Rubio says State Department will cancel 83% of USAID contracts

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the Trump administration is canceling 83% of the contracts funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and keeping the rest under the State Department.

Mr. Rubio said the decision was the result of a six-week review.

“The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,” Mr. Rubio wrote on X.

Mr. Trump targeted USAID early, describing it as an egregious part of the federal bureaucracy with billions in spending that strayed far from what Congress intended.

The Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk described some USAID-funded projects and organizations as “maybe the biggest scam ever.”

Critics of the move said the Trump administration was dismantling key health programs abroad and a vital source of “soft power” that keeps foreign nations on America’s side, so they don’t come under the thumb of rival superpowers.

Michael McFaul, a professor of political science at Stanford University and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, called the cuts a “huge mistake.”

“We needed reform of USAID, not dismantlement,” he wrote on X. “China is not ending its foreign assistance programs. In an age of great power competition, the Trump administration is unilaterally destroying one of our best instruments of soft power influence.”

The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, a group of 500 businesses and nongovernmental organizations, said countries like Russia and Iran will fill the gap left by a hole in U.S. aid.

“I can’t imagine Congress is comfortable with a rushed review process canceling 83% of programs that they themselves have championed over decades — a process that wasn’t transparent or open to meaningful bipartisan consultation,” said coalition President and CEO Liz Schrayer. “The facts show that life-saving programs were severely cut, putting millions of people in allied countries at risk of starvation, disease and death.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Rubio took over USAID and handed authority over the agency to Pete Marocco, a Trump appointee who served at USAID in Mr. Trump’s first term.

On Monday, Mr. Rubio said roughly 1,000 USAID contracts would remain housed under his State Department, “in consultation with Congress.”

Mr. Rubio, who reportedly clashed with Mr. Musk at a recent Cabinet meeting, expressed gratitude to the billionaire and his team.

“Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform,” Mr. Rubio said.

Mr. Musk responded by calling the cuts “tough, but necessary.”

“Good working with you,” he wrote in response to Mr. Rubio. “The important parts of USAID should always have been with Dept of State.”