Rubio says purge of USAID programs complete, with 83% of agency’s programs gone

Rubio says purge of USAID programs complete, with 83% of agency’s programs gone

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the Trump administration had finished its six-week purge of programs of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development, and said he would move the 18% of aid and development programs that survived under the State Department. Rubio made the announcement in a post on X. It marked one of his relatively few public comments on what has been a historic shift away from U.S. foreign aid and development, executed by Trump political appointees at State and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams. Rubio in the post thanked DOGE and “our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform” in foreign aid.