Ari Weitzman (4:16)

The future of the United States Agency.

Marco Rubio (4:18)

For International Development, or usaid, is uncertain. Usaid run by radical lunatics and we're getting them out and then we'll make a decision. As we've been reporting, there has been.

John Law (4:31)

A major shakeup within the government organization that oversees foreign aid and it's raising.

Ari Weitzman (4:35)

Questions about its future. U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News Monday.

John Law (4:39)

The U.S. agency for International Development, or.

Marco Rubio (4:41)

USAID, would be absorbed by the State.

Ari Weitzman (4:44)

Department as part of President Trump and.

John Law (4:46)

Elon Musk's efforts to overhaul the federal government.

Marco Rubio (4:51)

On Monday, following a week of upheaval at the U.S. agency for International Development, otherwise known as USAID, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he had taken over as acting administrator of the agency and told lawmakers that he and intends to work with Congress to reorganize it. Rubio's statement ran counter to comments made earlier in the day by Elon Musk, who said that he and President Donald Trump had decided to shut down usaid. These conflicting remarks and efforts by representatives of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to curtail the agency's operations have created uncertainty about the agency's future. For a little bit of background, USAID is an independent agency of the United States government that provides humanitarian assistance and financial aid to countries across the world. Its work focuses on a variety of international issues, from human trafficking to famine to medical services and more. Shortly after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order for a 90 day pause in foreign development assistance to review all aid allocations to ensure alignment with his foreign policy. The order prompted the State Department to issue a stop work order for existing foreign assistance and pause new aid payments. Days later, Secretary of State Rubio approved a waiver for continuing life saving humanitarian assistance, though confusion persisted among aid organizations about which services were exempt. Over the past week, USAID has experienced a significant disruption, with dozens of senior officials placed on leave, thousands of contractors laid off and employees locked out of their work accounts. USAID's new Acting Administrator Jason Gray said the employees had been placed on leave with full pay and benefits, while the agency assessed actions within USAID that appeared to be designed to circumvent the president's executive orders and the mandate from the American people. On Monday, the Trump administration closed USAID's headquarters in Washington, D.C. instructing employees to work remotely. Additionally, hundreds of contractors reportedly lost access to their official emails and systems over the weekend, raising concerns that the agency would be shut down imminently. While Rubio's statement to Congress affirmed that USAID would not close, the Trump administration is reportedly considering absorbing it into the State Department, a notion that Rubio also advanced. The Department of State and other pertinent entities will be consulting with Congress and the appropriate committees to reorganize and absorb certain bureaus, offices and missions of usaid, rubio wrote to Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders have said that any move to shut down USAID without congressional approval would be illegal, as the agency was created and is funded by Congress. Donald Trump does not have the authority to erase an independent agency created by Congress, nor can the Department of State absorb usaid, senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. Today we'll share arguments from the left and the right about the outlook for US Aid and foreign aid commitments during the Trump administration. Then Managing editor Ari Weitzman will give his take.

Hunter Casperson (8:04)

We'll be right back after this quick break.

Ari Weitzman (8:10)

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Isaac Saul (8:39)

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Marco Rubio (9:16)

