WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The State Department notified the U.S. Congress on Friday of its intent to reorganize the U.S. Agency for International Development and discontinue remaining functions that do not align with administration priorities, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
A statement from Rubio said USAID had “strayed from its original mission long ago. As a result, the gains were too few and the costs were too high.”
“Thanks to President Trump, this misguided and fiscally irresponsible era is now over. We are reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens,” it said.
The statement said the State Department and USAID had notified Congress on their intent to undertake a reorganization “that would involve realigning certain USAID functions to the Department by July 1 … and discontinuing the remaining USAID functions that do not align with Administration priorities.”
After President Donald Trump began his second term on January 20, billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency launched a drive to shrink USAID and merge its remnants into the State Department.
The administration has since fired hundreds of staff and contractors and terminated billions of dollars in services on which tens of millions of people around the world depended.
Rubio said earlier this month that more than 80% of all USAID programs had been canceled.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, David Brunnstrom and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Katharine Jackson and Lisa Shumaker)
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