Chris Coons (D): Yes, look, a ceasefire was in place. Hostages were being released, there was a path forward. And now President Trump has thrown it all into chaos again with a out of the box proposal that nobody saw coming. He is an unconventional president who’s more used to leadership on reality TV than on the complex diplomatic field of a place like the Middle East. The heads of state of all the surrounding countries have worked with the US to try and move forward a regional plan for peace. It did not include forcibly relocating millions of Palestinians. Let me also add, Andrea, the Gaza today is a humanitarian disaster. There is very little water, food, housing. It has largely been destroyed in the war since the October 7th attack on Israel by Hamas. And President Trump is right now laying off exactly those Americans who have experience dealing with refugees with folks who need clean water and public health and safety and who need shelter. That’s what USAID does. They respond to natural disasters. When there’s a Hurricane, Hurricane or an earthquake, they send in the so called Dart team from AID. And they have partners around the world. It’s exactly the folks who could make that recovery in Gaza possible who are being defunded and laid off and whose programs are being shut down.
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The problem is you can’t trust anything that Democrat politicians say, and most of the media repeat everything they say as if it were true.
The Trump administration, with Elon Musk’s involvement through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is moving to merge USAID into the State Department rather than completely shutting it down. USAID will remain as a humanitarian aid entity but with significant cuts in the workforce and a recalibration of funding to focus solely on “lower-income countries.”
Despite the restructuring, USAID will continue to operate as an entity focused on humanitarian aid. This means that while the agency itself isn’t being eradicated, its scope, operations, and possibly its independence might be significantly altered.
While there’s talk of cutting programs, the focus appears to be on making USAID more aligned with national interests and potentially reducing what they perceive as inefficiencies or misuse of funds.