Elsewhere in the world, the reception was frostier. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry posted a press release on X in the early hours of the morning in Riyadh, reiterating that its position on the need for an independent Palestinian state was “firm and unwavering” and noting that it “will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that.” Other regional governments quickly followed suit and rights groups denounced the plan as ethnic cleansing.

In the wake of Trump’s announcement, which some U.S. officials have since tried to walk back, Foreign Policy reached out to 10 writers to comment on what his plan would mean for Palestinians, the region, and U.S. national security. —Sasha Polakow-Suransky, deputy editor

Ethnic Cleansing Won’t Make the Middle East Safer

By Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and the head of the Palestine/Israel program at the Arab Center Washington DC.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump hold a news conference at the White House in Washington on Feb. 4. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

So, a convicted felon and an indicted war criminal walk into a press conference. While this may sound like the start of a joke, it is precisely what took place at a joint press conference held by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Feb. 4, just before the U.S. president announced his plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip and have the United States take control of what he views as prime real estate.

Trump now adds Gaza—along with Greenland, Panama, and Canada—to the list of territories that he wants to take over. It may seem comical, but few in the region are laughing.

After 15 months of mass destruction by the U.S.-backed Israeli military in Gaza that—according to top international human rights organizations and scholars—amounts to genocide, the last thing countries in the region want to see is further displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.

In fact, Saudi Arabia’s government found it necessary to issue a 4 a.m. press release to reject Trump’s outrageous idea.

The Middle East has suffered decades of instability and conflict because of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that occurred in 1948 and the creation of an Israeli state—and the region certainly doesn’t want to continue down that road for the next century just to please a U.S. president who will only be around for a few more years.

By calling for such criminal policies, Trump is not only less likely to expand the Abraham Accords to include countries like Saudi Arabia, but if he tries to implement a takeover of Gaza, he might undo the foundational Arab-Israeli peace agreements that preceded the Abraham Accords—such as the one with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.

The destabilization caused by the proposed move could go far beyond the Middle East. What message will other powers like China and Russia take from Washington’s thirst to grab what it can with complete disregard for sovereignty, international law, and peoples’ rights to self-determination?

At best, Trump could become an agent of chaos. At worst, he could drag the world back to wars of mass destruction that defined the last century and gave rise to the very rules and norms he so openly disregards today.

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Trump Is Motivating Islamist Extremists to Kill Americans

By Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Protesters display a placard featuring a picture of Osama bin Laden during an anti-U.S. demonstration in Lahore, Pakistan, on May 27, 2005. Arif Ali/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s call to “take over” Gaza, relocate 2 million Palestinians elsewhere, and build the “Riviera of the Middle East” under a U.S. “long-term ownership position” may never happen. However, simply suggesting it puts Americans directly in the gunsights of Islamist extremists—not just in the United States but around the world.

Research shows that foreign military occupation is the leading cause of the worst forms of terrorism—suicide attacks—and has also led to the rise of the terrorist groups that use these deadly tactics.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the United States suffered the deadliest terrorist attack in history, when 19 Islamist extremists recruited by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden willingly gave their lives to kill nearly 3,000 Americans. Shortly thereafter, I compiled the first complete database of suicide attacks around the world to understand why. At the time, the world leader in suicide terrorism was the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a nonreligious majority Hindu group that carried out more suicide attacks than Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

What most suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel foreign occupiers to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting.

In 1982, Israel’s military occupation of southern Lebanon spawned Hezbollah, which used suicide attacks to deadly effect. Israel’s increasing military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza led to the rise of Hamas. In the 1990s, the prolonged U.S. military presence on the Arabian Peninsula was the best recruiting tool for bin Laden’s campaign of suicide terrorism against the United States. And the data through 2022 shows that the close association of foreign military occupation and suicide terrorism has continued.

