On Jan. 20, as U.S. President Donald Trump was being inaugurated in Washington, D.C., some 8,000 miles away in Dar es Salaam, the government of Tanzania was reversing prior denials and declaring that there was, in fact, an outbreak of Marburg virus. Marburg, a highly contagious hemorrhagic virus, is a cousin to Ebola with a case fatality rate as high as 88 percent, and it could bring the kind of global attention the Tanzanian government has long tried to avoid.
Using lessons from the West African Ebola outbreak that began in 2014, which took two years and more than $2 billion of U.S. funding to contain, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were mapping a way to stop the Marburg outbreak early.
On Jan. 20, as U.S. President Donald Trump was being inaugurated in Washington, D.C., some 8,000 miles away in Dar es Salaam, the government of Tanzania was reversing prior denials and declaring that there was, in fact, an outbreak of Marburg virus. Marburg, a highly contagious hemorrhagic virus, is a cousin to Ebola with a case fatality rate as high as 88 percent, and it could bring the kind of global attention the Tanzanian government has long tried to avoid.
Using lessons from the West African Ebola outbreak that began in 2014, which took two years and more than $2 billion of U.S. funding to contain, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were mapping a way to stop the Marburg outbreak early.
The same day in the Western Hemisphere, officials were tracking a new outbreak of the extremely rare and Ebola-like Chapare hemorrhagic fever in Bolivia as they readied to prepare a response. But two weeks later, no plans have been executed, and the USAID leaders who would be responsible are on administrative leave as part of the new administration’s assault on foreign aid. None of the outbreaks have been contained.
Now, Trump has ordered an ill-considered scheme that contravenes U.S. law, could tear apart the international aid infrastructure built with bipartisan support over decades, and which would mean many more outbreaks and other disasters worldwide.
In the early hours of Monday, Feb. 3, Elon Musk—the businessman-turned-top Trump advisor—declared that he and the president had reached a decision about USAID—“we’re shutting it down.” USAID staffers were told that the agency’s headquarters were closed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that he was the new head of the agency, and the White House confirmed plans to merge it with the State Department. Reporting suggests the move would include laying off many or most of the USAID staff responsible for crucial programs.
To be clear-eyed: This is neither good policy nor legal under the most basic elements of U.S. law and the Constitution.
There are many reasons to demand reform at USAID. Critiques of the agency have emerged from the left and the right. Too much aid is poorly designed for the world of 2025, the agency too often operates in a neocolonial model, and not enough of the investment reaches those who need it most. But many of the critiques from Musk are completely baseless.
And aid money saves lives. Halting it has shut down efforts to prevent children from dying of malaria, stopped clinical trials for various drugs and medical devices, threatened a resurgence of HIV, and more.
And any reforms should be done legally. The U.S. Agency for International Development is an independent agency with authorities legislated by Congress. Its history is complex, but its status is clear. The president—let alone Musk, who is neither elected nor confirmed by Congress—does not have the legal authority to abolish USAID or move it under the State Department unilaterally.
USAID traces its origins to a bill introduced by U.S. Sen, William Fulbright that passed Congress in September 1961 and became the Foreign Assistance Act. After signing it into law in November, then-President John F. Kennedy created USAID by executive order to implement the law. Originally, the agency functioned under the authority of the secretary of state.
However, after significant debate in Washington over the independence of the agency, President Jimmy Carter created the United States International Development Cooperation Agency (IDCA) in 1979, bringing development and security assistance programs together and moving USAID from the State Department and into the agency. The order delegated the authorities created by the Foreign Assistance Act to the director of the IDCA.
In 1998, Congress took up reform of the aid infrastructure, passing the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, which abolished the IDCA. That act formally established USAID as an independent agency, stating that “there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5” of the United States Code.
The law required the president to come up with a plan and provided the option to, within 60 days, alternatively move all of USAID’s functions into the State Department. President Bill Clinton declined to do so and, as a result, USAID was confirmed as an independent statutory agency created by Congress. As it had done since inception, the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act provided that the secretary of state would give foreign-policy guidance to USAID.
