Secretary of state says on social media that 83% of the programs at USAid are being cancelled
Secretary of state Marco Rubio has announced that USAid will cancel the majority of its programs, while the rest will be folded into the state department.
Writing on X, Rubio said:
After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.
The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.
In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.
Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.
It’s unclear what impact the decision will have on a federal judge’s deadline today for the dismantled aid agency to pay $2b in bills:
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Saudi Arabia for negotiations that could pave the way for a minerals deal sought by the United States, which last week cut off aid and intelligence sharing Ukraine relies on to fend off the Russian invasion.
Earlier in the day, Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, said he expected “substantial progress” in the talks, which he said would be aimed at securing “a framework for a peace agreement and an initial ceasefire”.
We have a separate live blog covering this fast-moving story, and you can follow it here:
Donald Trump’s dismantling of USAid will strike a sharp blow to efforts to confront the climate crisis, the Guardian’s Fiona Harvey reports:
Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US overseas aid will almost decimate global climate finance from the developed world, data shows, with potentially devastating impacts on vulnerable nations.
The US was responsible last year for about $8 in every $100 that flowed from the rich world to developing countries, to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, according to data from the analyst organisation Carbon Brief.
About $11bn was spent last year, and a similar amount would have been spent by the US on climate finance this year under a continuation of Joe Biden’s plans, the analysis found.
But among the first actions of Trump on resuming the US presidency, in a turbulent two months, have been to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, and to eviscerate overseas aid efforts, of which climate finance is a part.
The White House has halted much of the funding to USAid, the government’s overseas aid agency that provides about a third of US climate finance, and contributions to the international Green Climate Fund and the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage.
US stock indices are dropping in early morning trading as Wall Street fears Donald Trump’s trade war against major US partners and vows to impose further tariffs beginning next month will spark a recession.
As of the time of this post, the broad-based S&P 500 was down 1.7%, and the tech-rich Nasdaq had dropped 2.7%. Both indices had fallen throughout last week, after Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico and doubled them on China, though he later relaxed the levies on the United States’s neighbors.
We have a live blog covering the latest in business news, and you can read it here:
Meanwhile, CNN reports that a top state department official was hired despite having a history of insulting his boss, secretary of state Marco Rubio.
Darren Beattie, the acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy, deleted tweets calling Rubio “low IQ”, among other disparagements. Beattie has a history of offensive social media comments, and was removed from his job as a White House speechwriter in 2018 after he attended a conference of white nationalists.
He’s nonetheless back in the second Trump administration. Here’s what he once thought of Rubio:
In a now-deleted tweet on January 7, 2021, Beattie invoked far-right conspiracy theories about Rubio’s past, referencing “Wainwright Park” — a curfew violation from Rubio’s teenage years that was later twisted into baseless speculation that Rubio is gay — and “foam,” a reference to similarly unfounded claims about Rubio attending foam parties at gay nightclubs.
“Forget Wainwright park, forget the foam, forget the war promotion and the neocon sugar daddies, forget the low IQ, forget the 2016 primary, Rubio is TOUGH ON CHINA (and good for military industrial complex) So be a good DOG and vote for him!!!” Beattie wrote.
A follow-up tweet about Rubio said, “What happens in the Cabana stays in the Cabana #Rubio.”
Beattie followed up his tweet with one that mocked what he perceived as Rubio’s attempt to rebrand himself as a nationalist, while sarcastically saying he supported tax credits for Black Lives Matter and criticizing his hawkish rhetoric on China.
“If a bunch of DC wonks try to reinvent Marco Rubio as a nationalist, but a ‘respectable’ one who promises tax credits to BLM supporters and is “TOUGH ON CHINA” will you be a good dog and vote for him?” the tweet said.
“Does Marco Rubio have a future in politics?” Beattie asked in another deleted tweet.
Beattie deleted three other tweets from July 23, 2020, that called efforts to rebrand Rubio a nationalist a “scam,” “nonsense” and “fake.”
“The idea behind the Hawley/Rubio scam is this. They are smart enough to know the rebranded neoconservatism of Nikki Haley and Crenshaw has no legs. Also smart enough to know free-market libertarianism has no legs,” Beattie wrote.