All right, first up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left criticizes the aid suspension, arguing the US Spends relatively little on aid but that it provides critical services. Some say any attempt to shut down USAID could spark a constitutional crisis. Others suggest that US Foreign aid does not do what it promises. The Washington Post's editorial board said Trump's freeze on foreign aid will hurt America. For many people around the world, aid is also the most visible symbol of U.S. power, soft power and a tangible demonstration of America's decency. Amounting to $68 billion in fiscal 2023, foreign aid is only about 1% of the federal budget. Yet it has long been in the crosshairs of some fiscal conservatives and other critics who deem it a waste of taxpayer dollars that could be better spent at home. The board wrote a sweeping order freezing most foreign aid programs risks causing immediate harm, though the new waiver for life saving medicine, medical services and shelter is a welcome reprieve for many other vital programs. Even a three month suspension could do damage. The United States is also the world's largest donor to the global fight against malaria, mostly through the President's Malaria Initiative, otherwise known as pmi. With even a short suspension of this aid, prevention gains could be reversed, especially in malaria prone cities such as Lagos, Nigeria. African health officials warn. The board said the aid suspension will also hamper refugee resettlement. The United States assists civic groups that help people, such as Afghan Special immigrant visa holders by providing food, housing and childcare to help settle them into American communities and find a path toward self sufficiency. In Slate, Fred Kaplan argued, it's a huge deal that Trump is trying to shut down US Aid. After Trump ordered a freeze on foreign aid, Musk sent his squad of Tech Bros. Into USAID's headquarters. When a security aid blocked its access to offices containing highly classified documents. The squad made a phone call and had the aide put on leave. It's not clear whether the group obtained access under normal circumstances. If an unauthorized person did that, it would be a serious felony, kaplan wrote. Then again, shutting down a congressionally funded federal agency, like much of what Trump and Musk pulled off this past weekend, is illegal too. USAID employees have been told to work from home and hundreds were locked out from agency computer systems. A contractor at one US aid funded non governmental organization told me he was told to pack up that the project was over. He said he's heard similar reports from other NGO workers. More drastically, programs delivering food, medicine and other forms of aid are at best aimless and at worst shut down entirely, Kaplan said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio came into the job of his dream two weeks ago with probably no idea that he would witness the dismantle of its foreign aid outlet without having a say in the matter himself. In Jacobin Carlos Cruz Mosquera, US foreign aid was always about furthering US interests. This decision will not only affect military aid, which makes up a large percentage of the total, but also threatens funding for developmental aid, human rights campaigns and initiatives that support democratic institutions, mosquera said. The general response to this announcement, however, reinforces a long standing false dichotomy the notion that U.S. and Western humanitarian and developmental interventionalism operates independently of these nations broader overtly aggressive geopolitical and imperialist interests alongside overt forms of domination, military interventions, territorial acquisition, direct political interference Western powers have long developed parallel forms of intervention and control. Sometimes called informal imperialism. This form of imperialism has empowered so called civil society non governmental organizations and civil society organizations in the peripheralized regions, mosquera wrote. These Western developmental aid and humanitarian programs are not only fundamentally incapable of addressing the region's severe social and ecological crises, they have also served as tools to reinforce the very structures that perpetuate these problems. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying. Which brings us to what the right is saying. The right mostly supports the changes to usaid, arguing the agency has strayed too far from its mission. Some note that Musk's influence in the government is starting to have wide reaching consequences. Others say Musk is right to scrutinize where U.S. aID's funding has gone. In hot air, David Strom wrote, just like that, USAID is mostly dead. As a practical matter, as long as the president can get Doge to go through the books, it will be hard to revive the agency in its current form because simply put, it is corrupt to its core. Not that it doesn't do some good things with tens of millions of dollars, something good might come of it, but current estimates are that only about 10% of the aid ever reaches the intended recipients. Assuming that the downtrodden really are the intended recipients, Stroum said. All the big consulting firms get billions of dollars from this slush fund. NGOs live and die with USAID grants, and the IC uses the agency to launder money and agents into other countries. You may think of foreign aid in terms of keeping the poorest of the poor from dying horrible deaths, but the meat and potatoes of US Aid is in extending the tendrils of power for the transnational elite and funding political operations. The censorship industrial complex depended almost entirely on this slush fund, strom wrote. Trump is going for the jugular here, and the Target is almost 100% domestic. If the estimates of how much goes to legitimate aid to poor people is really 10% of the foreign aid budget, as it seems likely, then this one move could rob the left of several dozen billions of dollars dedicated to expanding their power over us. In the Dispatch, Michael Warren said Elon Musk's Twitter becomes real life what exactly is Elon Musk up to? The South African born billionaire had a busy weekend with his team of exceedingly young disruptors at the Department of Government Efficiency, working overtime to implement the old Facebook company motto, move fast and break things, warren wrote. The Musk approach appears to be getting results, particularly with dismantling usaid, the chief administrator of the country's foreign developmental aid. The process began when Musk's Doge team won a standoff with senior USAID leaders on Saturday to gain access to the agency's classified information. While it's hardly fair to call it a co presidency, Musk's assertion of power continues apace, while Trump seems to approve. On Sunday evening, Trump told reporters the agency was rife with radical lunatics and praised Musk for doing a good job in his role at Doge, warren said. For those in Washington waiting to see this Musk led effort to reshape the government either lose favor with Trump or collapse on its own. It may be neither. That happens. A dogeified government will almost certainly exist on the other side, but will anyone be pleased with the results? The American Greatness staff praised Doge for pulling back the curtain on usaid. The newly formed Department of Government Efficiency Commission has gained access to the Treasury Department's federal payment system and is revealing some disturbing truths about the US Agency for International Development, the staff wrote. Doge has discovered that USAID is funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to various CIA fronts and favored organizations. Under the guise of a humanitarian agency dispensing foreign aid to needy and disadvantaged people around the world, questions are starting to arise over the immense amount of funding directed to Ukraine through US Aid, even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is claiming that he has only received 70 billion of the 180 billion in US aid that has been sent to his country. Nearly 40 billion of the US taxpayer aid sent to Ukraine has been sent through USAID, raising serious questions about how much money has been fraudulently distributed. The staff said the amount of wasted taxpayer money that is being uncovered is bad enough, but the secret work being done by US Intelligence agencies with that money is where things start to look highly questionable, if not criminal. Alright, let's head over to Ari for his take.

