USAID Gets Scalped, Rubio Confirms

Connected interests wail

The first big trophy of the DOGE effort looks about ready to be nailed to the wall. The vast, technically legal (mostly) taxpayer money laundering scheme we call USAID is going on a serious diet. This morning Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote (who by the way seems to be filling in the roll quite naturally it feels);

“After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID. 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. In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department. Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.”

Of course the beneficiaries of USAID are wailing and gnashing their teeth. “How, could, you??? We’re the good guys. So we stole a few (tens of) billions from hardworking American taxpayers here and there, that’s the cost of doing good work, and making the world better for the European Uni…er…NAT…um…the privileged crony cla…Anyway, we’re the good guys.”

Nobody at USAID EVER thought they would lose their funding, or their jobs. Now many are losing both. (Not that they won’t be compensated nicely for moving on, you know, just like the private sector where you and I work.)

Witness some of the wailing.