Ambassador Samantha Power (C), former head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), embraces evacuated employees and their supporters outside the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC, on February 27, 2025.
When Samantha Power walked out of the headquarters of the United States Agency for International Development in Washington, DC, for the last time on January 20, 2025, she had no idea what would happen to the agency she had led for the past four years for the Biden administration.
Within days, the new Trump administration froze all US foreign aid, halted thousands of programmes around the world – including emergency life-saving programmes – and began dismantling USAID.
“I was as shocked as I was horrified,” Power said in an interview with NPR. “I couldn’t believe at first that any human being would suspend aid, especially life-saving aid, without taking into account the humanitarian consequences or try to do so in a way that would allow people to adjust.”
Power was the last confirmed administrator of the 64-year-old agency – USAID was officially shuttered in July 2025. It employed approximately 15,000 people globally and managed thousands of programmes aimed at fighting disease and poverty.
Only a handful of former agency employees now work at the state department, and most programmes have been eliminated.
A year later, Power is still grappling with USAID’s losses and legacy and filled with anger over the administration’s treatment of its staff.
“It was very cruel, and it seemed like cruelty was the point of it,” Power says of the way the administration worked to dismantle it.
Nevertheless, Power remains hopeful that there is enough bipartisan support for foreign aid in Washington for the agency to be reorganised in some form in the future.
When you realised what the Trump administration intended to do with USAID, what did you do?
I did what many did; that is, I went and appealed to the Republicans [in Congress] who I knew were both close to the president and big champions of USAID.
Initially he worked with me and others behind the scenes to get the programme restarted and get a waiver for it, but at a certain point he apparently decided it was in his self-interest to go along. [with President Trump]”
Many former USAID employees who spoke to NPR felt as if they were in a long grieving process in the six months from when the Trump administration began dismantling USAID until its official closure in July, 2025. How did you feel during that time?
I think for a long time I not only made the agency unhappy but also felt a sense of powerlessness toward the people who had worked faithfully in partnership with me, under my leadership, in the Biden administration.
It was a minor disaster for the 15,000 USAID workers around the world. Every one of them served our country faithfully.
They certainly weren’t doing it for the money; they were doing it with a sense of purpose and mission.
And being unable to support them, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to pay rent, and knowing that some of them had to pull their kids out of daycare — combined with the personal heartbreak they felt and the livelihood and existential questions about their careers — made me feel massively ineffective during that period of time.
How do you think the loss of USAID is being felt around the world?
I think of the village that doesn’t have electricity because of Power Africa, which no longer exists and, within a short period of its operation, had provided widespread, better electricity to 150 million people.
What is the point of not having US-funded election monitors in some parts of the world when we know that many democratic trends are going in the wrong direction with AI leading to massive job displacement?
What does it mean that independent media investigating whether governments are stealing from their people and acting as checks and balances is very scarce?
When you close down anti-corruption civil society organisations, as has happened around the world when USAID and State Department funding is withdrawn from them, you lose things that won’t be measured in the here and now, but that will have really negative impacts across generations.
A year after the agency’s closure, NGOs and aid groups appear to be continuing their work. Why do you think we should still be talking about what happened to USAID?
USAID was founded by John F. Kennedy, and over the decades, the goodwill this agency has earned the United States and the American people is impossible to assess because it is limitless.
Walking away from USAID is both cruel and incredibly foolish. It is literally as if one possesses the most esteemed brand name and then proposes to create a new one, although it is the most popular, most beloved, and most respected branch of American foreign policy in the world.
Although it has flaws, Americans want to help, and USAID has understood exactly these sentiments.
Trump administration officials say they are more agile and efficient in disaster response now than when USAID existed. What do you see when you look at the responses to the ongoing Ebola outbreak and earthquake in Venezuela?
I see a response that is better than adequate—specifically, a better response than the US State Department’s response to the Myanmar natural disaster— and clearly expediting and devoting more resources to the Venezuelan response.
in part because of the major foreign policy and military investments made in Venezuela and in part because Marco Rubio certainly personally cares a lot about Venezuela, but whatever the reason, it’s better to do more.
But I think the big gaps aren’t causing headlines; headlines come from the decline in health metric measurement. For example, social scientists and economists have not yet figured out how to measure the impact of losing US aid for HIV or girls’ education in some communities around the world.
Critics of USAID say the agency has created dependency among low-income countries, and I know this is an issue you were trying to address during your tenure.
The Trump administration is arguing that it is making countries more self-reliant by cutting aid and making deals with governments. Do you think the administration’s argument there has merit?
Government-to-government aid, which is actually something the Trump administration is doing more of, was something I was very excited about, and we launched a big new government-to-government strategy [during my term].
But it was actually Congress’s concerns decades ago about whether governments were stealing USAID resources that led to the destruction of USAID and other foreign aid branches of the US government. Proceed through non-state actors.
So this move is a government-to-government change; I welcome it. Proper oversight is needed to ensure dollars are going where they should, and removing all the USAID people doing oversight is not the solution.
Do you think there is a world in which USAID comes back?
It should come back. Will it be politically challenging for President Trump’s supporters to accept the withdrawal? [USAID]?
Of course it will. So can such a scenario happen? Can they put the letter back at headquarters, hire everyone back, and say, “Oh, oops”?
There is very little chance of such a scenario happening soon. But this year, the Republican-led House and Senate sent a foreign aid bill worth 50 billion dollars to President Trump for his signature.
There are still supporters of this work, but it will require a delicate conversation about how to build back in a way that allows majorities in both parties to rally around the issue and for some to save face after a terrible mistake.
Do you expect USAID to be part of that potential restructuring?
Definitely. I’m doing everything I can to be a part of the conversation about what the core of what comes back should look like.
Recovery will be gradual, and different areas will generate varying levels of bipartisan enthusiasm, but it is important to be open to where results have been achieved.
USAID spent decades collecting those results, and the individuals involved in those programmes need to be at the centre of the conversation about what happens next—not just politicians who can figure out what the politics will allow, but also experts who can demonstrate the valuable work done on behalf of the American people.
NPR contacted the State Department for comment. A statement said, “Foreign aid often contradicted the administration’s foreign policy and was spent without any coordination with it.
It also often perpetuated the problems it claimed to solve while funding a corrupt NGO industrial complex.
The abolition of USAID and the restructuring of foreign aid under clear leadership allow the United States to be more effective and efficient, as well as advance our national interests.”
