Congressional Democrats are fighting back after U.S. President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk have promised to continue dismantling the U.S. foreign aid agency.
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00:00Staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, were told not to come
00:05in for work here on Monday. Its headquarters in Washington, D.C., instead became a site
00:10for protest.
00:11What do we do?
00:12Stand up, fight back.
00:13At the dismantling of the $40 billion U.S. budget foreign aid agency by President Donald
00:19Trump and his billionaire ally, Elon Musk.
00:22And just like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it. And
00:29who's going to stop him? We are. We're going to stop him.
00:34We're here today not only to fight for federal employees who dedicate themselves every day
00:41to a humanitarian task. We are here to save lives because that is what AID does.
00:50The last few weeks have seen spending cut off, staff furloughed and the website taken
00:55offline. The eradication of an agency that has for decades funded education and fought
01:01disease internationally is proving particularly controversial.
01:06Congressional Democrats say the shutdown is illegal and have vowed to fight it in court.
01:11Trump defended it as part of his efforts to shrink federal government spending, saying
01:16Musk, who is running the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, has found waste
01:21and fraud at the agency.
01:23That's something that should have been done a long time ago. It went crazy during the
01:27Biden administration. They went totally crazy what they were doing and the money they were
01:31giving to people that shouldn't be getting it and to agencies and others that shouldn't
01:37be getting it. It was a shame. So a tremendous fraud.
01:41Trump said a future report would detail Musk's findings. But for now, U.S.-funded humanitarian
01:46aid programs in more than 100 countries from Ukraine to South Africa have come to an abrupt
01:51halt. The U.S. is the largest provider of foreign aid in the world, and there are concerns
01:56that other international actors could move into spaces now left vacant.
02:01So the U.S. is actually currently involved in an intense and intensifying competition,
02:09a geostrategic competition, largely with China, but also with other adversaries around the
02:16world. By taking these steps, these drastic, draconian steps with regard to U.S. foreign
02:22aid, it actually could have the effect of seeding the battleground or seeding the playing
02:28ground, if you will. And others will very enthusiastically fill that void.
02:37Trump campaigned and won the presidency on a platform of putting America first and shaking
02:42up the federal government. His decisive move in his first weeks in office to dismantle
02:47USAID is sending out shockwaves at home and abroad.
02:52Hank Hsu and Rick Lowatt for Taiwan Plus.