Secretary Rubio cancelled 83% of USAID programs, eliminating 5,200 congressionally-appropriated contracts

On March 10, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced via X (formerly Twitter) that the Trump administration had completed a six-week review — conducted with the Department of Government Efficiency — and was cancelling 83% of USAID's programs: 5,200 of approximately 6,200 contracts. Rubio credited DOGE for an "overdue and historic reform." The remaining roughly 1,000 programs were to be administered directly by the State Department going forward. USAID was created by Congress through the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and served as the principal U.S. foreign aid agency, disbursing approximately $72 billion in fiscal year 2023 alone.

The cancelled contracts covered a broad range of congressionally-authorized programs: HIV/AIDS treatment under PEPFAR, malaria prevention and TB care, humanitarian food aid through the World Food Programme, and democratic governance programs across dozens of countries. Internal USAID projections obtained by news organizations estimated the cuts would cause up to 166,000 additional malaria deaths per year and hundreds of millions of additional polio infections over a decade. Aid workers, contractors, and partner organizations were given short notice, with many programs shuttered mid-execution.

The cancellations were carried out without legislation. Congress had appropriated USAID's funding and created its statutory mandate; the executive dismantled the agency's programming through administrative action alone. A federal court that later reviewed the broader USAID dismantling found the actions "likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways" by depriving Congress of its constitutional authority to decide whether and how to close a congressionally-created agency. The March 10 announcement represented the public culmination of the executive-branch decision to functionally eliminate USAID's independent programming capacity outside the legislative process.