The Bulwark has more reporting on Marco Rubio’s announcement that most of USAid’s programs had been canceled, including that the decision appears to have been made earlier than expected:
State officials had actually been notified last week that agencies and partners had until March 12 (i.e., Wednesday) to submit forms to the Office of Foreign Assistance for the foreign aid review process. USAID was operating on that timeline, though through a parallel review track. “The Office of Foreign Assistance (F) will coordinate Department of State responses to OMB,” read the email reviewed by The Bulwark.
A source familiar with the matter said the forms that they were being asked to submit involved numerous questions that had to be filled out for “every single partner.” Some people were simultaneously working through official channels to get previously canceled USAID awards un-terminated as of Friday.
But two days before the March 12 deadline, Rubio announced the review was over: 5,200 contracts were cancelled, and “in consultation with Congress,” he wrote, the administration intends “for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.”
Elon Musk responded to Marco Rubio’s announcement of major cuts to USAid, and wrote:
Tough, but necessary. Good working with you.
The important parts of USAID should always have been with Dept of State.
Last week, it was reported that Rubio and Musk argued in front of Donald Trump during a meeting of cabinet secretaries, which the president denied. Nonetheless, the Tesla billionaire and chair of the “department of government efficiency” has made a point of publicly complimenting Rubio.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio has announced that USAid will cancel the majority of its programs, while the rest will be folded into the state department.
Writing on X, Rubio said:
After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.
The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.
In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.
Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.
It’s unclear what impact the decision will have on a federal judge’s deadline today for the dismantled aid agency to pay $2b in bills:
Speaking of executive orders, the White House says Donald Trump will sign more, unspecified measures at 3pm ET.
Also on the president’s agenda today is a 2pm meeting with tech company CEOs, and a swearing in for the new Secret Service director at 5pm.
Immigration agents have taken into custody Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who as a student at Columbia University was a leader of protests against Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
The arrest comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order shortly after taking office that is intended to revoke the visas of students who take part in pro-Palestinian activity. But Khalil is a green card holder, and his lawyer is expected to challenge his arrest, while fellow activists are outraged at what they see as the Trump administration retaliating against him for his speech.
Here’s more on his arrest:
An armed man believed to be traveling from Indiana was shot by US Secret Service agents near the White House after a confrontation early Sunday – while Donald Trump was out of town, according to authorities.
No one else was injured in the shooting that happened around midnight about a block from the White House, according to a Secret Service statement. The president was in Florida at the time of the shooting.
The Secret Service received information from local police about an alleged “suicidal individual” who was traveling from Indiana and found the man’s car and a person matching his description nearby.
“As officers approached, the individual brandished a firearm and an armed confrontation ensued, during which shots were fired by our personnel,” the Secret Service said in a statement.
The man was hospitalized. The Secret Service said his condition was “unknown”.
The Metropolitan police department will investigate because the shooting involved law enforcement officers. The police department declined to provide more details.
When Wyoming legislators in 2022 passed a law banning trans girls from competing in middle and high school girls’ sports, the Cowboy State, by its governor’s own estimate, had a grand total of four transgender student athletes competing within its boundaries.
Still, in this year’s legislative session, which wrapped up on Friday, trans athletes were again a focus of lawmakers. They introduced bills to extend the ban on trans women in athletics to intercollegiate sports and ban universities from competing against teams with trans women.
Lawmakers also proposed legislation requiring public facilities from restrooms to sleeping quarters to correspond with assigned sex at birth, restrooms in public schools to have exclusive use designations by assigned sex at birth, prohibiting the state from requiring the use of preferred pronouns, and establishing legal definitions for “biological sex”, “man” and “woman”.
Five of the seven bills made it through the legislature. The volume of proposals spotlights the new conservative vision of the role of government emerging in the state, as well as the Republican divisions on the issue.
Debate on trans-focused bills isn’t new to this legislative session. In 2022, Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, described the state’s trans sports bill as “draconian” but still let it pass into law. Last year, 10 bills were introduced on the topic, and the legislature enacted a ban on gender affirming care for minors.
Major Alzheimer’s disease research centers across the country face a $65m funding gap amid a Trump administration-imposed delay, with at least one struggling to retain highly trained staff.
Although courts have ruled a government-wide funding freeze is illegal, the administration has managed to delay research funding by canceling scientific meetings and failing to publish forthcoming meetings in the Federal Register, both which are legally required.
