Former USAID leaders speak out against Trump's attempt to dismantle agency

A group of former administrators of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) joined on Wednesday to issue a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency.

In a joint statement, five former administrators who “served different presidents and voted for different political parties” stressed the global importance of the agency and said destroying it would only harm Americans.

“While we don’t agree on all issues, we wholeheartedly agree that USAID and America’s foreign assistance programs are vital to our interests, that the career men and women of USAID have served each of us well, and that it is the duty of the Administration and Congress to swiftly protect the Agency’s statutory role,” they wrote in the statement.

“Failure to maintain the global engagement that foreign aid enables, to honor the men and women of our civilian service as we do those in the military, or weaken and even destroy the Agency is to the benefit of neither political party and the detriment of all Americans,” they continued.

The statement was signed by former USAID administrators J. Brian Atwood, Peter McPherson, Andrew Natsios, Gayle Smith and Samantha Power.

The show of support for the agency comes after President Trump has taken numerous steps to undercut it and throw its fate into question.

USAID employees were notified this week that they would be placed on administrative leave with pay “until further notice.” That development came after most USAID staff lost access to the internal system over the weekend and were told that the agency’s Washington headquarters were closed to staff on Monday.

Billionaire Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, said Monday on social platform X that the president “agreed” to shut down USAID — an independent agency that supplies funding all over the world for development projects, dishing out funds to various contractors, universities and nongovernmental organizations, among others.