Marco Rubio and Donalfd Trump (File – AP)
US secretary of state Marco Rubio on Friday announced he is stepping back from his role overseeing the US agency for international development (USAID), handing off responsibilities to office of management and budget director Russ Vought as the agency enters its final phase of shutdown.In a post on X, Rubio wrote congratulating Russ, “I joked with @realDonaldTrump that I had four jobs. He told me to give one to my friend Russ Vought. So I did,” “Since January, we’ve saved the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. And with a small set of core programs moved over to the State Department, USAID is officially in close out mode,” he added. “Russ is now at the helm to oversee the closeout of an agency that long ago went off the rails. Congrats, Russ.” While the OMB has yet to confirm if Vought will serve as acting administrator of USAID or act in a designee role under Rubio, the move adds to his current portfolio, which includes heading the consumer financial protection bureau and leading Trump’s budget team. Vought also played a central role in shaping Project 2025, a conservative policy framework developed by The Heritage Foundation, according to Politico. USAID, once a key independent agency delivering international aid, has been gradually dismantled under the Trump administration. Earlier this year, President Trump appointed Rubio as acting administrator, and by March, 83% of its programmes – including those focused on food, water and medical aid – had been cut. The remaining functions were absorbed by the State Department on July 1.The restructuring followed a January executive order by Trump that froze a wide range of foreign and domestic aid programmes, targeting what the administration described as “woke” spending across federal agencies. More recently, in a letter sent Thursday to House Speaker Mike Johnson and later shared on the White House Office of Management and Budget’s X account, President Donald Trump said he was invoking a “pocket rescission” – a budgetary tool that lets the president allow allocated funds to expire without direct action. Since Congress has only 45 days to respond, Trump’s late August submission makes it nearly certain the funds will lapse unused when the fiscal year ends on September 30.There has been a consistent effort by the Trump administration to use the all possible tools at their disposal, like shutting down aid delivery agencies like USAID to pocket recession, along with other policy decision and recission proposals to substantially reduce the amount of money US spends on critical and humanitarian foreign aid, which they believe don’t serve the purpose.
