Rubio Announces USAID Has ‘Officially’ Ceased Operations

The U.S. secretary of state said the agency cannot administer foreign assistance as of July 1.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 20, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on July 1 the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which had been rapidly dismantled earlier this year by the Trump administration.

In a blog post on the State Department’s website, Rubio wrote that foreign assistance provided by USAID had failed to deliver results for Americans and also said that the agency was part of the “globe-spanning [non-governmental organizations] industrial complex” that was funded by taxpayers.

“USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” Rubio said. “Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown. On the global stage, the countries that benefit the most from our generosity usually fail to reciprocate.”

Rubio wrote that as of July 1, the agency “will officially cease to implement foreign assistance” and that only assistance programs that align with the Trump administration’s priorities will be facilitated.

Democrats and a union representing foreign service workers have strongly pushed back against the dismantling of USAID, claiming that cuts to the agency would lead to a reduction in aid to poor countries and would ultimately put lives in danger.

But Rubio said in the blog post that USAID pushed anti-American ideas across the world along with “censorship and regime change operations” overseas and that it collaborated with non-governmental organizations that were “in league with Communist China and other geopolitical adversaries.”

On the day of Rubio’s announcement, the American Foreign Service Association union, which has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, said in a statement that USAID’s closure would cause the United States to lose its standing in the world and would impact the government’s capacity to wield “soft power.”

“Rather than engage in constructive conversations to lessen the devastating impact of these layoffs, the administration chose instead to inflict maximum pain and hardship through a barrage of questionable—and likely illegal—policies, accompanied by dismissive and dehumanizing rhetoric, all delivered with little thought to implementation or human consequences,” the American Foreign Service Association stated.

Some Republicans in Congress welcomed the July 1 announcement.

“America First: Every Dollar, Every Diplomat. Thank you, President Trump and Secretary Rubio, for your leadership,” GOP members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote in a post on social media platform X.

This comes just three weeks after Rubio ordered U.S. embassies around the world to proceed with a directive to fire all remaining staffers with USAID.

A federal judge had temporarily blocked an executive order by President Donald Trump for mass firings at multiple federal agencies, including the State Department, and plaintiffs have argued that Rubio’s reorganization plan appears to violate that court injunction. The Trump administration said the plan was already underway when the order was issued.

Earlier this year, the Department of Government Efficiency had made USAID one of its first targets to dismantle as part of a Trump administration initiative to reduce what it said was fraud, waste, and abuse within the federal government. At one point earlier this year, Rubio had served as the acting head of USAID while it was being dismantled.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.