Ari Weitzman (17:59)

Alright, that is it for what the left and the right are saying. Which brings us to my take. We've already had four years of Trump as president, then four years with Trump as a candidate. Now, after the first two weeks of his second term, Trump's point of view on foreign policy is getting pretty clear. The United States is not in the business of extending generosity that doesn't provide immediate benefits. We also have a pretty good sense of his negotiation style, which is, I'm willing to rethink this entire arrangement if you don't give me what I want. We saw this on the campaign trail when he threatened dropping out of NATO if European nations don't put up their fair share of military spending. We saw it just this past weekend when he announced 25% tariffs on our neighbors to the south and north if they don't take steps to secure their borders. We saw it yesterday when he said continued aid to Ukraine would be contingent on access to rare earth minerals in the country. Now we're seeing him run a similar playbook on US Aid, with Elon Musk saying that Trump is willing to shut the whole agency down for being out of step with his political agenda. Unfortunately for us in the public, that means we're in a continual state of reacting to the most dire political consequences of the President's moves, even when those consequences aren't the most likely outcome. So, yes, it's possible USAID gets shut down, but if the tariff saga is any indicator, and I think it is, then it's more likely that it gets reorganized and its mission redirected. So let's go over what's happening with usaid, what it does, what Trump wants it to do, and what the stakes are before we get into what's probably going to happen. What it does the organization was founded to counter Soviet influence in international development, but it has long outlived that mission. Now, USAID is mostly a humanitarian organization. It provides billions to help fight AIDS in sub Saharan Africa. It helps other countries prevent and respond to famine and drought through its famine early warning system. It has also provided vital aid to civilians caught in the machinations of war, not just through billion dollar grants to Ukraine and hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza, but also through tens of millions of dollars in grants sent to war torn countries like Yemen and Sudan. USAID is the world leader in international humanitarian aid full stop. It spent $68 billion on foreign aid in 2023, by far the most of any country in the world and almost double what the European Union spent. That is an enormous commitment of raw dollars. However, contextualizing that amount can also be helpful. Most Organization for Economic Cooperation and development countries, or OECD countries committed to spending 0.7% of their GDPs on aid in 1970. Today only four countries do so Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden and Germany. The United States spends 0.24%, or about 1% of the federal budget. What Trump wants it to Do Donald Trump wants the organization to advance her national interests as he sees them. It's reasonable to ask why the United States would want to spend billions on foreign assistance when our country's own issues with poverty and food security are far from under control, a sentiment that many Americans share. When you put it into that perspective, it's only fitting for the government's chief executive to scrutinize its foreign aid agencies. Spending and USAID's model is certainly worthy of scrutiny. It gets funding through Congress, but that funding is usually not earmarked, and the agency can still issue emergency disbursements to react to international crises. It is an independent organization, but it also answers to the State Department. It manages its own workforce, but it also distributes 25% of its resources to locally led development. And it's planned to increase that amount to 50% over the next 10 years. In other words, USAID takes taxpayer dollars and gives them to an independent organization that then decides what it wants to focus on and distributes those dollars to other third party organizations. Again, the precedent is right to scrutinize that model. Or, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and current acting head of USAID more pugnaciously put it, the agency is insubordinate to State Department priorities and should be redirected to serve the national interest. What the stakes are $68 billion is an enormous sum, but visualizing how much that is on a global scale can be difficult. On one hand, that's only $200 for every American. On the other hand, it's more than the GDPs of over half the countries in the world. Even just redirecting that amount of money internationally will have earth shaking impacts, to say nothing of pooling it entirely. Also remember USAID's original mission, countering development practices of foreign adversaries. If you reorient this budget towards that goal, the United States is no longer leading the world, but playing catch up to China. The Belt and Road Initiative. China's global strategy to invest in infrastructure projects to further Chinese trade and grow its relationships on the global Stage made over $90 billion in deals in 2023. Meanwhile, Russia is pursuing strategy of growing its influence in Africa through arms sales. A strategy that seems to be working to curry favor with some national governments. Obviously, humanitarian aid is a very different diplomatic tool than infrastructure investment and selling weapons. But if US aid makes decisions that result in the State Department working against itself, then the US is hurting its ability to compete with our adversaries. In sum, I agree with a lot of the communications that have been coming out of the federal government, especially from Rubio. If the United States government is going to be in the philanthropy business, it should be directing its funds strategically. That isn't to say that fighting AIDS in Africa isn't important or moral or even flat out beneficial to the entire globe. It is. But why is that the job of the US government? To be insensitively blunt, why should the US subsidize the health of countries that align with Russia? If we citizens want to spend billions of dollars on philanthropy, we can do that on our own rather than outsourcing our charity to the government. However, I disagree with a lot of the government's communications too, especially for Musk. Let's realign this organization to follow the national interest is a completely different statement from let's shut this whole thing down. And dangling US aid off the sharp edge of a precipice has real consequences. To say nothing of the fact that Musk's involvement with the agency has been ham fisted childish in a very literal sense. You should go check out the age of some of the contractors that are working with Musk here. And of course, potentially illegal. That AIDS program in Africa, frozen for 90 days. The famine warning system that I talked about earlier. It's offline official communications about aid programs to countries that we talked about earlier as well, like Yemen and Sudan, those have gone totally dark. As editor Will Kbach wrote when we covered the US Pulling out of the Paris agreement and the who, Trump's approach on the international stage is like taking a sledgehammer to a spiderweb. But why threaten to blow up an agency when you can just say you're going to redirect it? You're not negotiating with a foreign power here. You're managing the executive branch that you oversee with usaid, just as with federal employment in general. Through the Office of Management and Budget, which we covered last week, Trump seems to be following the Project 2025 playbook of consolidating the executive branch's powers under the president. As the head of the branch, that's his prerogative. But the method he's employing to do so has, frankly, been terrible. Give unfettered access to poorly vetted Doge contractors, haphazardly shut everything down and pursue a policy change of unspecified benefit at a massive cost. Doing so destabilizes the agencies that Trump is tasked with managing. It puts the civil servants who work with or for those organizations and their families in tremendous stress. And it creates real concern abroad about wanting to do work with the United States. There are plenty of good reasons to want to shake up usaid, but citizens and noncitizens alike shouldn't be left trying to give our best guess on what those reasons are. And government by rug pole isn't a great strategy for the most powerful person on the planet.

