U.S. faces deadline to pay billions for aid work already done

Amna Nawaz:

Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration's review of foreign assistance has officially concluded and that the administration would cut 83 percent of USAID's programs and fold the rest into the State Department.

This comes as the administration appears to be ignoring a court deadline requiring it to pay $2 billion in debts to aid groups for work already done.

Nick Schifrin has been following all this, and he joins us now.

So, Nick, tell us more about what Secretary Rubio announced today. And what's the status of that court deadline?

Nick Schifrin:

Secretary Rubio announced the cuts on a post on X,saying — quote — "The 5,200 contracts that are now canceled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve and in some cases even harmed the court interests of the United States."

The State Department did not respond to messages requesting the list of The 1,000 programs it did save or anything else that I sent them today.

As for that court deadline, as you said, the court ordered the administration to pay $2 billion in debts to aid groups for work that has already been done by 6:00 p.m. Eastern tonight. And two attorneys who are familiar with the legislation told me there has been a — quote — "trickle of payments," but nowhere near an acceptable amount.

And one of those attorneys goes on to argue — quote — "The government is intentionally dragging its feet. The whole process is overtaken by political actors using these invoices for work already done as a cudgel to destroy the aid industry."

The attorneys also argue the administration is ignoring court orders from a month ago not to issue new terminations based on President Trump's initial inauguration night executive order or Secretary Rubio's secondary subsequent memo.

The government instead argued that, on February 26, no, our new terminations are not based on that executive order or Secretary Rubio's memo, but based on a — quote — "individual review" by Secretary Rubio of all 13,000 contracts that state and USAID have.

So let me just put those numbers up. The government says Rubio personally reviewed 13,000 contracts.Assuming that's from inauguration night to February 26, that's 38 days, which means Rubio reviewed 342 contracts a day. A lawyer familiar with the litigation told us — quote — "That is totally implausible and, honestly, insulting."

Amna Nawaz:

Well, Nick, 83 percent of USAID's programs being cut. Just what's the impact of those kinds of cuts?

Nick Schifrin:

Let's split the impact up between security and strategic impact and the humanitarian impact, which we will get to in a minute.

For the security and the strategic, I spoke to Kaush Arha, who's the president of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Forum and who, as USAID's former strategic adviser on strategic engagement, he helped coordinate U.S. policy toward China during the first Trump administration.

Kaush Arha, President, Free and Open Indo-Pacific Forum: There is enough fat in federal government that needs to be trimmed. And I applaud President Trump's efforts of trimming the fat and federal government. But at the same time, you have very important services that our agencies provide overseas, in particularly with the competition with China.

Nick Schifrin:

Arha argues that, in Southeast Asia, USAID helped countries reform their economies to be more cooperative or conducive to American investment, rather than Chinese investment.

And in the Pacific islands, USAID assisted with development, education and social programs in exchange for being the first partner on security.

Kaush Arha:

Providing those basic services for those states in which China is coming in and saying they will provide those services or they will provide policing services, really the main delivery point on that is AID.

And because USAID had a tremendous sort of goodwill, based on its humanitarian assistance program, whether it was for health or whether it was education or whether it's food security, it had a leg up on China to be the person as the one who they turned to in reforming their economic programs, so that they are more conducive to America.

Nick Schifrin:

Arha argues that USAID helped the U.S. win the Cold War, Amna, and whatever comes next will have to be there in order for the U.S. to win whatever comes next with China.