Since 2016, Congress has passed five authorizing laws that define new authorities, oversight, and authorizations of funding levels, and USAID’s independence has been maintained throughout. As such, USAID remains a distinct statutory agency with separate authorization, appropriation, and authorities. Several senators have already weighed in to make this argument.
Dissolving USAID or merging it into the State Department without the authorization of Congress would be unconstitutional. Article I of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the legislative prerogative to create and abolish agencies. And that authority has been affirmed by the judiciary in the years since: “To Congress under its legislative power is given the establishment of offices, the determination of their functions and jurisdiction…” wrote the Supreme Court in Meyers v. United States (1926).
Because Congress established USAID by statute, the executive branch lacks the unilateral authority to abolish it or subsume it without a corresponding act of Congress. This is not a small or a limited issue: The separation of powers doctrine is central to U.S. constitutional government, and allowing the executive to reshape or eliminate an agency that Congress created and continues to fund would deeply weaken the legislature’s independence.
Rubio, in fact, has been among the most recent legislative architects of USAID. He was the lead sponsor of the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016, which enacted USAID’s obligation to establish measurable goals and monitor them with results posted online. Rubio also co-sponsored a follow-up bill that required USAID to publicly share which countries and organizations received the funds.
This is exactly why USAID needs highly trained, well-qualified professional staff of the type that is now threatened with dismissal.
Ongoing disease outbreaks demonstrate why attacks on USAID are not just unconstitutional, but also bad policy. Aid should be independent. Merging with the State Department and initiating mass layoffs do not serve U.S. interests as defined by Rubio in a Jan. 26 press statement. It does not make the United States safer or stronger.
A Jan. 27 report from the Africa CDC indicates that there have already been nine deaths from the Marburg outbreak—surpassing the total number of deaths from the last outbreak in Tanzania. It is occurring in the Kagera region, which borders multiple countries and is a major transit hub, creating a very real risk of spread to other Central and East African countries—and beyond.
If the virus is not quickly contained, it could develop into a regional epidemic, as occurred in West Africa in 2014 when a small Ebola outbreak spread to more than 13,000 cases in a matter of months. Although they occurred primarily in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, infections spread as far afield as the United States and Spain. It took two years and the deployment of the United States military to contain it.
But the Tanzanian government has little interest in talking to the U.S. State Department about its outbreaks. Indeed, the Tanzanian government first denied there was any Marburg outbreak—much as it has done with mpox and did previously during COVID-19. The diplomatic arm of the United States government is very unlikely to be seen as a partner, since U.S.-Tanzania relations are complex and fraught. China, not the United States, is the country’s largest trading partner, while India is the largest investor.
Tanzania has worked hard to build a middle position between Washington and Beijing, and as such, U.S. diplomats are engaged across multiple strategic areas with the government of Tanzania—from military bases to trade to human rights and democracy. The independence of agencies such as USAID and the CDC allows them to engage differently.
USAID is both funding and personnel. It funds the local organizations around the world that can often be most effective in addressing health, while also providing expertise to secure accountability and transparency. USAID helped with the effective Marburg virus response in 2023, when it supported the Tanzanian government and UNICEF to secure needed equipment, medicines, and people. It funded the Red Cross to engage its network of community-based volunteers to respond. All of that capability is now frozen, and it could be lost altogether.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization currently reports 118 other separate health emergency events. There are new outbreaks of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Uganda. The clade I strain of mpox has been detected in the Americas. Bird flu is a growing regional and global crisis. The AIDS pandemic continues.
Every one of these outbreaks not only puts lives at risk around the world, but also has implications for U.S. foreign policy, existing within complex trade-offs of geopolitics and human need. None are best tackled by the State Department directly.
Usually, the World Health Organization would take the lead on such efforts. But Trump’s recent executive order cut off U.S. cooperation with WHO and ordered the secretary of state to find bilateral alternatives—which, in a more normal world, would include USAID.
Doing aid better—and with the outcomes and focus that Rubio has pushed for—requires people, infrastructure, and political independence.
That should give us pause. Is this move really about aid at all, or is it about auditioning tactics in the aid sector that Trump and allies want to use in other areas of government, no matter the impact?
