Former administrator says USAID reforms are ‘baloney’

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s government efficiency unit, also known by its initials DOGE, started shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development in February, laying off thousands of employees and pausing funding on many activities. The administration is reportedly still figuring out how to restructure the agency .

But a former administrator of USAID said despite what the administration says, it isn’t trying to increase efficiency.

“They’re not reforming. They destroyed the agency,” Andrew Natsios told Boston Public Radio on Thursday.

Natsios is a former Massachusetts state representative and chair of the MassGOP. He served as USAID administrator under former President George W. Bush’s administration. He’s now a professor at the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M University and director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs.

“There are 5,000 foreign service nationals who worked for AID for decades — who are doctors, who have PhDs, they went to medical school ... they know the local language, they know the local colors, they worked for AID for many, many years — and they’re being laid off now,” Natsios said. “They say they’re going to have regional missions. That’s baloney.”

The Trump administration’s move to shut down the agency is currently in the courts. USAID is a statutory agency, meaning it was created through a law passed by Congress.

“If you pass a law saying this agency will exist, here’s a 400-page law explaining what they’ll do, you can’t just go in and abolish them,” Natsios said.

Natsios said dismantling the over 60-year-old aid agency disregards its benefits. Across the globe, USAID workers — many of whom are not even American citizens, but are foreign service nationals — implement public health measures, offer preventative healthcare services like immunizations, treatment for HIV/AIDS and voluntary family planning (“Not abortion,” Natsios said).

USAID also supported education efforts, like providing funds for the nonprofit Sesame Workshop to run an Arabic-language version of “Sesame Street.” Natsios said “Sesame Street” is a weapon against Islamic extremism.

“‘Sesame Street’ doesn’t teach people to kill each other. That’s what al-Qaida teaches,” he said. The show also taught basic literacy and public health measures, like how kids should wash their hands before eating.

That effort exemplifies the type of “soft power” provided by USAID, creating a sense of goodwill toward the U.S.

Now, Natsios said Chinese agencies have lunged at the opportunity to fill the void left by American aid workers.

“All over the world [the Chinese have] taken over the economies. Now, they’re taking over the aid system, and we’re letting them do it,” he said.

Natsios, a conservative Republican, said most GOP lawmakers do support foreign aid, yet they’re afraid to vote to protect it because of threats from the Trump administration.

“The problem is they don’t want primaries,” Natsios said. “And the administration is actually telling people, ‘You vote against this stuff, you say anything publicly, you’re going to have a primary against a MAGA person.’”