Most prominently, the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq led the Afghan Taliban to begin its own campaign of suicide terrorism and gave birth to al Qaeda in Iraq, which later morphed into the Islamic State, creating an enormous wave of anti-American suicide attacks that only subsided with the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region.

For years, Americans have assumed that the danger of Islamist terrorism is over or, at least, not going to touch their lives. However, Trump’s proposal for the United States to occupy Gaza on a permanent basis is bound to rally Islamist extremists across the Middle East—not just what’s left of Hamas but also al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and others—against Americans.

Proposing to seize Gaza gives powerful substance to the long-standing Islamist narrative that the United States is the real threat. Ordinary Americans will pay the price.

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What Trump Really Wants in Gaza

By Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gazan writer, analyst, and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s vision for Gaza, as laid out during his press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Feb. 4, threw a grenade into an already destabilized Middle East foreign-policy scene.

The idea of the United States taking over the Gaza Strip is so clearly unfeasible that it can’t be credibly regarded as an option any time soon.

Analysts and foreign-policy professionals will therefore be interested in figuring out whom Trump is trying to pressure by staking out such an extreme position that could move the goalposts and disrupt postwar planning for the Gaza Strip.

This is all happening as the negotiations for the second phase of the cease-fire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas are being negotiated—a stage that begins to deal with more political and strategic issues related to Gaza’s future and recovery.

Trump is likely seeking to pressure Arab nations into doing more for Gaza through his threats of the United States taking over the Gaza Strip—signaling that he would reluctantly have to get involved if they don’t take the initiative.

This includes Gulf nations, which he hopes will finance Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction. Egypt and Jordan—while unable to take in displaced Palestinians for obvious geopolitical, economic, security, and social issues—may be expected to play a more significant security role in Gaza, with the ultimate goal of preventing Hamas’s monopoly on power and authority in Gaza.

Of course, regardless of Trump’s true intentions, his statements will nevertheless be extremely damaging to the United States’ international and regional standing, as well as add to the widespread perception that the country has been unhelpful throughout the war in Gaza.

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Criticizing Trump Isn’t Enough. Arab Leaders Need a Counterproposal.

By Dennis Ross, a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Delegates attend the Arab League’s Summit for Jerusalem in Cairo on Feb. 12, 2023. Ahmad Hassan/AFP via Getty Images

U.S. President Donald Trump’s background in real estate and construction has a lot to do with his shock announcement on Tuesday. His call for the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza is not driven by concern for Palestinian attachment to the land and a fear of expulsion from it, but by his perception of a straightforward problem of reconstruction in an environment where infrastructure has been largely destroyed and vast numbers of unexploded bombs litter a devastated landscape.

For him, reconstruction is not possible so long as Gaza is densely populated. His answer: Palestinians leave Gaza and are absorbed in Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere in the region.

For Trump, it is common sense. For Palestinians and Arabs, it is a profound threat to the Palestinian national cause because they perceive it to mean that Palestinians are again being forced to leave a part of their homeland. (Something that is the dream of the extreme right in Israel, which has long believed the Palestinians can simply be wished away.)

Arab leaders understand that supporting what will be portrayed in the Middle East as a betrayal of Palestinian national rights could unleash great popular anger against them—potentially destabilizing their regimes and allowing Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas to recapture credibility by being prepared to resist such a betrayal.

That explains the quick rejection of the Trump proposal by the Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari governments—the very countries that Trump wants to host roughly 2 million Palestinians.

Their rejection may be understandable, but if they want to dissuade Trump, they cannot just come with calls for a two-state solution, which is little more than a slogan at this point. Just as the Arabs coordinated their public rejection of Trump’s plan for Gaza, they should coordinate a concrete counterproposal for what comes next in Gaza that goes beyond platitudes.

Jordanian King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi separately plan to meet with Trump later this month; they need to be able to present a practical plan—based on agreement with the Saudis, Emiratis, and Qataris—that lays out how the rebuilding of Gaza can proceed based on a formula of “reconstruction for demilitarization.”

