On March 28th, 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—led by tech mogul Elon Musk—issued a memo to employees at the United States Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D.), one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid organizations. The memo was titled “U.S.A.I.D.’s Final Mission,” and detailed plans to place the agency under the State Department, slash 83% of its programs and fire thousands of employees. While the agency’s work is focused overseas, the consequences will still be felt locally—including in the Bay Area, where dozens of local nonprofits depend on U.S.A.I.D.-linked funding to survive.
Following President Trump’s January 20 Executive Order halting all foreign aid pending a 90-day review, over a thousand U.S.A.I.D. staff were placed on leave. But on February 6, the Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group—on behalf of two major unions—filed a lawsuit, arguing the move was unconstitutional. Just two days later, Judge Carl J. Nichols temporarily blocked the layoffs and ordered that some employees be reinstated while pending further legal review.
Still, on March 10, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the administration’s plan to proceed with the cuts—U.S.A.I.D. will be fully merged with the State Department by July 2025. The move signals a shift in the agency’s purpose, realigning it with the administration’s political agenda and potentially redistributing its budget.
In response, Musk and Trump have turned to social media, using inflammatory language to justify the move. “U.S.A.I.D. is a criminal organization. It is time for it to die,” Musk posted on his social media platform X—formerly Twitter. Trump followed with: “CLOSE IT DOWN!”
The Executive Order triggered a flurry of panic and anxiety from both the national and international public.
“The impact [of cuts] is on important programs, on people’s actual lives globally and potentially in the US long-term,” Dr. Madhavi Dandu, a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said.
Nationally, the most immediate effects have been job cuts in the nonprofit sector. In California, the nonprofit sector is the sixth largest business sector, meaning one in six Californian workers are employed by a nonprofit. Without sustained funding, thousands could lose their jobs—and worse, possibly their motivation to continue to engage in public service altogether. “Graduates are becoming more fearful of entering this field if they feel it’s going to be constantly under attack,” Robert Gibbons, Director of Education at the California Institute of Nonprofits, said.
In addition, cuts have directly targeted the funding of many nonprofit organizations. In the Bay Area, one major target is The Asia Foundation, an international nonprofit focused on challenges in Asia and the Pacific. DOGE has reclaimed $11 million in U.S.A.I.D. funding from the organization.
“Nonprofits fill a really critical societal need; they’re filling gaps that municipalities, communities, states and federal governments aren’t able to fill,” Gibbons said.
Internationally, U.S.A.I.D. funding cuts have dismantled thousands of humanitarian programs. Since 1961, U.S.A.I.D. has successfully supported tens of thousands of international development projects, delivered humanitarian aid and advanced US soft power abroad. Today, those efforts are unraveling. In Sudan—now facing the world’s largest humanitarian crisis—U.S.A.I.D.-funded communal kitchens have shut down, leaving over half a million people without reliable access to food. In Ethiopia, the loss of funding put 5,000 health workers out of jobs, stalling essential HIV and malaria prevention efforts. These are just two examples among more than 5,000 programs that have been eliminated.
One of the Trump Administration’s main justifications for the funding cuts is the “America First” agenda, part of Trump’s broader strategy to prioritize domestic interests by reducing U.S. involvement in global affairs and lessening the perceived burden of foreign assistance.
Another rationale is the cost of the program. Yet, in 2024, U.S.A.I.D. accounted for roughly 0.3% of the total U.S. federal budget. Meanwhile, the U.S. government holds the world’s largest gross national income—the annual budget is $6.8 trillion.
“[U.S.A.I.D. is] actually a really tiny part of the U.S. budget,” Dr. Dandu said.
Further justifying the move, Musk tweeted on X: “No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding. No one.” This is, factually, untrue. Several people formerly receiving care provided by U.S.A.I.D. funding have reportedly passed due to these cuts, with The New York Times estimating over three million deaths within the next year.
Beyond the immediate effects of these cuts, further danger lies in the dismantling of global crisis prevention. For example, should another health emergency—such as the COVID-19 pandemic—emerge, the US would be far less equipped to respond, both at home and abroad.
“US foreign aid is both a responsibility that we have and a protective tool,” Dr. Dandu said.
And there is more at stake for nonprofits. Apart from U.S.A.I.D. cuts, nonprofits are bracing themselves for the HR9495 bill—colloquially called the “nonprofit killer bill.” This aim passed unanimously in the US House of Representatives in November of 2024 and is currently being held in the Senate. If signed into law, the bill would grant the government the power to label any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and revoke its 501(c)(3) status, without any evaluation process.
A bill like this could truly do what it’s said to do: kill nonprofits. “The organizations that would be targeted would be climate, immigrant-serving, and reproductive rights organizations, then organizations that advocate and support marginalized communities like LGBTQAI+. Those groups are the nonprofits that the administration is most concerned with,” Gibbons said.
Though the full effects of the dismantling of these federal organizations are still early in the process of unfolding, the political implications are clear. Musk recently said in an interview on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” That sentiment signals an ideological shift in US politics. While past administrations emphasized international collaboration and humanitarian assistance, through their actions, today’s leaders appear to view compassion as a weakness.
“What began as America First is now increasingly resembling America in isolation,” Alesandra Cassar, a professor of economics at the University of San Francisco, said. “It takes such a long time to build the reputation of being a good player in the international field, and it takes zero time to ruin this trust.”
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