This legislative ask is designed to be shared with your members of Congress and their staff.
On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order requiring all foreign assistance programs to stop work for 90 days. In late February, over 90% of grants and contracts at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department were terminated. As a Quaker organization, FCNL believes we are called to love and care for our neighbors. FCNL also recognizes that all new administrations have the right to review ongoing foreign assistance programs against their foreign policy goals. However, ceasing almost all life-saving humanitarian, peacebuilding, health, and poverty-focused foreign assistance during such a review is having devastating impacts on millions of the world’s most vulnerable, increasing global instability and harming U.S. national security.
Programs impacted include critical legislation that supports peace, stability and security and was signed into law by President Trump during his first term. These include the 2019 Global Fragility Act (supporting peacebuilding, conflict prevention and stabilization, and good governance), the 2019 Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act (preventing genocide and mass atrocities), the 2017 Women, Peace and Security Act (preventing violence against women and girls and supporting women’s roles in conflict prevention and recovery), and the 2020 Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (supporting people-to-people reconciliation).
Publicly Support Immediately Resuming U.S. Foreign Assistance Funding
The stop-work order and terminations are having the opposite impact of the Trump Administration’s stated goal of making the U.S. safer, stronger, and more prosperous.
The sudden and comprehensive halt to U.S. foreign assistance risks:
- Irreparably damaging the United States’ reputation and credibility with other governments as a steadfast partner;
- U.S. national security by destabilizing and interrupting some of the United States’ most cost-effective tools for promoting stability, trade and human security globally, creating space for malign actors to fill the void left by the United States;
- American jobs as U.S. businesses, non-profits, and faith-based organizations are laying off thousands of employees as they are not able to afford to keep workers idle for 90 days without funding.