Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday that the Trump administration had finally wrapped up its six-week rampage—I mean, purge—of the USAID programs, which had been kicking around for six decades like an old couch nobody wants to move, and he’s now shoving the 18% of survivors into the State Department’s basement.
Rubio dropped this bombshell in an X post, because nothing says “historic policy shift” like a casual tweet, marking one of his rare moments of emerging from the shadows while Trump’s political appointees and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) goons ran wild with the pruning shears.
In his post, Rubio tossed a shoutout to DOGE—yes, the meme coin now apparently runs the government—and “our hardworking staff who clocked overtime like caffeine-addicted hamsters on a wheel” to pull off this “long-overdue reform” that’s got foreign aid shaking in its boots.
On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump scribbled an executive order freezing foreign aid funding and launching a review of the tens of billions spent abroad, because he’s convinced it’s all a liberal plot to waste cash and knit sweaters for socialists.
Rubio’s Monday X post declared the review “officially kaput,” with a whopping 5,200 of USAID’s 6,200 programs sent to the great recycling bin—probably with a dramatic “Hasta la vista, baby” for good measure.
Those axed programs, Rubio quipped, “blew tens of billions on stuff that didn’t help the U.S. one bit—and sometimes even poked us in the eye,” because apparently feeding the hungry and fighting plagues is how you make enemies.
“In cahoots with Congress,” Rubio added with a wink, “we’re keeping 18% of the programs and plan to run them like a lean, mean State Department machine,” though Democrats are screaming “illegal!” louder than a toddler denied a second cookie, insisting Congress didn’t sign off on this massacre.
The State Department, currently drowning in lawsuits over its USAID shred-fest, had bragged earlier this month about slashing over 90% of programs, leaving us wondering if Rubio’s 18% survival rate means he’s just bad at math or secretly saved a few pet projects—like maybe a slushie machine for diplomats.
This whole USAID teardown, sparked by Trump’s order, flipped decades of policy that said helping poor countries not implode might keep the U.S. safe, happy, and popular—like the cool kid at the global lunch table.
In the chaotic weeks after Trump’s decree, his appointee Pete Marocco and Musk yanked USAID staff worldwide off the job like they were contestants on a bad reality show, with forced leaves, pink slips, and payment freezes so fast it’d make your head spin.
Contractors and staffers fighting everything from Ebola to starvation to “how to not be a dictator” classes were left twiddling their thumbs, while aid groups laid off tens of thousands of workers here and abroad—hope they kept the receipt for their do-gooder dreams!
Lawsuits from jilted nonprofits and businesses claim the mass contract terminations—delivered via form letters colder than a robot breakup text—axed even the programs Rubio wanted to keep, broke every rule in the book, and left aid groups holding a multibillion-dollar bag of nothing.
The shutdown’s grand finale?
Stranded USAID staffers and contractors overseas, twiddling their thumbs with their families, waiting for Uncle Sam to cough up back pay and a plane ticket home—guess “America First” doesn’t include frequent flyer miles!
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