Jeremy Konyndyk Profile picture
Feb 4 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Might not feel this way on twitter - but back here on earth, DOGE did not have a great day yesterday on the @USAID front.

Elon's attempt to speedrun the destruction of USAID is starting to hit real legal and political bumps.

The pushback is starting - and must be sustained.
🧵
Congress is waking up to what is happening, on both sides of the aisle.

Big spontaneous rally outside of USAID HQ yesterday with a sizable contingent of Congressional Dems defending the agency.
GOP is waking up as well. Multiple Republican senators weighed in yesterday criticizing the Rubio aid freeze. Notable that they're doing so publicly. Image
Image
Image
Increasing public awareness and scrutiny of the DOGE staff members who have seemingly taken over USAID's systems.
Importantly, the actual document that Rubio sent up to the Hill yesterday contradicts Elon's assertion that the agency is gone.

And contra Elon, it also acknowledges that any major re-org of US aid policy must involve Congress. Image
This is notable because outside of the twitter echo chamber, the USG still runs based on laws - a reality that the document acknowledges multiple times.

It's clear they still aim to absorb USAID into State - but they're also acknowledging they can't do so unilaterally.
Meanwhile Congress has affirmed that same reality.

A new report out from Congress' in-house authorities at the Congressional Research Service states this explicitly:
crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN…Image
Outside of Elon's twitter feed, here's where things actually stand:
- DOGE staff acting on unclear legal authority have attempted to unlawfully shut down a federal agency
- In doing so they have compromised sensitive government personnel, procurement, and classified info systems
- These actions have badly disrupted critical US-funded activities around the world and placed taxpayer-funded resources and assets at grave risk of waste or abuse
- US personnel operating overseas have been put at grave risk by being expelled from Embassy security & oversight
- USAID continues to exist as a legal entity, per State Dept notice to Congress; Rubio & Marocco in charge
- But most staff at the agency are being obstructed from carrying out their lawful duties
- Congressional funding mandates are being violated by the State funding freeze
- Russia is cheering all of this on from the sidelines (wonder why??)
- And vital USAID programs that save lives and advance US values and interests around the world remain disrupted and frozen. Image
To be clear: this situation is still a disaster. But there are some hopeful signs here that this attack on USAID will not pass unchallenged.

Important to keep up the pressure!
usaidstopwork.com/rallyinformati…

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More from @JeremyKonyndyk

Jun 4
For days, GHF and its defenders tried to "debunk" the massacre claims by arguing "but this didn't happen *at* the GHF sites."

As we know, the people killed were in the crowds walking long distances through IDF perimeters TO REACH THOSE VERY SITES.

Which GHF now...admits.
The whole episode says a lot about the sincerity of whoever is pulling the strings at GHF.

First instinct is to put out a gaslighting press release denying the massacre reports, while pretending that whatever happens outside their perimeter has nothing to do with them.
Only after *another* massacre (which they also initially try to debunk) does GHF belatedly acknowledge that...maybe...there are some issues with an aid model that forces huge crowds of hungry people to cross long distances and then clusters them along IDF force positions.
Read 4 tweets
May 27
Seasoned humanitarians do not operate this way because it's a terribly risky and ineffective way to deliver aid.

Quick 🧵 on what seems to have gone wrong, and why nothing about today's events was surprising.

(subtitle: humanitarians know stuff, actually)
One thing that relief workers learn early is that managing desperate crowds is TOUGH.

So you generally try to deliver aid in a way that avoids drawing more people than you can manage and serve at a given site.

More sites = smaller crowds = manageable distribution. Not this: Image
The GHF model is the total inverse of that.

Rather than dispersing people across many sites, GHF concentrates them at very few sites with very grandiose aspirations of serving huge numbers.

As evidenced by today's chaos, GHF had no plan for what that would mean in practice.
Read 15 tweets
May 9
"We will take your baby and deport you without her.”

Blockbuster new report from us @RefugeesIntl and our partner @humanrights1st documenting shocking stories of asylum seekers unlawfully disappeared, abused, and expelled by Trump's @CBP and @ICEgov.

Read on. 🧵 Image
Our teams interviewed numerous asylum seekers who have been unlawfully expelled from the US to Costa Rica, Panama, and their home countries (where they face real risk of persecution or torture, likely constituting refoulement).
We found a consistent pattern of government abuse and deception intended to subvert legal oversight and to deny people's rights.

Some of these accounts appear consistent with the practice of enforced disappearance under international law.
Read 17 tweets
May 4
Teachable moment here.

I don't love using the term "humanitarian principles" b/c it sounds like an ethical creed.

That's not what the principles are. They are fundamentally a *tool* to enable safe humanitarian access.

A tool refined by years of hard lessons.

Quick🧵
Saying something "contravenes humanitarian principles" rarely persuades non-humanitarians.

When I was in government, that approach never worked.

Instead I would argue for why supporting independent, neutral humanitarian action *stood the best chance of operational success.*
I see the principles as two pairs:

The *what*: hum'n action seeks to protect life (Humanity) on the basis of need alone (Impartiality).

The *how*: hum'n action does not take sides in a conflict (Neutrality) and operates apart from political & military objectives (Independence) Image
Read 10 tweets
Apr 24
More an amputation than a major re-organization.

The core structure of @StateDept remains intact and mostly unchanged.

But they amputate the US government's foreign aid capacity and eviscerate other soft-power tools.

A 🧵
Here's a cross-walk of the prior State org chart to the new one released by Rubio (links to both below).

🟥 items appear to be fully eliminated.

🟨 items are retained but reshuffled

🟩items are new to the org chart

New: state.gov/wp-content/upl…
Old: 2021-2025.state.gov/department-of-… Image
Image
DepSecs unchanged.

5 of the 6 undersecretaries unchanged; 1 eliminated and replaced by a revising the foreign assistance budget director (Marocco's old job).

Primacy of the regional bureaus is preserved/reinforced.

No cuts announced to overseas posts.
Read 17 tweets
Mar 31
Aid leaders have been warning for 2 months that the gutting of @USAID would leave US unable to respond to major global disasters.

We are now seeing that play out in real time with the Myanmar quake - reality is calling bullshit on the Trump admin's narrative.

🧵
In today's press briefing @statedeptspox bizarrely "rejected the premise" that a meaningful US response requires USAID staff "to be physically there."

As the guy who used to deploy those teams - this is total nonsense.

You can't conduct search-and-rescue virtually. Come on.
The reality is that other countries began deploying their teams immediately - and the US would have too, under any prior administration (including Trump 1).

But Elon, Pete Marocco, and Rubio have wrecked the USG's ability to do this.
Read 12 tweets

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