After Secretary of State Marco Rubio took to X on Monday to declare that 83 percent of the USAID programs would be cancelled and contracts rescinded, a curious memo from a USAID senior staffer obtained by Politico, instructed remaining staffers to convene at the former agency on Tuesday for destruction of “classified safes and personnel documents.”
Rubio said:
After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.
The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.
In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.
Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who…
