The State Department is taking care of programs previously administered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in a movement, according to officials, will restructure foreign assistance from the United States and reorient it towards national interests, since a new study finds that cuts could contribute to millions of deaths by 2030.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in a publication on Substitution On Tuesday, the USAID, which supervised foreign aid, disaster relief and international development programs, would no longer provide assistance to other countries.
“As of July 1, USAID will stop implementing foreign assistance,” Rubio wrote. “Foreign assistance programs that are aligned with administration policies, and which will advance US interests, will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more responsibility, strategy and efficiency.”
A senior state department official, who informed journalists on Tuesday, said that the “foreign assistance policy of the United States” would aim to be “diplomatically linked” with the foreign policy agenda of the Trump administration and US partners.
“Once we knew this transition and the programs are here, I think the next months will help indicate where we believe that our vision of the future is,” said the official. “Do not foresee an operational gap.”
Elon Musk listens while President Donald Trump speaks at the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on February 11, 2025.
Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Images
The foreign aid agency was among the first government agencies that the Government Efficiency Department, previously administered by Elon Musk, cut its effort to climb the size of the federal government.
The Trump administration sought to dismantle USAID, ending thousands of contracts and placing licensed workers.
In Declaration in February, The State Department said that “the significant parties of the USAID funds are not aligned with the central national interests of the United States.”
In farewell comments recorded privately with USAID staff on Monday, former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama criticized the decision to gut the agency.
Obama calling Usaid dismantling a tragedy and a “colossal error”, according to The Association presswhich reviewed parts of the video. Bush focused on Pepfar, the global health initiative was launched under his administration to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which is credited to save 25 million lives, the AP reported.
Humanitarian aid organizations said they have been witnessing the effects of USAID cuts, with closed programs that helped communities experience poverty and conflict.
“It’s an extremely sad day,” Vice President of Emergency and Humanitarian Action of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) told ABC News. “I had the pleasure of working with hundreds of USAID committed personnel worldwide in the last two decades. They have done incredible job and financed incredible projects, and it is sad to see that this will come predominantly to its end.”
Kitchen said that IRC has lost several of its subsidies and that 40% of its funds came from USAID. As a result, he said that several IRC programs are now closed or will soon close, including water and sanitation programs, mobile health clinics and school programs.
“What is seen … are thousands of girls who can no longer go to any form of school [In Afghanistan] As a result of the closure of this program, “Kitchen said.” The one who really hits me is that we have somehow found ways to keep thousands of girls who go to school, informal schools and underground schools. All that has stopped. “
USAID closure is produced in the middle of a study published in The lancet On Monday, that found that USAID cuts could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
The USAID logo is seen in a machine that processes the recycled plastic in construction blocks in the Hub Pasig Eco, a project affected by the freezing of the Trump administration in foreign aid, on March 10, 2025 in Pasig, Metro Manila, Philippines.
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Using models, the authors estimated the impact of USAID financing on deaths from 2001 to 2021. The team then used models to estimate the effects for five years.
The study found that USAID funds prevented more than 91 million deaths from low -income and low -income countries during the 21 -year study period, including a 65% reduction in HIV/AIDS mortality and a 51% reduction in malaria.
Forecast models not only predicted millions of additional deaths due to steep cuts, but also projected that one third of those deaths occur in children under 5 years.
The State Department official said that such studies “Malvan” the new vision of the administration for foreign assistance and that he informed life and death impacts “is not what we are listening to in the field.”
“You can return and face all these little decisions again. That is not our approach,” said the official. “That is not the secretary’s approach. We are excited about the type of the foreign assistance agenda ‘America First’ that will be and how much impact we can have in the future.”
The official said that the new strategy, for example, would expect the partners to assume greater prevention work for patients with HIV infections and reduce their dependence on programs financed by preventive medical care.
They pointed out that up to 90% of direct beneficiaries are receiving their medicine under Pepfar to date. There will be more investment to end the transmission of HIV from mother to child, said the official.
“The administration aims to end the mother-child transmission for when President Trump leaves office, and we believe that we can comply with that and that we will invest more in that particular space,” said the official.
