Why Trump hates USAID so much

The Trump administration’s takedown of federal spending has begun in earnest with the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent government agency that has been funding healthcare, pro-democracy and civil society programmes around the world since 1961.

‘We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,’ Elon Musk boasted on X, describing the agency as ‘a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.’ Over the past three weeks, USAID’s leadership and staff have been gutted by furloughs, firings and disciplinary leaves, the website taken offline and – most painfully to many – funding for thousands of NGOs around the world has been suspended, leaving media outlets, anti-corruption centres and democracy activist organisations high and dry. The move has drawn howls of protest from the NGO-funded journalists and civil society activists who say they will have to shut down their investigative and campaigning activities.

‘Almost none of the information you read about Georgia would be available without independent and critical media, delivered by me and others who report on the country,’ complains Katie Shoshiashvili, a senior corruption researcher at the Tbilisi branch of Transparency International.