Trump administration ends some ‘lifesaving’ USAid contracts, officials say
About 60 letters cancelling contracts were sent over the past week, a USAid official said.
The Trump administration has notified the World Food Programme (WFP) and other partners that it has terminated some of the last remaining lifesaving humanitarian programmes across the Middle East, according to US and UN officials.
The projects were being cancelled “for the convenience of the US Government” at the direction of Jeremy Lewin, a top lieutenant at Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whom the Trump administration appointed to oversee and finish dismantling the US Agency for International Development, according to a letter sent to USAid partners and viewed by the Associated Press.
About 60 letters cancelling contracts were sent over the past week, including for major projects with the World Food Programme, the world’s largest provider of food aid, a USAid official said.
An official with the United Nations in the Middle East said the WFP received termination letters for Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Some of the last remaining US funding for key programmes in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and the southern African nation of Zimbabwe were also affected, including those providing food, water, medical care and shelter for people displaced by war, the USAid official said.
The Trump administration had pledged to spare those most urgent, lifesaving programmes in its cutting of aid and development programmes through the US State Department and USAid.
The Trump administration already has cancelled thousands of USAid contracts as it dismantles USAid, which it accuses of wastefulness and of advancing liberal causes.
The newly terminated contracts were among about 900 surviving programmes that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had notified Congress he intended to preserve, the USAid official said.
There was no immediate comment from the State Department.
Also on Monday, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said it is ending half a century of partnerships with the federal government to serve refugees and children, saying the “heartbreaking” decision follows the Trump administration’s abrupt halt to funding for refugee resettlement.
The break will inevitably result in fewer services than what Catholic agencies were able to offer in the past to the needy, the bishops said.
“As a national effort, we simply cannot sustain the work on our own at current levels or in current form,” said Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the USCCB.
“We will work to identify alternative means of support for the people the federal government has already admitted to these programmes. We ask your prayers for the many staff and refugees impacted.”
Catholic bishops sued President Donald Trump’s administration in February over its abrupt halt to the funding of aid provided to newly arrived refugees, saying they are owed millions already allocated by Congress to carry out resettlement aid under agreement with the federal government.
But a federal judge ruled that he could not order the government to pay money due on a contract, saying a contractual dispute belongs before the Court of Federal Claims. The bishops have appealed against that ruling.
Beyond that specific funding dispute is the Trump administration’s halt to all new refugee arrivals. The Catholic bishops oversaw one of 10 national agencies, most of them faith-based, which contracted with the federal government to resettle refugees who come to the US legally after being vetted and approved by the federal government.
Archbishop Broglio’s announcement did not specify what the children’s services program was.
The bishops have overseen Catholic agencies resettling displaced people for a century. In recent decades they had done so in a partnership with the US government, receiving grants that covered much, though not all, of the expenses.
The Trump administration’s “decision to reduce these programmes drastically forces us to reconsider the best way to serve the needs of our brothers and sisters seeking safe harbour from violence and persecution,” said Archbishop Broglio, who heads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, US.
Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, accused the bishops conference in January of resettling immigrants who are in the US illegally in order to get millions in federal funding — an apparent reference to the resettlement programme, which actually involves legally approved refugees.
The bishops noted that rather than making money on the programme, they receive less in federal aid than the programmes cost and need to supplement the funding with charitable dollars.
Mr Vance followed up his criticisms by appealing to Catholic teaching as justifying immigration restrictions. That drew rejoinders not only from US bishops but an implicit rebuke from Pope Francis, who said Christian charity requires helping those in need, not just those in one’s closest circles.