The plan must also address how an interim administration in Gaza could work and who will assume responsibility for governance, law and order, prevention of smuggling, and day-to-day management. It cannot be Hamas, or there will be no reconstruction, and at least initially, the Palestinian Authority is too weak, too dysfunctional, and too corrupt to play anything but a supportive role. Providing Trump with an alternative may not be his first choice, but he could take credit for getting Arab states to adopt a real approach to the day after in Gaza.

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Trump’s Plan for ‘Cleaning Out’ Gaza Didn’t Emerge in a Vacuum

By Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

The sun sets over collapsed buildings in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Jan. 20, as residents return following a cease-fire deal a day earlier between Israel and Hamas. Bashar Taleb/ AFP via Getty Images

U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to “take control” of Gaza and “clean out” its more than 2 million inhabitants has elicited international outrage because it is both illegal and immoral—in effect, a U.S.-sponsored plan of ethnic cleansing—but his ill-conceived vision would also be radically destabilizing.

The original dispossession of Palestinians following Israel’s creation in 1948—known in Arabic as the Nakba, or catastrophe—produced decades of violence and instability. A U.S.-sponsored second Nakba would ensure decades more of both.

Trump’s plan did not emerge in a vacuum and, in many ways, is the natural culmination of his predecessor’s policies—as well as years of dehumanization of Palestinians in U.S. political discourse.

Although former President Joe Biden would never have put forth such a proposal, his policies over the last 15 months effectively laid the groundwork for it due to his tolerance for Israeli excesses and disregard for Palestinian lives.

Trump’s characterizations of Gaza as a “demolition site” and a “hellhole” are not inaccurate. And with more than 90 percent of Gaza’s housing units, all its universities, most of its hospitals, 70 percent of its agricultural land destroyed, Gaza may well be uninhabitable.

But none of this was unforeseen, nor was it inevitable. Israeli leaders telegraphed their intentions virtually from day one, promising to “flatten” Gaza and turn it into “city of tents,” all while declaring that there are “no innocents” in Gaza. Barely a month into Israel’s massive bombing campaign, United Nations human rights monitors were already warning that Gaza was being rendered uninhabitable.

Despite such warnings and Washington’s own assessment that Israel’s bombing campaign was “over the top” and “indiscriminate,” Biden refused to place any meaningful constraints on Israel’s conduct and continued to arm, finance, and facilitate Gaza’s destruction at every stage.

This inordinately high threshold for Palestinian death and destruction was itself a reflection of Palestinians’ diminished humanity in U.S. politics. Unlike antisemitism and other forms of racism, which generally elicit bipartisan outrage, anti-Palestinian racism and dehumanization have been normalized in American political culture.

As Israeli politics have shifted rightward, both Israeli policy and the political discourse in Washington have become notably more hostile toward Palestinians. Thus, denying Palestinian suffering, the existence of the Palestinian people, and even the very idea of “innocent Palestinian civilians” have become standard features of U.S. politics.

If Washington can countenance such unprecedented death and destruction in Gaza, then uprooting those who are left may not be so far-fetched.

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Trump’s Gaza Proposal Is Less Original Than He Thinks

By Matthew Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy.

U.S. President Donald Trump and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner meet with Netanyahu in Jerusalem on May 22, 2017. Kobi Gideon/GPO via Getty Images

It’s always tempting to dismiss Donald Trump’s wilder remarks as flights of fancy. But we should be clear that his suggestion in a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday that Gaza’s population, which numbers over 2 million, should simply be moved out of the territory so it can be redeveloped (presumably with Trump’s companies getting a big piece of the action) constitutes nothing less than advocating a crime against humanity.

Trump’s idea appears to have originated with—wait for it—his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who last year told a Harvard University audience (in a Middle East dialogues series at which I also spoke) that Gaza’s “waterfront property” was “very valuable” and suggested that Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.

