He has called USAID a "tremendous fraud."
Interesting, then, that both his wife, Melania, and his daughter Ivanka have worked with and praised the agency.
In 2018, Melania Trump — who was First Lady at the time — visited Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi with USAID.
She said this:
"We care, and we want to show the world that we care, and I've partnered and am working with USAID. And that's what I want to share — that we care."
And this:
"I wanted to be here to see the successful programs that the United States is providing to the children."
And this:
"We are having funding, so we are helping the countries, and we are working hard for helping them and we will continue to help."
Ivanka Trump, for her part, took credit for leading a $50 million USAID program in 2019 to empower women in developing countries, saying:
"We know there's a correlation between gender inequality and conflict, there's tremendous amounts of research. ... It is in our domestic security interests to empower women."
And on a trip to Africa of her own, Ivanka visited Ivory Coast and Ethiopia to announce millions in USAID assistance for women entrepreneurs.
Ivanka even used some $11,000 in USAID funds to buy video equipment for an event at the White House in 2019, during her father's first term.
For those not caught up in "DOGE"-driven ideological extremism, supporting the humanitarian work of USAID is common sense.
Public Citizen is suing Trump over his attempt to dissolve USAID. Our earlier note about this new lawsuit is copied below in case you missed it.
On Friday night, a federal judge granted our request for emergency action to stop the Trump regime from putting 2,200 USAID workers on leave and to bring back the hundreds put on leave earlier in the week.
But this is only a temporary interruption to Trump's (Musk's?) plans. We will be back in court next week. This lawsuit is far from over.
******
This past Thursday night, Public Citizen sued Donald Trump for shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
By dissolving USAID — in clear disregard for the law and the Constitution — Trump has touched off a global humanitarian catastrophe.
- Originally established by Congress in 1961 — when John F. Kennedy was president — USAID is a vital humanitarian organization that provides life-saving food, medicine, and support to much of the rest of the world.
- But Trump has illegally ordered USAID workers to stop doing their jobs, frozen the agency's funding, and prepared to lay off or fire nearly all employees.
- With USAID in disarray, medical clinics, soup kitchens, refugee assistance programs, and countless other critical projects across the globe cannot operate.
- This is a humanitarian nightmare of Donald Trump's and Elon Musk's making in service of ideologically bizarre interests.
The Constitution is clear — Congress created USAID and only Congress can dismantle it. Not MAGA sycophant and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Not President Donald Trump. And definitely not the unelected Elon Musk.
Public Citizen is representing the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees in this case, with co-counsel at Democracy Forward.
Our lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction barring Trump, and State Department or Treasury Department officials, from taking any action to dissolve USAID absent congressional authorization. We are also seeking a temporary restraining order — mandating a reversal of the Trump regime's unlawful actions and a halt to any further steps to dissolve USAID — until the court has resolved our suit.
By the way, we have now filed five lawsuits against the Trump regime (and there are more to come). Here are the other four:
1. We've told you about the suit we filed, within moments of Trump being sworn in, challenging the secrecy and structure of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency that is being run by Elon Musk.
2. We also sued over the removal from publicly accessible government websites of a broad range of health-related data and other information used by health professionals to diagnose and treat patients.
3. We've been emailing you about the suit we filed earlier this week to block the illegal invasion of privacy being carried out by "DOGE" at the U.S. Treasury Department.
4. And, on Friday morning, we filed a lawsuit to block "DOGE" from improperly accessing private information at the Department of Education.
If you can, please donate today to support Public Citizen's work standing up to the Trump regime.
Anything you can chip in — $5 or $25, $50 or $100, $500 or even more — will help at such a critical moment.
Or join our popular Monthly Giving program (if you haven't already) to help make sure we have the ongoing financial resources to fight Trump day after day after day.
If you've donated to Public Citizen already, thank you. If a donation is not right, we get it. Either way, we wanted to keep you updated on how we're challenging the Trump regime.
Thank you for being part of this shared project called Public Citizen.
For justice,
- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
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