Trump administration terminated funding for aid programs it said were lifesaving

(CNN) — When the Trump administration abruptly terminated ten thousand foreign assistance contracts and grants last week, it ended funding for programs around the world – including those that had been granted waivers by the State Department to continue their lifesaving work.

Millions of people may be affected by the cancelation of the funding, sources said, noting that it exacerbates the impact already felt from the dismantling of USAID and the sweeping foreign aid freeze and stop work orders put in place in late January.

Although some had been restored, such as for production of emergency food products at one company following CNN reporting, many remained terminated as of Monday. Those terminated last week included contracts for work providing clean water and shelter, treating infants and children with HIV/AIDS, preventing infectious diseases, and countless other efforts.

That freeze included an exemption for Secretary of State Marco Rubio to issue waivers for lifesaving services like food and water. However, a USAID official was put on leave after they wrote a memo saying that they were unable to implement the waivers due to actions by Trump administration appointees.

According to the administration, the terminations were the result of Rubio and the State Department finishing a review of the frozen foreign assistance.

“You cannot pause a plane in mid-flight, fire the crew, without a catastrophe,” said Atul Gawande, a former head of USAID’s Global Health Bureau. “You can’t terminate just by shutting off … you have to be able to enable a proper transition, or people will be hurt.”

Several humanitarian officials described the terminations of the awards as “a bloodbath.” Others said the rollout of the terminations from the State Department and USAID was confusing and unexpected, even to some officials within those agencies. Two sources said termination notices had metadata tying them to DOGE employees who are detailed to the agencies.

There did not seem to be a pattern in the terminations, over which the Trump administration claimed Rubio had final say. Each termination notice said the award was being terminated for “convenience,” sources said, and some ended by thanking them for being a partner of USAID or the State Department and “God Bless America.”

Many noted that it seemed to be timed in response to a judge’s order compelling the Trump administration to pay nearly $2 billion in unpaid fees to humanitarian organizations and contractors by last Wednesday night. That part of the lawsuit is now before the Supreme Court.

Officials from half a dozen humanitarian aid organizations said they received termination notices for programs that had received waivers.

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF), for example, said last week it “received award termination notices for three of its primary USAID agreements, which had previously received approval to resume limited work under the PEPFAR waiver for lifesaving work from the Department of State.”

“These agreements cover HIV programming in Lesotho, Eswatini, and Tanzania that serves pregnant women, children, and families with HIV,” the organization said in a press release. “These projects are supporting more than 350,000 people on HIV treatment, including nearly 10,000 children and more than 10,000 HIV-positive pregnant women. Terminating these programs will have a devastating impact on the communities EGPAF serves and our work to end AIDS in children, youth, and families.”

Another humanitarian official, who spoke on background for fear of retribution, said more than 80% of their organization’s foreign assistance awards were terminated, including “more than a dozen that had lifesaving waivers in place.”

That included work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, they said, meaning that 14,000 internally displaced persons “are at risk of contracting cholera and other waterborne illnesses because we can’t keep delivering the safe drinking water.”

“More than 12,000 will be forced to live in the open and crowded and dangerous collective centers because we can’t deliver the emergency shelter kits we were meant to,” the official said.

An official from another humanitarian organization said programs that provided seeds to farmers, ones that provided support to malnourished children, and “programs designed to help youth make the choice not to get involved in extremist groups” had all been terminated. They told CNN that about a quarter of the programs that had been terminated were issued waivers.

“What we don’t understand is the Secretary of State made clear that lifesaving programs, especially but not only food assistance programs, he wanted to continue and then many of them have been terminated,” they said.

“We’re really at a loss, and we’re assuming that there’s been some kind of mistake here,” the official said. “We are hoping that they will reverse these decisions, which are going to be very damaging to people.”

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