Only somewhat less offensive than Trump’s advocacy of ethnic cleansing has been the cascade of “told you so” remarks from liberal pundits, most of whom offered little if any criticism of President Joe Biden for unconditionally backing 15 months of the Israeli slaughter that brought us to this point and who continually dismissed the potential impact of Gaza on the U.S. election (except, apparently, for the purposes of blaming pro-Palestinian voters for Trump). Thus far, the response from Democrats has been muted. One might hope that, with a Republican now back in the White House, more of them might magically resubscribe to the belief that silence in the face of crimes against humanity is bad.

In any case, the more effective opposition will likely come from the region, many of whose governments have already made clear that Trump’s proposal is a nonstarter. Trump and Kushner’s supposed close allies in Riyadh rejected the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and reiterated once again that no peace and normalization with Israel will take place without the creation of a Palestinian state.

The promise of a Saudi-Israeli peace deal is ultimately what could put a brake on Trump’s apocalyptic daydream. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has made clear that he understands it would be political suicide for him to move forward with such an agreement in the absence of any path to Palestinian self-determination.

While he personally doesn’t care very much about the Palestinians, he knows that people in his country and in the region very much do. (Yes, we’ve come to a place where Saudi Arabia seems more committed to international law and the protection of civilians than the United States.)

While it’s possible that Trump has proposed the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza as a bargaining ploy, creating a potential “concession” out of thin air, we shouldn’t lose sight of the gravity of this moment.

The president of the United States has made the commission of a crime against humanity the explicit policy of his administration. The fact that Trump sees such a proposal as within the realm of acceptable discussion is itself a reflection on our deeply broken and corrupt political discourse, especially as it relates to the Palestinians.

While Trump’s proposal was particularly offensive, Tuesday’s press conference with Netanyahu demonstrated more continuity than many in Washington would like to admit. The spectacle of a U.S. president and an Israeli prime minister presuming to determine between themselves the future of the Palestinians is emblematic of decades of U.S. policy toward the conflict and a key reason for that policy’s consistent and continued failure. Trump is making the same mistake as past administrations, albeit in a bigger and uglier way.

One part of Trump’s proposal—the rebuilding and economic redevelopment of Gaza—is necessary for a future of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. Trump is right that the beautiful seaside territory has enormous potential for development. But Palestinians deserve to benefit from that potential, and will have a say in that future, one way or the other. If Trump truly wants that future to be peaceful, he’ll need to acknowledge that reality and retreat from the path he has proposed.

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Palestinians Have Always Feared U.S. Complicity in Erasing Their Presence

By Dalia Hatuqa, a multimedia journalist based in the United States and the West Bank.

A Palestinian woman is seen through the ring of an inflatable float as she walks along a beach in Gaza City on Aug. 10, 2017. Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images

From “sheer lunacy” to “Netanyahu’s lapdog,” reactions here in the occupied West Bank to U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Gaz-a-Lago” plan have been characterized by ridicule, anger, and disbelief.

The U.S. proposal to take over Gaza, dubbed ludicrous and rejected by most Arab and European mediators, has confirmed long-standing Palestinian suspicions of U.S. complicity in Israel’s decades-long project to erase their presence. It echoed what many see as classic U.S. arrogance: Trump’s history of dictating the region’s future without consulting its people.

U.S. leaders have long treated Palestine as a laboratory for geopolitical ambitions, sidelining Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty to bolster the U.S.-Israel alliance. To many, Trump’s idea of displacing Gaza’s population—before the recent Israeli full-scale destruction, it was already trapped under a 17-year blockade, repeated assaults, and systemic human rights violations—felt like a grotesque extension of this legacy.

