I’ve seen firsthand how USAID aligns with Trump’s, America’s values

In the fourth week of the Trump presidency, I lost my job. Over the past 15 years, I have worked on USAID-funded projects in agriculture, health, nutrition and education. Recently, I worked to strengthen countries’ education systems so they can rely less on U.S. foreign assistance. This work abruptly ended when the Trump Administration terminated my project alongside hundreds of other USAID-funded projects.

If we take the Trump Administration’s justifications for these actions at face value, it doesn’t add up. The administration claims that USAID projects do not align with its America First policy, which, according to its own Project 2025 playbook, should counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In fact, USAID provides countries with a partnership alternative to China. There are already examples of China seeking to fill USAID’s funding and influence vacuum in geopolitically strategic countries like Nepal, Colombia, and Cambodia.

Secretary Rubio, who has historically supported USAID and was co-sponsor of the 2023 READ Act Reauthorization Act that requires implementation of quality basic education in USAID-targeted countries, has emphasized needing to work with countries to halt and deter migrant flows. But stopping USAID funding to countries will likely increase migration, as populations will no longer benefit from the economic opportunities these projects offer.

Elon Musk, an nonelected senior adviser whose company SpaceX has received USAID funding, claims that he is weeding out inefficiencies. But USAID projects have robust requirements for measuring their efficiency and effectiveness. I know firsthand: my job has been to evaluate if projects are reaching their objectives and producing return on investment. I do this because I believe in the mission of USAID and I also want to ensure that American’s tax dollars are well spent.

Unless you know someone who works directly in foreign assistance, you likely won’t feel the impacts of USAID’s illegal dismantling immediately. But I don’t doubt you will soon. Illinois’ economy, which will lose an estimated $107.6 million in USAID contracts and assistance, will be impacted. Illinois’ farmers, whose crops will no longer be purchased by USAID’s Food for Peace program that totaled $2 billion last year, will be impacted. Illinois’ universities that partner with USAID on research initiatives such as the Soybean Innovation Lab have already been impacted. And the estimated over 51,000 Americans working in foreign assistance whose jobs have or will be lost have felt the impacts since President Trump’s first day in office.

What is especially unsettling to me is the cruelty and the ruthlessness of the administration’s illegal dismantling of USAID, without regard for the lives it is harming in this country and around the world. Even more unsettling is the knowledge that, although USAID is one of the first casualties of the administration’s wrecking ball to our federal government, it won’t be the last.

Federal workers are your family members, your friends, your neighbors. They send your Social Security checks and tax refunds, and they clean the national parks that you visit on your annual vacation. Already, thousands of hardworking people around the country, from agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Education, and the National Institutes of Health, have lost their jobs. These people have families, mortgages and bills. They will no longer be contributing to the American economy.

I feel fortunate to have worked with USAID over my career. I’ve met with HIV-positive women farmers in Zanzibar, learning how USAID trained them to grow and sell more crops, thus earning the money needed to put their children in school. I’ve sat with parents of deaf children in Morocco who shared stories of how a project trained them in Moroccan Sign Language so that they could communicate with their children for the first time. I’ve built a friendship with a coworker in Rwanda, who, after surviving the Rwandan Genocide, dedicated himself to making sure that all Rwandan children have access to quality education.

The bottom line is, USAID’s goals are undeniably aligned with the American values that our country is based on and that are described in our Declaration of Independence: that all beings are equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The American public deserves to know this truth.

• Aimee Reeves is a graduate of Batavia High School and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since leaving the Midwest, Ms. Reeves has worked in a variety of countries throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and she even spent time in the small island nation of Kiribati. She currently resides in New York City and is still playing soccer, as she did for the Batavia Bulldogs and Strikers Fox Valley Soccer Club.