Autocratic regimes 'relishing' USAID gutting: Samantha Power

Samantha Power, a former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), says autocratic regimes across the world are “relishing” the Trump administration's efforts to gut the agency.

“It's not even an opinion. They are out relishing this moment and celebrating it, including a statement, an official statement from the Russian foreign ministry today,” Power, also a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said during a Thursday appearance on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”

“So this is a disaster, not just from a humanitarian standpoint, from the standpoint of all the beneficiaries who may in fact die because they won‘t have access to U.S. resources. But it‘s a disaster for U.S. national interests and national security,” she added.

Russia expelled USAID in 2012 for "meddling" in its politics.

"It is anything but an aid, development and assistance agency," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a weekly briefing, according to The Moscow Times.

"It is a machine for interfering in internal affairs, it is a mechanism for changing regimes, political order, state structure."

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk, who has been tasked by President Trump with rooting out what they see as wasteful spending, has made USAID one his primary targets, describing it as a “criminal organization” that should “die.”

Reports emerged Thursday evening that the workforce for the primary government agency of foreign aid is being slashed from more than 10,000 employees to fewer than 300.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has defended the administration's approach, recently describing USAID as a “global charity.”

“They have basically evolved into an agency that believes that they’re not even a U.S. government agency, that they are out — they’re a global charity, that they take the taxpayer money, and they spend it as a global charity irrespective of whether it is in the national interest or not in the national interest,” Rubio said Monday.

Former USAID leaders and patrons have vehemently disagreed with that assessment, saying funds are well spent and crucial to international humanitarian efforts.

“The assistance provided by U.S.A.I.D. comes in many forms, and with a budget of less than 1 percent of the U.S. government’s overall annual spending, it, alone, is no panacea for the world’s major challenges. Like all government agencies, it could be more efficient, and making it so was an effort I spearheaded during my tenure,” Power wrote in a New York Times op-ed. 

“Yet for much of the world population, the investments and work of U.S.A.I.D. make up the primary (and often only) contact with the United States. Some investments save lives almost immediately — like the medicines dispensed to 500,000 children with H.I.V., or the nutrient-rich food manufactured in states like Rhode Island and Georgia that pulls starving children from the brink of death.”