Meanwhile, there has been no cease-fire for Palestinians in the West Bank. As Israel’s Iron Wall operation entered its third week in the West Bank, troops tightened sieges on cities like Jenin, locked down refugee camps, and demolished homes under the pretext of security. For Palestinians living amid these choking restrictions and ever-increasing settler attacks, Trump’s declaration of his plan to annex Gaza and ethnically cleanse its population seemed inextricably tied to Israel’s escalating violence.

Many viewed the timing as deliberate—a political lifeline for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose grip on power relies on appeasing his far-right coalition, delaying his corruption trial, and quelling public anger over the unresolved hostage crisis in Gaza. To Palestinians, the U.S.-Israeli collusion revealed a transactional pact: Netanyahu distracts from domestic turmoil and accelerates annexation, while Trump cements his legacy as a disruptor of international norms—erasing Palestinians’ futures under the guise of diplomacy.

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Why Egypt Is United in Opposing Trump’s Gaza Plan

By Sara Khorshid, a doctoral candidate at Western University in Canada.

People raise Palestinian and Egyptian flags during a demonstration against plans to displace Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt and Jordan in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Jan. 2. Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

If there’s one issue on which the people of Egypt and their government overwhelmingly agree, it’s the rejection of U.S. President Donald Trump’s call to evacuate Gaza’s Palestinians to Egypt. Egyptians may have different grounds for this position, but they are equally outraged by Trump’s proposed plan—and by the mere fact that he dared to announce it publicly.

The Egyptian people have historically regarded Israel as a colonial power, one that repeatedly sought to seize Egyptian land. Most Egyptian households have members who fought against Israel in the 1956, 1967, or 1973 wars, and younger generations still remember what their ancestors fought for.

Since October 2023, Egyptians have followed news of the shocking humanitarian toll of Israel’s war on Gaza. They have launched a boycott campaign of corporations they regard as pro-Israel, including many U.S. brands. So great is Egyptians’ sympathy for Palestinians that a simple Egyptian street vendor threw his fruits onto Gaza-bound aid trucks—a moment captured in a video that went viral last year.

But Egyptians’ current outrage is not solely or unanimously based on support for the Palestinian cause. Many see Trump’s brazen statements as an attack on their country’s sovereignty. Some are motivated by a conservative, nationalistic-based fear of a flood of Palestinians crossing into Egypt and competing with citizens over limited resources, amid rampant inflation that has devastated the livelihoods of millions.

Egypt’s leaders realize that condoning Trump would test the Egyptian people’s patience. Even before Trump made his shock announcement on Tuesday, the foreign ministry had, on Jan. 26, categorically rejected any displacement of Palestinians, whether “temporary or long term.”

On Thursday, Cairo reaffirmed its “complete rejection of any proposal or concept aimed at … uprooting or displacing the Palestinian people from their historic homeland and its seizure, whether on a temporary or permanent basis.”

To the Egyptian state, this is a national security issue that would undermine its already shaky domestic support and open the door for a security crisis due to the importation of Gaza’s violence to its territory. It could also cause grave internal tensions.

Even if Trump offers Egypt significant benefits in return, such as economic aid or debt relief, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi would struggle to make any concessions on this issue. The stakes are very high.

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The Arab World Sees Trump’s Gaza Plan as a Declaration of War

By Hala Rharrit, a former U.S. diplomat, who served for 18 years with the U.S. State Department, before resigning in April 2024 in opposition to the Biden administration’s Gaza policy.

I can attest, as a veteran U.S. diplomat specializing in the Middle East, that President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States will “take over the Gaza Strip” is tantamount to a declaration of war. At least, that’s how it is seen across the Arab world.

The Trump administration has undermined its own early victory. It entered office taking credit for the Gaza cease-fire, which had begun to defuse tensions in the Middle East. Yet the announcement of a plan that would entail expelling Palestinians and a U.S. occupation of Gaza has again put a direct target on the United States’ back.

Arab leaders from across the region have firmly rejected the plan. Egypt and Jordan have both come out strongly against any forced relocation of Gazans, while Saudi Arabia issued a statement affirming that Palestinian statehood is a nonnegotiable; without it, there will be no Saudi normalization with Israel.

