Musk's assault on USAID is reckless and dangerous

The whirlwind activity of the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency has included an all-out assault, carried out by Elon Musk’s newly created "Department of Government Efficiency," on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Is the gutting of USAID, which will apparently survive in some form as a division within the State Department, a righteous battle against waste, fraud and corruption, as Musk claims? Or is it a reckless assault that endangers not only lifesaving programs in many countries but America’s role in the world?

Government programs are prone to waste and abuse, and comprehensive audits are always welcome. But Musk’s wrecking-ball approach, endorsed by Trump, is not only irresponsible and almost certainly lawless, it is also a disturbing sign of this administration’s hostility to a pro-freedom American agenda and indulgence of authoritarian regimes.

A large part of USAID’s work involves humanitarian efforts such as AIDS prevention and medical research. The pausing of some studies — for instance, clinical trials of treatments for malaria, cholera, tuberculosis and cervical cancer — endangers patients who volunteered by disrupting their access to drugs and monitoring by health care workers. Even if those programs needed to be audited, surely this could have been done while continuing the work.

The chaos also includes apparent orders for USAID staffers abroad to promptly return to the U.S. with their families — ironically, at massive expense to the federal government.

Worse yet, Musk, amplified by his army of online "influencers" — and sometimes by Trump and by Republican members of Congress — has made baseless insinuations of corruption, claiming that various Trump critics have been in the pay of USAID based on extremely tenuous links. 

Not surprisingly, many of the claims are garbled — such as a viral post asserting that Jeffrey Epstein, the late billionaire sex offender, had received USAID funding. It was a different Jeffrey Epstein, a health company director. False reports that various celebrities received USAID money to travel to Ukraine in support of its war effort went around as well.

The attacks on support for Ukraine also point to another disturbing aspect of the anti-USAID crusade: the antipathy to U.S. support for freedom and human rights abroad. Many Trump supporters associate these efforts with a left-wing agenda — even during periods when these programs were under the aegis of Republican administrations. Right-wing activists see "corruption" and nefarious schemes in USAID’s supposed promotion of "regime change" abroad. Ironically, in this they are fully in solidarity with leftists who see those programs as manifestations of U.S. imperialism. Indeed, Musk himself has attacked as "very corrupt" an effort to cultivate dissident activism in communist Cuba.

But there is nothing underhanded in USAID’s support for pro-democracy efforts. The fact that the agency spent some $14 million on assistance to grassroots activists and election monitors during Ukraine’s 2004 "Orange Revolution," which brought in a new government supportive of more liberalization and closer ties to the West, was widely reported at the time.

USAID’s work, whether related to humanitarian assistance, health programs or civic activism, is not simply altruistic. It’s a way to advance American values and influence abroad — what is known as "soft power." We all benefit from a healthier, more stable, freer world. When a U.S. administration not only sabotages this work but targets it for vilification and conspiracy theories, we are in a dangerous moment.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.