Internal USAID list provides snapshot of Trump cuts

A nearly 400-page list provided to Congress may give rare insight into the scope of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which have already roiled the global humanitarian community and shut down programs around the world.

Some of the cuts on the list appear to impact lifesaving services — such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria prevention, along with maternal and baby health — which would contradict a Trump administration commitment to continue such programs under the State Department’s umbrella.

Ending those programs would also hurt Americans, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement to The Hill.

“The Trump administration’s slash-and-burn approach to U.S. foreign assistance, including lifesaving programs, is putting Americans at risk from infectious diseases like Ebola and drug-resistant TB,” she said, referring to tuberculosis (TB).

“These cuts also hurt American farmers whose crops nourish severely malnourished people in conflict situations and diminish our global stature and ability to compete with global adversaries, like China and Russia.”

Other items on the list run the gamut from cybersecurity assistance to administrative resources like printers, conference tables and car maintenance.

The internal list, which has not been previously reported, was provided to Congress by a whistleblower. Democrats say it originated from the desk of Peter Marocco, one of the leading figures dismantling USAID alongside Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The State Department has yet to make available a comprehensive list of its terminated programs and did not respond to questions about the list obtained by The Hill.

A federal court earlier this month ordered the Trump administration to restart payments on programs initially labeled as paused and under review. However, some groups long funded by USAID say there’s no sign of payments being restored.

“In lieu of restarting payments they just went ahead and terminated all of these programs,” a Senate Democratic aide said. The Supreme Court ruled that the administration must pay out reimbursements for programs where funds were initially frozen. At least one aid group contacted by The Hill said it was starting to see some payments.

Rubio claims that he has conducted a thoughtful, methodological review to root out waste, fraud and abuse in USAID, without undermining lifesaving programs. Rubio, in a statement on March 10, said he was cutting 83 percent of the agency and terminating 5,200 programs. Court filings put that number at 5,800 programs at USAID and 4,100 at the State Department.

The moves are facing a barrage of legal challenges, and the Trump administration is on a string of losses.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Musk and DOGE likely acted unconstitutionally in their efforts to shutter USAID. Another federal judge ruled earlier this month that President Trump overstepped his constitutional authority in the initial foreign aid freeze.

“It’s pretty clear that these guys are not interested in reforming [USAID], they’re interested in destroying [USAID], that’s pretty clear in the way they’re approaching things,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told The Hill shortly after a closed-door meeting with Marocco on March 6.

Republicans, even those with concern over canceled programs, largely toe the Trump administration’s line that audacious action is needed to disrupt a slow-moving bureaucracy, and echo criticisms of waste.

“You've heard me pretty publicly say, we can have a little bit more compassion,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said of USAID’s quick shutdown.

“If I could be king for a day, would I do it differently? Of course. But I'll come back to this — we've tried to do it the nice way. We've tried for decades and we've failed. We have to admit the country elected a disruptor.”

Rubio, in the March statement, said 1,000 USAID programs would be moved under the auspices of the State Department. Court filings said the administration preserved only 500 programs, and Devex, the media platform covering the global development community, reported USAID staff were ordered to review and rescind terminations to meet the 1,000 program benchmark.

Aid groups contacted by The Hill describe more than two months of whiplash, from Trump’s initial foreign aid freeze and stop-work orders, Rubio’s waivers for lifesaving humanitarian assistance, termination letters and then rescinded termination letters.

“We never stopped that lifesaving work because we felt it was too important to continue,” Janti Soeripto, Save the Children U.S. president and CEO, said in an interview with The Hill last week.

Soeripto described the situation as “fluid” and said the organization has put out an emergency appeal to fill the shortfall left by the federal funding cuts.

“What we're seeing, though, now is a real impact of … other organizations leaving areas. We see increased risks for children, which are already very vulnerable just because there's less capacity.”

Save the Children ended operations in five countries after receiving more than 100 termination letters from USAID. Some of those programs were reinstated, and the organization is just starting to see reimbursements for costs it incurred in December and January as part of its contracts with USAID.