Trump’s assertion that Arab states can simply take in Palestinian refugees forcibly kicked out of Gaza would be implicating those leaders in Palestine’s ethnic cleansing—and that would be suicide for regimes across the Middle East.

Protests continue to erupt in many parts of the Arab world, from Morocco to Jordan, condemning regional leaders for not doing enough to protect Palestinian civilians. In countries that are already economically and politically volatile, this level of social unrest, combined with a forced influx of Palestinian refugees, would be extremely destabilizing and destructive. What Trump is suggesting has the potential to unleash revolutions and provoke state collapse in the Middle East.

This plan will not bring peace. It is a threat to U.S. national security and will only ensure a vicious cycle of violence for Israelis and Palestinians.

The only solution has always been and will remain diplomacy, an end to illegal occupation, and Palestinian self-determination in accordance with international law.

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Trump Makes Population Transfer an American Policy

By Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

People walk along Gaza’s coastal Al-Rashid Street to cross the Netzarim corridor on Jan. 27, as displaced Palestinians began returning north. Omar al-Qatta/AFP via Getty Images

From my 27 years of working in the official U.S. Arab-Israeli diplomacy business, I can say President Donald Trump’s Gaza gambit goes above and beyond the craziest and most destructive proposal any administration has ever made (and there have been some strange ones). In one fell swoop, standing next to an Israeli leader who looked like the cat that just swallowed a dozen canaries, the president let loose on a scheme that is not just impractical but dangerous.

Trump has now harnessed U.S. prestige and credibility to propose an idea that will be perceived as forced transfer or worse; validated the all-too-dangerous fantasies of the Israel right; undermined key U.S. partners Egypt and Jordan; made his own goal of Israeli-Saudi normalization that much harder; and for good measure sent an unmistakable signal to authoritarians everywhere that they have the right to assert control over other people’s territory.

All that said about an unserious proposal from an unserious man, I think we may have missed the real takeaway from that presser. I couldn’t help but notice that Trump was reading from a script as he outlined his proposal. More than likely, he had talked some of it through with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or had perhaps been influenced by him, though Netanyahu often appeared as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Far from laying down a marker or reading Netanyahu the riot act, Trump seemed detached from engaging on the matter of the cease-fire deal, asserting that he didn’t know whether it would be implemented and making clear that he’d met with Netanyahu to listen.

That all, of course, might change. Few things are guaranteed in Trump world except that things change. Nonetheless, Netanyahu left the White House as one of the happiest people on the planet. He now has talking points he can use with his far-right allies, arguing that his good friend in the White House sees Gaza the way they do—free of Hamas and tragically of Palestinians as well.

Getting to phase two of the cease-fire deal—ending the war; freeing the remaining hostages; and completing the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza—already faced long odds before Tuesday. That head-exploding presser couldn’t have made Israeli-Palestinian dealmaking any easier.

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The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been immobilized in recent days as part of the Trump administration’s tumultuous effort to remake the federal government. 

The Trump administration on Monday said it is merging USAID with the State Department, a move that came amid days of turmoil at the agency and statements by tech billionaire and close presidential advisor Elon Musk that the agency was being shut down completely. 

Employees have been told to stay out of USAID’s headquarters in Washington, career staffers have been put on leave, contractors have been laid off, and international staffers across the globe have been ordered to return home. 

USAID is the U.S. government’s lead humanitarian and development agency, providing assistance to countries worldwide to help address poverty, disease, and other humanitarian crises as well as to promote democracy and other U.S. interests. 

Critics of the agency including Musk and President Donald Trump argue that it is rife with fraud and waste and that its expenditures don’t align with U.S. interests. But experts warn that the administration is moving to dismantle an agency that provides essential aid to millions across the globe and serves as a critical source of U.S. soft power, potentially opening the door for adversaries such as China and Russia to gain increased influence as Washington pulls back from the world.

Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on with the agency, why Trump and Musk want to dismantle it, and what’s at stake. 

What’s going on at USAID? 

A flurry of recent moves has sparked alarm and confusion at USAID, leaving the agency in limbo and with an uncertain future. 

It all began with Trump signing an executive order on Inauguration Day freezing all U.S. foreign assistance for 90 days pending review. Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed that with a cable detailing how that order should be carried out, freezing nearly all foreign assistance, with a few carveouts for emergency food programs and military aid to Egypt and Israel. 

As the primary agency responsible for providing such assistance, USAID soon came into the administration’s crosshairs. The USAID website went dark on Saturday, the Trump administration closed the agency’s headquarters on Monday, and staffers were told to work from home. Close to 100 career USAID staffers have been placed on leave, and hundreds have reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems. 

Two top security officials at USAID were also placed on administrative leave after attempting to prevent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) representatives from gaining access to restricted parts of the agency. 

USAID “has long strayed from its original mission of responsibly advancing American interests abroad, and it is now abundantly clear that significant portions of USAID funding are not aligned with the core national interests of the United States,” the State Department said in a post on X on Monday. 

Going forward, Trump has tapped U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the agency’s acting administrator, the statement said. Rubio’s messaging on the agency hasn’t been as absolute as Musk’s, and he’s said that his agenda is not “about ending the programs that USAID does, per se.” 

“There are things that USAID, that we do through USAID, that we should continue to do, and we will continue to do,” the top U.S. diplomat told reporters in El Salvador.

In a letter to Congress, Rubio said that he had tapped Trump ally Peter Marocco to engage in a “review and potential reorganization of USAID’s activities.” That could entail a “suspension or elimination of programs, projects or activities; closing or suspending missions or post; closing, reorganizing, downsizing, or renaming establishments, organizations, bureaus, centers, or offices; reducing the size of the workforce at such entities and contracting out or privatizing functions or activities performed by federal employees,” he wrote. 

However, on Tuesday, a notice was posted on the USAID website stating that as of 11:59 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, “all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs.” Direct hires have 30 days to return home, and contracts deemed nonessential will be terminated, the notice added. 

As of now, USAID has effectively been shuttered, in practice if not officially. 

“What we’ve seen in the last two weeks is a stoppage of almost all foreign aid and U.S. implementing organizations having to send their staff home,” said George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Sustainable Development. “This goes on for a few more weeks and a number of them are going to go belly up.” 

Why do Trump and Musk want to dismantle USAID? 

Critics say that the agency is wasteful and that its spending doesn’t align with U.S. interests. As head of DOGE—which is not an official government agency—Musk has been one of USAID’s sharpest opponents. He has baselessly decried USAID as a “criminal” organization and said it should “die.” 

U.S. foreign aid traditionally garners bipartisan support. Washington has been the world’s biggest foreign aid donor, even as that money represents a relatively tiny fraction of U.S. spending. Foreign assistance—which includes development support, humanitarian assistance, and security funding—accounts for just 1 percent of the entire U.S. federal budget. Around 60 percent of that money is administered by USAID.

USAID was initially established via an executive order signed by then-President John F. Kennedy in 1961 in concert with the Foreign Assistance Act of the same year. Legislation in 1998, the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, established USAID as its own agency—separate from the State Department.

But the agency has been a target of conservative critics for years. Lawmakers such as GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have long characterized USAID, and foreign aid more generally, as wasteful and corrupt. “Abolish USAID and all foreign aid,” Paul said in a recent post on X. 

A 2019 review by the USAID inspector general pointed to significant issues with programs funded by the agency falling short of expectations. Along these lines, there are also proponents of U.S. foreign aid, such as Walter Kerr, the executive director of Unlock Aid, who have criticized USAID’s effectiveness and called for reform. But Kerr said the “first priority” at the moment should be “to make sure that we can get life-saving assistance flowing again.”