Hunter Casperson (26:39)

We'll be right back after this quick break.

Isaac Saul (26:45)

Valentine's Day is coming up, and for me, there's only one place I trust 1-800flowers.com this year, 1-800-flowers wants to make sure you're a Valentine's hero with an exclusive offer. Double the roses for free. When you buy one dozen, they'll double your bouquet to two dozen roses. It's the perfect way to say I love you without breaking the bank. Trust me. 1-800-Flowers always delivers. To claim your double the roses offer, go to 1-800-Flowers.com acast that's 1-800-Flowers.Com acast.

John Law (27:15)

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Ari Weitzman (27:54)

All right, that's it for my take. Which brings us to your questions answered Today's question comes from Ryan from Rochester, New York, who asks, do your personal and or moral positions ever vary from your political positions? If so, where you share an example. I often separate how I personally or morally feel about an issue from how I politically feel about it, and those positions frequently vary, sometimes in a significant way. This question today was answered by Hunter Casperson, our new editorial fellow, who writes absolutely. An example that comes to mind is President Trump's recent immigration actions A bit about me. For the first seven years of my schooling I attended a two way immersion program where my classes were made up of about 50% English speaking students and 50% Spanish speaking students. This experience brought me closer to my peers, some of them lacking US Citizenship and others with birth rate citizenship but whose parents immigrated illegally. You can guess where I'm headed with this. These relationships led the foundation for my belief that Trump's narrative and strategy on immigration is immoral. However, as Tango editor Will K. Back wrote last Wednesday when we covered Trump's executive orders and immigration, Trump is doing exactly what he said he would and his views seem to have a lot of support, which makes his actions fundamentally Democratic. Although I find Trump's actions on immigration unjust politically, I support Democratic leadership and therefore indirectly, Trump's immigration acts. Still, I wonder how much of public support for Trump's immigration agenda was cultivated by the President's rhetoric on the criminal nature and inhumanity of immigrants rather than representing the American people's authentic beliefs. Beliefs as a matter of policy, I have not researched data directly addressing Americans perception of immigration in relation to the visibility of Trump's rhetoric on immigrants. So I'm shoving that thought as an idea to be researched before being claimed valid. Overall, it's always easier to find reasons to align your political beliefs to your moral ones, but it's important to reflect critically on whether you can defend your beliefs on grounds other than morality or simple emotion. All right, that's it for our reader question today. I'm going to send it back over to John for the rest of the pod and I'll talk to you all soon. Have a good one.

