Trump's USAID Cuts Help China and Russia, Former Officials Argue in Court

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Newsweek

Published Mar 17, 2025 at 4:12 PM EDT | Updated Mar 17, 2025 at 5:02 PM EDT


President Donald Trump's decision to put a halt to most foreign-aid funding has caused "irreparable" damage to America's standing abroad and strengthened adversaries including China and Russia, former senior Republican and Democratic officials wrote in a new court filing.

The Trump administration has destroyed the United States' "credibility as a reliable partner" to allies around the world by dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the former top diplomats, defense and national security officials from past Republican and Democratic administrations said in a blistering amicus brief filed Monday in federal court.

Foreign aid funding "is the right thing to do, but it's also in our interest," Michael Hayden, aa former CIA director under George W. Bush and one of the officials who signed the brief, told Newsweek.

Other signatories include Eric Edelman, a former senior Defense Department official under Bush, Richard Greene, the director of U.S. Foreign Assistance under Bush, and the Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Perry.

Read more: https://www.newsweek.com/usaid-trump-court-chuck-hagel-interview-2046127

[msongs]

1. MGRA - make russia great again nt

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. At Trump's insistence, pro-democracy media outlets suddenly go silent

For generations, the Voice of America has countered authoritarian propaganda with independent news. That’s apparently no longer a White House priority.
https://bsky.app/profile/stevebenen.com/post/3lklwpgu2ks2c

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-insistence-voice-american-democracy-outlets-go-silent-rcna196685

Those assumptions weren’t quite right. As The Washington Post reported, the president late last week signed an executive order seeking to eliminate several additional federal agencies, including the one that oversees the Voice of America.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) — the parent of VOA, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia — is an independent agency established by Congress. In 2020, Congress passed a law intended to limit the power of the agency’s presidentially appointed chief executive. More than 1,300 journalists, producers and staff at VOA received an email saying they were placed on administrative leave Saturday, VOA Director Michael Abramowitz wrote on his private Facebook page.

In that same online message, Abramowitz also wrote, “[T]oday’s action will leave Voice of America unable to carry out its vital mission. That mission is especially critical today, when America’s adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating false narratives to discredit the United States.”

It’s a key detail: As the Post’s report added, VOA exists “to counter authoritarian propaganda for foreign audiences with independent news.” That, evidently, is no longer in line with the White House’s international goals......

The Washington Post’s Max Boot added, “There is a sickening symmetry to President Donald Trump’s actions: While undermining U.S. democracy at home, he is also trying end U.S. government support for democracy abroad. His victims range from a leading human rights organization to the U.S. government networks that beam factual information to victims of oppression around the world.”

What’s more, it’s worth emphasizing that the policy took effect quickly. This isn’t a situation in which the administration began a lengthy winddown process, assessing the policy implications over time. Rather, this is an instance in which Trump signed an order on Friday, and within two days, democracy-promoting networks were dark — for the first time in more than 80 years.

Steven Herman, a longtime Voice of America correspondent, published a “requiem” over the weekend, writing, “To ​effectively shutter the Voice of America is to dim a beacon that burned bright during some of the darkest hours since 1942.”

Whether Trump considers this a negative or a positive is not clear.