If the future of international humanitarian aid relies on U.S. funding, the situation is looking bleaker than ever.
Foreign aid supporters don’t have much hope for a reversal of Elon Musk-led cuts, even though President Donald Trump’s administration says it wants to keep some foreign aid going.
“In my thirty-plus years, it’s never been harder to sustain any form of hope,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, one of several organizations suing the administration over its January freeze on foreign aid. “What’s so devastating is that this administration has moved with lightning speed. The courts move relatively slowly and methodically, and Congress has moved not at all.”
Time is of the essence for humanitarian assistance in the field, where the U.S. is the single largest donor of aid and many nonprofit organizations rely on the U.S. for a significant portion of their budgets.
The Trump administration has said it wants to retain some elements of foreign aid, including “life-saving humanitarian assistance.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a waiver to restart that type of assistance in late January.
But even for the programs the administration wants to keep, bringing aid back online has been a “bumpy road,” said one official at an organization previously supported by the now-decimated U.S. Agency for International Development.
“The past five months have been a time period of, like, we have a waiver, but no money, and so how can we resume programming?” this official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution against her organization. “Or, this work is life-saving, but it doesn’t appear to have been granted a waiver.”
In the countries where USAID used to assist, the funding freeze is having significant effects. In refugee camps in Africa, the sudden disappearance of U.S. support has reportedly led to violent demonstrations, cuts to food rations, increases in crime and substance abuse. Cuts to medical research and HIV prevention efforts could also slow decades of progress fighting fatal diseases like tuberculosis and HIV/AIDs.
The same official said the stop-work order was met with confusion from countries where aid had disappeared. Organizations and people she worked with often didn’t understand the sudden evaporation of resources and staff.
“People were asking, like, ‘Did the community do something wrong?’” she said. “‘Is that why you took the doctor away?’”
The only ways to undo the drastic cuts to foreign aid programs would take a long time.
One way is through a painstaking amendments process on the upcoming rescission package, which is scheduled for a vote in the House on Thursday. That measure, if it passes unamended, would codify at least $7.4 billion in cuts to USAID and other foreign assistance programs.
Warren said he sees the rescissions as one last chance for Congress to get involved in saving some foreign aid.
“The rescission process and the fiscal year 2026 budget are the next two big milestones to see if Congress, and I want to be clear, particularly the Republicans in Congress, wake up and decide to become members of Congress,” Warren said.
Senate Democrats, though skeptical that the administration will respond to any congressional effort to claw back funding, also said the rescission package could be an opportunity, whether voted down as a whole or cherry-picked to restore some funding.
“You can pull it out and just, line-item by line-item, vote ‘Don’t rescind this. Don’t rescind this. Rescind this,’” Sen. Tim Kaine said. “And I think you’ll see Democrats do that. It is entitled to an endless amendment process, so we’ll try to amend specifics.”
Kaine said he thinks Republicans will support restoring funding for some elements of the package.
The Senate will likely take up rescissions after it gets done with reconciliation. When it does, the rescission measure is likely to be subject to what one senator called “endless” amendments, chewing up valuable Senate floor time.
It’s possible that some Republicans who have previously supported funding foreign aid would use the opportunity to adjust some of the cuts through the traditional appropriations process.
“With anything having to do with appropriations, you’re going to have to, number one, go back to authorizing it specifically,” Sen. Mike Rounds said. “And then you’re going to have to appropriate specifically for that program, which is what Congress should have been doing all along. I think this will make us redouble our efforts.”
Rounds said he would like to see re-appropriations for “many” of the foreign aid programs cut.
But the rescissions package could legitimize and set a precedent for what Democrats see as an illegal effort by the executive to roll back congressionally appropriated funding. The best scenario, they say, is for the whole thing to fail.
“A rescission is a bad idea,” Sen. Chris Coons told NOTUS. “It undoes the negotiated outcome of an appropriations bill, and frankly, the [Office of Management and Budget] and the Trump administration have made it clear this would be the first.”
Coons also voiced concern that the rescissions that successfully pass Congress would undermine ongoing court action.
Warren’s organization, AVAC, along with the Global Health Council and a handful of other groups, won a temporary restraining order in February forcing the administration to pay back money it owed for humanitarian assistance work done in January and February. It’s taken a while, but the money is finally flowing.
For programs that the administration terminated, however, the money Congress appropriated for any work after February is just sitting around — unpaid.
If the rescissions package succeeds as is, much of that money would no longer be obligated to be paid.
Warren said he’s not optimistic that foreign aid will return to what it was before Trump took office. Even if the court rules in their favor, all it does is potentially unlock some of the congressionally appropriated money that isn’t covered by rescissions.
“In terms of the nuts and bolts of getting this work to go back to happening on the ground, the government has systematically decimated the infrastructure to do that with design and intention to disrupt it all,” Warren said. “So, you know, that ship’s sailed.”
Other Senate Democrats also had little hope that action, even from Congress or the courts, would make much of a difference.
“We don’t have an army. We can’t compel them to do what the courts say they need to do,” Sen. Chris Murphy said. “So we can come to whatever decision we want in Congress but if they decide to ignore the courts and ignore Congress, that’s their decision. It’d be terrible.”
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Helen Huiskes is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.