The mood at today’s rally at the Capitol in support of the U.S. Agency for International Development was one of shock, fear and fury at lawmakers for not doing more to push back against the dismantling of USAID.
Mary Kate Adgie, a State Department contractor who said she was laid off last week as a result of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s stop-work order, told NBC News she was working on projects under the Global Fragility Act — a law co-sponsored by then-Sen. Rubio and signed by Trump during his first administration that “aims to revitalize how the United States invests in stabilization around the world, recognizing that conflict prevention is immensely cheaper than conflict resolution.”
“The 180, I would say, is, it’s shocking,” she told NBC News.
Adgie — who said the way the stop-work order was “jarring” — has been frustrated by what she says has been misinformation around “wasteful” foreign spending.
Recently, she had been working on a USAID project in Papua New Guinea “to invest in civic education, community violence, gender-based violence reduction, opportunities to advance equity,” she said.
“I think that’s important conversation for the strategic competition interest of the United States,” she said. “And now we’ve completely pulled out, and our implementing partners and local community members are left wondering what’s going to happen after we had been laying the groundwork and the foundation.”
She expressed frustration that an estimated 8,000 people in the field are now unemployed.
“I’ll be OK. I have community. I have resources. I have savings,” Adgie said. “I think it’s really just heartbreaking to know that there are millions of people around the world depending on this, particularly local implementing partners. They will not survive a 90-day pause for foreign assistance review. People will not get the services that they need, and as a result, the U.S. is going to be less prosperous, less secure and less safe.”
A woman who works for a USAID implementing partner who declined to be named on the record is frustrated by how the shuttering of USAID to reduce government spending has happened in an unnecessarily expensive manner that wastes taxpayer dollars.
“The waste to taxpayer dollars just happening because of the chaos — no one’s against a realignment and a review of what’s happening. That would be no problem, but the way, the chaotic way they’re doing it is such an immense waste to U.S. taxpayer dollars that when we eventually know what that number is, it’ll be infuriating,” she said. “And you should be infuriated as taxpayer that this is happening, and it’s going to happen again, not just at USAID but at Department of Education, etc.”
Scott Paul, Oxfam America’s director of peace and security, called it a “seismic event for the humanitarian system” worldwide.
“This is not sustainable,” he said. “This is an issue of life and death for people around the world. There is no humanitarian assistance in the world that is untouched by what has happened in the last two weeks for USAID.
“In the space of two weeks, the world’s richest person has deprived the poorest people in the world, struggling through the worst times of their lives, the very help they need to get that,” he added.
Jerry Parks, who works for a USAID implementing partner on monitoring and evaluation of global health programs, stressed the level of oversight and accountability he encounters in his work.
“There’s all sorts of analysis done,” he said. “And if a project isn’t working, we recalibrate it so the money is very much accounted for. The idea that this is sort of corrupt waste being thrown into the ether is just nonsense.”
“I can’t emphasize how devastating this is,” Parks said.
Without his organization’s work, he’s worried that HIV cases in places like Kenya and Uganda will climb, putting people in “serious danger.”
“We have made humongous improvements in combating AIDS,” he said. “It’s the greatest achievement of public health history, and all that is being undone.”
Parks said he believes it’s possible to care for people both in America and abroad.
“There’s so much kindness in this country,” he said. “And I think that if people realized what good the U.S. did in the world for how little money, I find it very hard to believe that there would be so much opposition.”
Democratic lawmakers — faced with heckling from rallygoers calling on them to “do your job” — expressed hope that the courts would intervene and that their Republican colleagues would act.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., called the shuttering of USAID “downright illegal.”
“It’s pretty clear that presidents are not kings,” he told the crowd. “They don’t get to decide to cherry-pick the law. This is not, like, à la carte. The law is the law, and President Trump needs to obey all parts of that law.”
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., asked where Republicans are when “lives are now at stake.”
“Lives are now being lost as a result of this unlawful taking, this grotesque cruelty of the Trump administration,” she said. “What is going on is corrupt, it is cruel, it is chaotic, it is lawless, it is unconstitutional, and that’s the point.”
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., who said she plans to introduce legislation to push back against Musk’s “illegal takeover of USAID,” appealed to the crowd’s expertise.
“It is a power grab meant to silence critics, and let’s be clear: While USAID might be first, it is not going to be the last, but joke’s on them, because who knows better how to work in an authoritarian country than all of you?” Jacobs said.