Musk, the world’s richest person, has gone beyond debating the merits of foreign aid or critiquing the allocation of USAID’s budget. The billionaire has made a series of unfounded and conspiratorial statements about the agency in recent days, including an unsubstantiated claim that USAID “funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people.”

Musk has also stated that USAID is a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.” Similarly, Trump on Sunday said that USAID was being run by “radical lunatics.” 

The future of USAID was also a key focus of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy blueprint. Despite Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the initiative on the campaign trail, he has appeared to draw from the plan after taking office. 

In a Project 2025 chapter focused on the agency, former USAID Deputy Administrator Max Primorac argued that the Biden administration had “deformed the agency.” Primorac advocated for further tying U.S. foreign aid to U.S. foreign-policy aims, writing that the agency must focus on “countering China’s development challenge” and turn away from the Biden administration’s “radical climate policy.” 

“The next conservative Administration should scale back USAID’s global footprint by, at a minimum, returning to the agency’s 2019 pre–COVID-19 pandemic budget level,” the chapter wrote. “It should deradicalize USAID’s programs and structures and build on the conservative reforms instituted by the Trump Administration.” 

Primorac did not respond to Foreign Policy’s request for comment. 

What’s at stake here? 

The Trump administration’s moves against the agency have alarmed former USAID officials and experts, who warn that the president is gutting an agency that provides essential aid to millions worldwide and advances U.S. foreign-policy interests. 

If the effort to dismantle USAID continues in the way it appears to be trending, “we would be looking at the removal of a huge and important tool of American global statecraft,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former top USAID official. “This is a key way that the United States does good in the world.”

“The U.S. will lose influence and a lot of people will suffer” if USAID disappears, Konyndyk said, and the country will “look like a ridiculous, ungenerous, and unreliable global actor.” Konyndyk warned that China and Russia will seek to “capitalize on that for their own influence.”

Moscow already appears to be paying close attention. Musk’s efforts against USAID were praised by Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Monday. “Smart move by @elonmusk, trying to plug USAID’s Deep Throat. Let’s hope notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow him whole,” Medvedev said in a post on X.

“Countries are asking whether or not we’re a dependable ally,” Ingram said. “The Chinese don’t do this; the Chinese carry through with their commitments.” 

The apparent merger of USAID with the State Department also raises legal questions. Since USAID was established via an act of Congress, Democrats and legal experts say the administration is acting illegally, with Democrats accusing the White House of launching the country into a constitutional crisis. 

“Trump/Musk cannot unilaterally close USAID or transfer under State,” Sen. Andy Kim posted on X. “Any action to shut USAID down would need to go through Congress, and we will fight this.” 

Even some Republicans have spoken out in support of USAID in the midst of the Trump administration’s efforts against the agency. GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Monday told reporters that he has “felt for a long time that USAID is our way to combat the Belt and Road Initiative, which is China’s effort to really gain influence around the world, including Africa and South America in the Western Hemisphere.”

But Wicker also said he was open to seeing an audit of the agency to shed light on the “mismanagement” pointed to by Rubio. 

“Many people around the world are dependent on U.S. foreign aid, and that means if people can’t access emergency medicines or food, there will be grave consequences,” Kerr said, adding, “After we resolve this immediate humanitarian crisis we can focus on reform.” 

Konyndyk said there’s “a constructive, good-faith conversation that needs to be had about some of the ways that USAID works,” while going on to say that problems at the agency are not going to be solved by “woodchippering” it or merging it into the State Department.

 The Trump administration’s evolving effort against USAID leaves the agency with an uncertain future, but it’s likely to face both legislative and legal challenges in the days ahead.

“I don’t think enough is yet being done. But we’re starting to see the system react,” Konyndyk said. “Ultimately, this is going to end up in Congress, in the courts.”