Idahoans with connections to USAID dismayed by Trump, Musk actions | Opinion
Casey Bartrem, a contractor with the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, was in a bureau meeting on the Monday after the inauguration when she was told to expect an email soon regarding her contract.
Bartrem, executive director of Terragraphic International Foundation in Moscow, had been a USAID contractor since July 2023, supporting countries to address childhood lead poisoning, identifying it and developing monitoring systems and programs to reduce it all over the world, including Africa, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.
“When the election was over, we all expected there would be a change in program priorities,” Bartrem told me in a phone interview. “That often happens when there’s a switch in administrations. Each administration has its own priorities, and so the funding that becomes available for the agencies … has a different focus. So it might switch. There might be more focus on global health. There might be more focus on democracy, depending on who’s president at the time and who the administrator is. That’s to be expected.”
What wasn’t expected was a complete shutdown of the agency, including Bartrem’s work.
Bartrem, who holds a doctorate in environmental science from the University of Idaho, said she thought that maybe her contract wouldn’t be renewed when it came up in July.
Instead, she got a stop-work order that afternoon.
Accusations against USAID
In the past two weeks, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (which is not even an official department or agency of the federal government) have taken drastic actions against USAID, including initiating its shutdown and gaining access to classified data at USAID.
President Donald Trump said USAID was “managed by a group of radical lunatics.” Musk called USAID a “criminal organization.”
Nearly all USAID staff were placed on leave, and almost all USAID workers worldwide are being pulled off the job.
USAID headquarters was closed in anticipation of a complete shutdown, and Musk fired half of the agency’s global health arm, according to Atul Gawande, former head of global health at USAID, in an interview with Fox News.
Hundreds of USAID contractors lost access to their official emails and systems.
USAID employees were instructed not to report to work, with many locked out of their accounts.
National security role
I spoke with one Idahoan who previously worked for USAID. She spoke with me on the condition that she remain anonymous to protect the reputation and integrity of her current organization and avoid any potential negative impacts on her current work.
“USAID is really important for national security,” she said. “One thing I learned early on in my time at USAID was that the Defense Department, the State Department and USAID work really closely together. … Defense loves this work. It’s so critical for national security, and it is a perfect complement to what our diplomats do.”
She said she is shocked over the abrupt and unprofessional manner in which USAID is being shut down, calling it unconstitutional.
She refuted accusations that USAID employees are “lunatics” or that it’s a “criminal organization.”
These are professionals who have extensive expertise in their fields and have made personal sacrifices to do what they do.
“These are people who are serving their country,” she said. “Many of them have advanced degrees, many of them have deep language proficiency in the countries where they work. These are serious people.”
That was the experience of a USAID subcontractor with Idaho ties who requested anonymity due to fears of repercussions for speaking publicly.
“I feel like the narrative of USAID being a criminal organization is such a tough one to hear because I do think the industry is just really filled with people who deeply care about others and want to make the world a better place, a more just, equitable place,” she said.
USAID’s work
USAID works in areas like global health, agriculture and nutrition programs and economic development to help maintain stability and reduce the need for military intervention.
One of USAID’s better-known programs is PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief), which was started under President George W. Bush to provide life-saving HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention services in many countries.
Other initiatives include such things as malaria control, microfinance programs for small businesses to stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty, literacy programs, teacher training, election support, disaster relief and conservation efforts.
USAID has more than 10,000 people in its workforce, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, and most of those employees — roughly two-thirds — are serving overseas. The agency has more than 60 country and regional missions, according to CBS News. In all, the U.S. spent about $40 billion in foreign aid in the 2023 fiscal year, according to a report published last month by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, as reported by PBS News. Foreign assistance overall amounts to less than 1% of the U.S. budget.
As justification for shutting down USAID, the Trump administration cited spending on such things as $1.5 million on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in Serbia, $2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam and $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru.
Some of the claims are isolated examples, and some have not been verified. Others, such as Trump’s claim that USAID spent $50 million for condoms in Gaza, have been debunked.
“I think if you looked at individual things and individual programs, I’m certain you could find things that could have been done better,” said Bill Smith, professor of international studies and director of the Martin Institute at the University of Idaho.
The USAID subcontractor I spoke with said she never saw any kind of spending like what the White House claimed during her time working with USAID. Some of those claims might have some basis in truth, she said, but regardless, both she and Smith pointed out that USAID goes through rigorous audits every year.
In fact, the Office of Inspector General conducted 67 audits on USAID and USAID-related finances in 2024 alone.
Abrupt shutdown
Smith said he has no problem with looking at USAID’s spending, possibly even restructuring it.
The problem, he said, is the way the reform and restructuring is taking place, without proper planning or transition.
“This has taken people really by surprise,” he told me in a phone interview. “Even though they knew there might be some reform, there was no anticipation that it would be gone effectively like this.”
Smith said it would have been better to have “conversations before the decision was made, with allies and with international organizations, different agencies in the UN who could be ready to pick up the slack that was coming.”
Cutting off aid abruptly will have immediate negative impacts, creating “gaps in medical care, gaps in food aid, gaps in all kinds of things,” Smith said, not to mention the immediate impact on the federal workers and their families stationed all over the world.
Bartrem raised another interesting point about eliminating the work of USAID in such an abrupt manner: It’s wasteful.
“The amount of waste of work that has been done,” Bartrem said. “I can speak to only lead, but I can’t imagine how many millions, or maybe even a billion, that has been wasted in work done that has just been destroyed. It’s just been thrown away. When we talk about efficiency, this is not efficient. It’s disgusting, how wasteful it is.”
Value of foreign aid
All of the people I spoke with made the same points about the importance of foreign aid in general:
- It’s in the United States’ national security interest to help other countries to create stability in a region.
- Countries we help become our friends, further preempting the need for military action.
- Without it, a vacuum is created, leaving the door open to other countries to step in, including China and Russia.
Constitutional question
There’s also a constitutional issue at play here.
Congress controls the purse strings, and I will be the first to agree that they’ve been doing a really lousy job at it.
But that doesn’t give the president license to undo what Congress has approved — or give a billionaire private citizen free rein to raid a federal workplace and access classified information.
When the executive branch exceeds its authority like this, it’s up to our system of checks and balances to keep it in check.
Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress — including Idaho’s entire delegation — have abdicated that responsibility and duty.
U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, blocked a Democratic resolution Monday in the Senate that affirmed USAID’s role in protecting the United States’ national security.
“The idea of merging USAID and the State Department has been floated by nearly every administration since USAID was established by Congress in 1998,” Risch said on the Senate floor. “I’m supportive of the Trump administration’s efforts to reform and restructure the agency in a way that better serves U.S. national security interests.”
That’s all well and good. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Risch now chairs, should have frank, open and thorough hearings on the value of USAID, its spending and whether to kill it altogether — not simply roll over and let the president destroy it without legislative approval.
For Bartrem, it goes beyond just sloppy protocol.
“Americans have this decision to make,” Bartrem said. “If they agree with the messages of the Trump administration, and this is about improving efficiency and reducing wasteful spending, if you agree with that, do you think it’s acceptable to do that at the expense of our civil liberties? And do you believe that Trump and his appointees are cleaning up the government, and if so, are you OK with him using the Constitution as their rag to do it?”
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
