This is intended to be a reminder of how things look in the moment, compared to how we may view them later. Hindsight can be (but isn't always) 20/20, but it can also be distorted by time, and people forget what things were really like.
We are currently three weeks into the second Trump administration, and there have been all sorts of changes, from decreeing that the federal government only recognizes two genders, to cracking down on illegal immigration. On the foreign policy side, there have been proposals to take control of Greenland, the Panama Canal, and even Gaza. On the domestic side, Elon Musk has been set loose on the federal bureaucracy, in the form of DOGE. The biggest news there has been the dismantling of USAID, the US Agency for International Development. It looks like that process may get repeated at the CFPB (Consumer Finance Protection Bureau) and the Dept of Education, and who knows where next, but the USAID is the first iteration of that process, the one farthest along in the present day, and the one with the most backlash, as far as I can tell.
Now Republicans have been trying to scale back USAID for years, so this is not coming from left field, but it was probably not on the average American's radar. As an organization that spends hundreds of billions of dollars, mostly to benefit non-Americans, it is easy to see how it would fall victim to an "America First" priority set. But beyond the staggering spending on foreign needs, there appears to be high levels of corruption and waste in the organization itself. Now Democrats are painting the attack on USAID as a catastrophe that will destabilize the planet, and that it is not within Trump's power to dismantle it.
But USAID was established by executive order by Kennedy in 1961, and while Congress eventually codified its existence into law, that isn't what created it. It was started by the President, and Congress caught up to that change later, and there is no reason for that not to work in reverse. Also, the House of Representatives controls the 'purse-strings,' but that is limited to allocating money to things to fund the government. It obviously doesn't work in reverse, in that the president is in charge of executing the act of governing based on the specifications legislated by Congress, but either side can cut funding for something. And there is enormous precedent for the president to shift funding for expenses Congress never even approved. (See Ukraine assistance) So I see no legal reason that Trump can't get rid of USAID.
Then there are the moral implications. The richest man in the world implementing the dismantling an organization ostensibly devoted to aiding the development of those who are poverty stricken in third world countries doesn't have good optics. USAID is probably doing some beneficial things in certain parts of the world, although Democrats have come up with few compelling examples of that during this conflict. But most of those would fall under the umbrella of charity related endeavors. And a strong argument could be made that A: the government should not be involved in charity in any form, especially the federal government, and that B: it may be impossible for the government to 'do' charity, because 'charity' is a spiritual activity, that involves voluntarily sharing ones time or resources. Everything the government does is inherently by compulsion, and the government is not a spiritual entity, (although the people who make up the government are, similar to corporations) so both those issues prevent true charity from taking place in that capacity. Instead, all you have is the redistribution of wealth. And in this case, due to the current federal deficit and debt load, anything in that vein, is stealing from our children, to buy goodwill in the present, in what must be the worst form of virtue signaling. So it would be hard to come up with a moral objection to shutting it all down, even if the "good" didn't outweigh the bad.
But the bad clearly appears to outweigh any true benefit from the organization, and they aren't doing anything good that a true charity couldn't do better, and with voluntary funding, therefore making it actual charity, instead of a further extension of state power, which is what Democrats openly admit it is. One of their biggest objections to eliminating it is that it is a valuable tool to influence (manipulate) other countries. I don't want the US to be manipulating other countries, unless they are a threat to us, at which point I want the Defense Department to be our response. It is hard to imagine how 'soft power' could be anything less than evil, working in secret, even if for America's selfish benefit. And if not for America's benefit, then why be part of the US government? Anyhow, I can imagine there being some negative consequences of eliminating most of USAID, but it looks at the moment like that action is worth it. This what America voted for, to reform a government which has gotten out of hand, and lost touch with the people, as all oversized organizations do.