“The applicants know what their scores are, they know if their scores are really good they’re very, very likely to be funded, but now they can’t be funded because the advisory councils haven’t met,” said Jeremy Berg, a former director of the National Institute of General Medicine Sciences.
As the Trump administration seeks to reshape government and cut costs in line with its priorities, scientific institutions, and in particular the $48bn-budgeted National Institutes of Health (NIH), have come under attack.
Funding delays have affected nearly every research field, from pediatric cancer to dementia, as part of a multi-pronged strategy of draconian cuts. Government cost-cutting measures come ahead of an expected push to extend Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly enriched the wealthy.
A radical makeover at the US department of justice has seen key drives to fight corruption hamstrung in ways that could benefit US businesses operating abroad and foreign kleptocrats, including some Russian oligarchs.
The moves have sparked sharp criticism by former US prosecutors, transparency experts and top Democrats, who warn that the moves to cut back on anti-corruption efforts is a huge setback for American efforts to clean up global business practices and tackle the power of oligarchs and of authoritarian rulers.
Donald Trump’s US attorney general Pam Bondi – long an ally of the president – has moved fast to halt enforcement actions for six months under the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that bars bribes by US businesses to win overseas deals, which some American firms have long charged gives certain foreign firms a competitive edge.
Trump sounded bullish while signing an executive order in February to halt the department’s FCPA investigations for six months to review policy guidelines. “It’s going to mean a lot more business for America,” Trump boasted, to the dismay of critics.
In another fast foreign shift at the DoJ, a Bondi memo last month indicated that two units aimed at fighting kleptocracy – including some major Russian oligarchs – were being disbanded with some lawyers redeployed to focus on new priorities involving fighting drug cartels and transnational crime.
The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.
Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.
The watchlist is part of the Civicus Monitor, which tracks developments in civic freedoms across 198 countries. Other countries that have previously been featured on the watchlist in recent years include Zimbabwe, Argentina, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.
Mandeep Tiwana, co-secretary general of Civicus, said that the watchlist “looks at countries where we remain concerned about deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”.
The selection process, the website states, incorporates insights and data from Civicus’s global network of research partners and data.
The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation”.
Donald Trump has not treated Greenlanders with respect since expressing his renewed interest in acquiring the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island, Greenland’s prime minister was quoted on Monday as saying.
Trump reiterated his interest in acquiring the island during his address to Congress last Tuesday, painting a picture of prosperity and safety for the “incredible people” of Greenland, an autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark, Reuters reported.
Trump reaffirmed that message in a Truth Social post early on Monday, writing: “We will continue to keep you safe, as we have since World War II. We are ready to invest billions of dollars to create new jobs and make you rich.”
Greenland’s prime minister, Mute Egede, told Danish public broadcaster DR in an interview aired on Monday: “We deserve to be treated with respect, and I don’t think the US president has done that recently since he took office.”
“I think that the recent things the American president has been doing means that people don’t want to get as close to (the US) as they might have wanted in the past,” he added.
“We need to draw a line in the sand and put more effort into (cultivating relations with) the countries that show us respect for the future we want to build,” said Egede, in comments aired a day before Greenland holds a general election.
Egede has repeatedly said that Greenland, whose population is only 57,000, belongs to its people and that it should decide on its own future. He supports full independence for Greenland.
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with news that Republicans are growing concerned that Donald Trump’s tariffs are hurting the US economy, with constituents telling them they are struggling financially.
Business owners, exporters and farmers have told lawmakers that Trump’s expanding trade war and threat of steep tariffs against Canada, Mexico and Europe are having a direct impact on business in the US, The Hill reports.
“The Canadian tariffs will definitely have a detrimental impact on the economy of Maine and on border communities in particular,” said Senator Susan Collins. “We have for example a major paper mill in northern Maine right on the border that gets its pulp from Canada.”
“That mill alone, which is by far the biggest employer in the region, employs 510 people directly. I’ve talked to the owner of that mill, the imposition of a 25% tariff could be devastating,” she added.
“I have every major industry in Kentucky lobbying me against them; the cargo shippers, the farmers, the bourbon manufacturers, the home-builders, the home sellers – you name it – fence manufacturers,” senator Rand Paul told The Hill.
“The bourbon industry says they’re still hurt from the retaliatory tariffs” during Trump’s first term, he said. “So do the farmers.”
