SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Been a difficult week for the United States Agency for International Development. The Trump administration killed nearly all of the aid's - of the aid agency's programs, put thousands of its employees on administrative leave or laid them off. Meanwhile, a legal battle between the government and global health groups is going on about the funds that are still frozen. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said it would weigh in, though it hasn't issued a ruling yet. NPR global health correspondent Fatma Tanis joins us. Fatma, thanks so much for being with us.
FATMA TANIS, BYLINE: Thanks for having me, Scott.
SIMON: The case has reached the Supreme Court. Help us understand it, please.
TANIS: So in January, when Trump officials at USAID froze foreign aid funds, they also didn't pay organizations that work - for work that was done before in December and January. And these global health groups now say that they've had to lay off staff and are facing insolvency. So they sued the government to make payments. A federal judge then ordered the government and set a deadline for last Wednesday to make those payments, but on Wednesday night, the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, and Chief Justice John Roberts paused the case, giving the government a reprieve. Then on Friday, global health organizations urged the Supreme Court to order the government to make those payments. It's about $2 billion that the government owes these organizations, and we're still waiting to see what the court will do next.
SIMON: And what about the terminations to the agency's grants? What kind of programs have been cut?
TANIS: So the administration sent out termination letters to organizations saying that it had determined that those grants were not aligned with agency priorities and that continuing those programs is not in the national interest. The administration has decided that more than 90% of USAID's grants are to be terminated. And some of those grants funded programs that work to deliver the Trump administration's own policy goals like curbing migration, drug trafficking. Others provided shelters for rape survivors or education for children around the world.
SIMON: Were there any exemptions?
TANIS: So here's where it gets confusing, because the State Department says that programs that provided, quote, "lifesaving assistance" were to be spared. About 500 grants have been allowed to continue. And in fact, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had issued waivers sparing those programs from the funding freeze altogether. But we're hearing that many of those grants have, in fact, been terminated. We're talking about, you know, UNICEF's immunization program for polio, programs that delivered medications for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.
I spoke to David Miliband. He's a president of the International Rescue Committee, and they received termination notices for 46 programs. Dozens of IRC's malnutrition clinics in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Sudan will have to shut down. Here he is.
DAVID MILIBAND: These are high-impact programs. They're evidence-backed. They deliver extraordinary value for money, and they obviously are addressing the most life-threatening of conditions for the youngest children. And so we are in a very difficult position of the starkest of stark choices about how to sustain programs with no legal allowance for using American funds other than to shut down.
SIMON: Fatma, where does this leave the global assistance industry?
TANIS: Well, it's quite the earthquake for the global aid industry. It's all interconnected, so this move by the administration has far-reaching implications. Millions of people around the world will feel the impact. One example, the U.N. said that 9 million people in Afghanistan would no longer have health services without U.S. funding. And organizations just say that there's no replacement really for the role that the U.S. had in the global aid sector.
SIMON: NPR's Fatma Tanis. Thank you so much for being with us.
TANIS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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