Rockefeller Foundation poll finds most Americans — including much of Trump's MAGA base — still support foreign aid, with backing rising from 54% to 70% once voters learn it made up about 1% of the federal budget before 2025.

With USAID dismantled and disaster response folded into a downsized State Department, the Trump administration is scrambling to mount a "whole-of-government" earthquake response in Venezuela, in what former officials call the first major test of America's restructured, transactional aid apparatus.

With USAID's closure gutting hundreds of development projects and Canada, the U.K., and Germany also slashing aid budgets, a UC Berkeley lecturer argues university development studies programs must move away from decades of grant-focused, donor-dependent curricula and instead teach community-led, locally driven models to survive the sector's collapse and remain relevant..

Two former Trump-era State Department and USAID officials argue in this op-ed that Washington risks defaulting to U.N. transfers and outsourced implementation unless it rebuilds dedicated foreign assistance staffing, embassy-level coordination, and accountability infrastructure.

UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima urged Washington to reverse its decision to begin a phased withdrawal of PEPFAR funding from South Africa, warning the move could cost lives in the country with the world's largest HIV-positive population. She cites early signs of reversal tied to the broader collapse in U.S. aid funding.

Despite Congress passing a law directing the State Department to spend $9.4 billion on global health and over $5 billion on humanitarian aid, ProPublica reports that Trump officials have delayed obligating funds, labeled aid money "unallocated" to require OMB sign-off, and ignored congressional inquiries.

Germany's far-right AfD is exploiting a fraud scandal at development agency GIZ — where 24 Yemen-office employees were dismissed over alleged embezzlement estimated at tens of millions of euros — to push for abolishing the country's development ministry entirely, with party spokesperson Rocco Kever explicitly pointing to the Trump administration's gutting of USAID as an "interesting and courageous signal" for Germany to emulate.

The Trump administration is initiating a phased drawdown of PEPFAR funding to South Africa — which supports roughly 8 million people living with HIV and has received over $400 million annually — citing the country's "failure to make demonstrable progress" on U.S. policy concerns, with full termination expected by early 2027.

IOM Director General Amy Pope tells AFP that declining development aid is driving more displacement from crisis-hit regions like Sudan, and urges wealthy donor nations to invest in stability now rather than face costlier emergencies later.

The WFP received an $800 million contribution from the U.S., a partial reversal after the Trump administration earlier slashed U.S. funding to the agency, even as global hunger sits at record levels, Reuters reports. 

The Council on Foreign Relations reports that the revamped $1.2 billion Food for Peace program moved to the USDA is now routing U.S.-grown commodities to a short, mismatched list of just seven countries — two of which don't meet an emergency threshold — while bypassing countries needing it the most.

Writing in the New York Times, former USAID disaster-response official Jeremy Konyndyk warns that the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo and Uganda could become the worst on record, in part because the Trump administration's shuttering of USAID, staffing cuts at the CDC, and U.S. withdrawal from the WHO. 

A year after the Trump administration ended most U.S. democracy funding, Carnegie Endowment scholars find that no actor has stepped in to fill the void, with established Western donors largely maintaining but not expanding their commitments — and several, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK, cutting democracy aid further.

A new report from House Oversight Democrats finds that the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID has contributed to an estimated 600,000 deaths, two-thirds of them children, while also hampering the global response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak, The Hill reports.

In this opinion, Nicholas Kristof argues that the dismantling of USAID and the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO have directly worsened the current Ebola outbreak by eliminating early-warning infrastructure, expert presence in the DRC, and disease preparedness planning.

Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman argues in Foreign Affairs that while the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID has been deeply damaging, the development sector can still make progress by pivoting toward investment in local capacity and self-reliance.

Writing for Inkstick, Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Priya Moran argues as FY27 appropriations get underway Congress still has the opportunity to reverse course and reinvest in the life-saving, cost-effective foreign aid and peacebuilding programs that advance both American values and national security.