Marco Rubio (30:04)

Thanks, Ari. Here's your under the radar story for today folks. Last week the Food and Drug Administration announced its approval of a pill to treat acute pain, the agency's first approval for a non opioid pain medicine in more than 20 years. The drug Journavax differs from opioid pain medication in that it latches onto receptor proteins on nerves outside the nervous system, whereas opioids attach to the nerves in the brain and spinal cord, increasing the risk of addiction. A new non opioid analgesic therapeutic class for acute pain offers an opportunity to mitigate certain risks associated with using an opioid for pain and provides patients with another treatment option. Jacqueline Corrigan Curret, acting director of the FDA's center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said. Ars Technica has this story and there's a link in today's episode Description all right, next up is our numbers section. The year USAID was established by President John F. Kennedy as an independent agency following Congress's passage of the Foreign Aid Assistance act was 1961. The number of countries where U.S. aid has an official presence as of 2024 is 99. The approximate number of countries that received assistance from USAID in fiscal year 2023 was 130. USAID's budget in fiscal year 2024 was 44.2 billion. USAID's budget as a percentage of the federal budget in 2024 was 0.4% the total foreign assistance appropriations provided by Congress for fiscal year 2023 was $66.1 billion. The amount of aid disbursed by USAID in 2023 was $42.45 billion and the percentage of U.S. adults who said the country is spending too much on assistance to other countries is 69%, according to a March 2023 AP NORC poll. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. Research has shown that finding accessible clothing is a common problem for people with disabilities. In a collaboration with fashion designer and disability advocate Victoria Jenkins, the Irish retailer Primark tackled this problem with a collection of 49 items designed to meet specific disability needs. The line features adaptive designs such as magnetic zippers, discreet holes for tubes, and jackets made specifically for wheelchair users. Disabled people face a lot of barriers in their lives, and clothing shouldn't be one of them, jake Jenkins said. Positive News has this story and there's a link in today's episode Description alright, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, Please go to readtangle.com and sign up for a membership. You can also go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up for a premium podcast membership, which gets you ad free daily podcasts, Friday editions, Sunday editions, interviews, bonus content and so much more. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Ari and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace.

Hunter Casperson (33:20)

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our Managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kdak, Bailey Saul and and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bova, who is also our social Media Manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, Please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Hi, this is Freddie Wong from Dungeons and Daddies and this episode is sponsored by Rocket Money. Houston. Houston, we have a problem and that's too many subscriptions that I don't know about because I like to put my credit card number into sites just for the sheer thrill of it. That's the fundamental problem of the Internet and money, and Rocket Money is here to solve that. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills. You can see all those subscriptions that you've accrued over a lifetime of putting your credit card in on the Internet in one place. If you don't want them, just cancel them with a few taps. Rocket Money can help with that. Rocket Money's over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all the apps app's premium features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com cancelsubs that's rocketmoney.com cancelsubs, not submarines. Enjoy a brilliant sleep experience with Soundcore from Anchor Stressed out by your partner's snoring? Having trouble falling asleep? Waking up too easily? Suffering from poor quality sleep? Now put on Soundcore Sleep A28 earbuds. Experience unparalleled pressure free comfort perfect for side sleepers. Choose your favorite sound in your curated playlist. Feel your body getting lighter and lighter and enjoy a full night of peaceful sleep with the A20's long lasting battery. Then wake up feeling fresh with a personal built in alarm. Get the sleep you deserve with Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds. Discover more on soundcore.com S O U N D sound C O R E Soundcore Use code sleep at Checkout to get $30 off S L E E P in all caps.

John Law (35:48)

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