Another terminated program that initially received a waiver was a $1.2 million contract aiding victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Women and girls in the DRC are facing a staggering crisis of sexual violence, where the United Nations estimates 60 rapes are occurring per day, and sexual violence is being implemented as a deliberate tactic of war.

“That was considered lifesaving, that got a humanitarian waiver,” Rachel Moynihan, a spokesperson for the UNFPA’s Washington office, said of the DRC program. “And then abruptly, on Feb. 26, it was terminated. It's not clear who within USAID knew who was terminating what.”

UNFPA, like all other USAID grant recipients, received immediate stop-work orders as part of Trump’s foreign aid freeze. The organization received some waivers for programs, then termination letters, some of which were pulled back.

“The rescission of terminations, we haven't been talking to anyone, so we don't know why, but I would hope it's because this is lifesaving work, and that this is work that really makes a dramatic impact on the lives of some of the most marginalized and vulnerable women in the world,” said Sarah Craven, director of UNFPA's Washington, D.C., office.

“It has been a very confusing time, to put it mildly,” she added.

Republicans and Democrats are increasingly split in the fight over foreign assistance, an area of historic bipartisan convergence, but increasingly in the crosshairs of Trump’s "America First" foreign policy.

“Mr. Marocco was very clear in exposing the waste that goes on out there in pointing out the way that many of these programs at State and USAID were designed to not be accountable,” Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said after meeting with the USAID deputy head on March 5.

“And making sure the priority is to put dollars into programs that save life, food medication and not all the other BS that has been going on, the radical liberal things such as drag shows in Ecuador, doing transgender job fairs in places like Bangladesh for $500,000.”

That grant is not on the list that was provided to Congress, but some of the programs included as terminations in Bangladesh include prevention and treatment of tuberculosis, initiatives to promote food security, administrative resources, resilience in natural disasters, economic development, environmental protection and support for women’s rights, to name a few.

Helen Keller International, an aid group in Bangladesh, said in a statement on March 6 that although the U.S. government had rescinded some terminations, including contracts to produce ready-to-use therapeutic foods used to treat malnutrition, funding has not resumed.

“Without funding and clear guidance on how to resume, children and families around the world continue to go without critical, lifesaving treatment,” the organization said.

Some canceled programs appear to contradict goals set by Trump’s diplomatic nominees.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, said it’s one of her “top priorities” to increase American representation in some of the technical organizations at the body to edge out China leading these groups. But listed among USAID’s terminations is “funding to increase Americans in the United Nations’s humanitarian space,” estimated at $736,750.

Some of the canceled funds are curious, like a tablecloth shipment that cost $770 in airfreight and clearance charges, used for the mission director’s residence “overseas." Or $3,659 for a “front office wooden plaque” for a USAID office in Uganda.

One organization said they received a termination letter for a program that was already ending in February 2025, underscoring the confusion around the cuts.

But overall, critics warn foreign aid cuts are creating a preventable crisis that is contributing to deaths and increased hardship around the world.

Aid groups say that even if the U.S. wants to demand that other countries step up contributions, the gap between American funds and the top foreign donors cannot be bridged over a matter of days or weeks.

In 2024, the U.S. represented 41 percent of all total global funding for humanitarian aid contributions — a figure that represents about 1 percent of the U.S. budget. The second- and third-highest donors, Germany and the EU, respectively, support only about 8 percent of total humanitarian funding.

An internal USAID memo painted a grim picture of the global impact of the cuts.

It said Ebola and Marburg virus are likely to impact tens of thousands more people every year; malaria alone could cause 166,000 additional deaths; hundreds of millions of polio infections are likely to occur in children, with 200,000 paralyzed; and 1 million children will be left untreated for severe, acute malnutrition.

Still, some Democrats are counting on Republican allies to lean on Rubio to help mitigate the damage, but a Senate Democratic aide acknowledged that the impact is “scattershot.”

“I think you’re seeing increasing discontent by Republican lawmakers, who were keen to have a review, and root out what they view as an unnecessary funding, but were not looking at a process that was going to scrap all foreign assistance,” the aide said.

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