The US State Department says humanitarian assistance can continue. Foreign aid workers say that's not happening

[Eugene]

Source: CNN

The US State Department says humanitarian assistance can continue. Foreign aid workers say that’s not happening

By Lauren Kent, CNN
5 minute read
Published 2:19 PM EST, Sat February 8, 2025

(CNN) — US-funded aid work around the world has been largely brought to a standstill, multiple sources tell CNN, despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claims that the United States continues to provide lifesaving humanitarian aid.

As the Trump’s administration’s 90-day freeze on nearly all US foreign aid continues into a third week, thousands of USAID personnel were expected to be placed on administrative leave or fired, with plans to only retain several hundred personnel deemed “essential,” effectively gutting the agency. However, a federal judge Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plans to put 2,200 direct hire USAID employees on leave and halted the accelerated removal of staffers from countries around the world.

“The goal of our endeavor has always been to identify programs that work and continue them and to identify programs that are not aligned with our national interest and identify those and address them,” Rubio said Thursday during a visit to the Dominican Republic.

Rubio, now the acting administrator of USAID, reiterated earlier this week that he had issued a blanket waiver for lifesaving programs.

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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/08/world/usaid-humanitarian-assistance-aid-freeze-intl-latam/index.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. This is mostly cruelty on purpose, with a little bit of gross incompetence

I'm sure the people who discussed and issued the "freeze" ("ban" is a better term - "freeze" can sound like "no increase" ) wanted everything stopped, and worded it so that would be how it was taken. Either planned beforehand, or after complaints, they may have then issued "clarifications" or "waivers"; a few of them may have been fooled into thinking there were always meant to be some exceptions, but if they did, they're too incompetent to be left in charge of important things like USAID.