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$3.2 billion in congressionally approved foreign assistance is now at the center of a growing fight over the future of U.S. foreign aid.

As the fiscal year ends on September 30, Sens. Patty Murray and Brian Schatz warn that the Trump administration plans to redirect $2.5 billion that Congress approved for global health ($1.3B) and development assistance ($1.2B) toward costs associated with closing out USAID. The senators say those funds remain available through FY2026 for the purposes Congress originally authorized.

At the same time, they warn that another $725 million could expire unused next week, including:
• $115 million for combating international narcotics trafficking, human trafficking and other crimes
• $310 million for assistance in Europe and Eurasia to counter Russia
• $300 million for economic growth, secure supply chains and U.S. competitiveness

The stakes extend beyond a single agency or fiscal deadline. The dispute raises fundamental questions about congressional appropriations, the implementation of U.S. foreign policy, and whether resources approved for global health, development, security and economic programs will reach the purposes for which Congress authorized them.

For the thousands of development and humanitarian professionals who have dedicated their careers to this work, these aren’t abstract budget numbers. They represent programs, partnerships, expertise and lives affected by decisions being made in Washington.

September 30 is the deadline. What happens to these funds—and to the programs they were intended to support—remains an issue to watch closely.



🔗 Read the article here:

Democrats warn Trump plans to kill $3.2B in Hill-approved foreign aid Top appropriators say the White House wants to use billions of dollars to shutter USAID. The rest would go unspent.

A new investigation by The Washington Post details a striking transformation inside the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) — from an institution focused on refugee protection and humanitarian assistance to an operation facilitating deportations to countries where migrants have no prior connection. A new investigation by The Washington Post details a striking transformation inside the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) — from an institution focused on refugee protection and humanitarian assistance to an operation facilitating deportations to countries where migrants have no prior connection.

According to internal government records reviewed by the Post, the administration has authorized or pledged at least $410 million for third-country deportation arrangements involving 31 countries, primarily in Africa and Latin America. That includes $81 million in direct payments to foreign governments, as well as $179 million pledged to the International Organization for Migration and $124 million to the U.N. Refugee Agency in connection with refugee and infrastructure projects in countries accepting deportees.

The scale of the shift is significant. The bureau overseeing the new Office of Remigration previously operated with a humanitarian-assistance budget of roughly $4 billion a year. Meanwhile, the administration has deported more than 25,000 people to at least 28 countries other than their countries of origin, according to the Post’s analysis.

For those who have spent their careers in foreign assistance, diplomacy, refugee protection and humanitarian response, this story raises consequential questions about how U.S. foreign assistance tools are being repurposed — and what happens when institutions built around protecting vulnerable populations are redirected toward immigration enforcement.

🔗 Read the full investigation from The Washington Post: “How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation” - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2026/09/21/how-trump-turned-refugee-bureau-into-410-million-deportation-operation/

How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation Inside the secret deals powering the president’s push to deport migrants to countries not their own.

"It took one email to a library, a set of photos, and a single evening."

That's how former USAID Foreign Service Officer Zaid Abuhouran describes the talk he gave at his local public library in Bloomingdale, New Jersey, to about 30 neighbors who had no idea what his old job actually looked like.

After being separated from USAID in 2025, Zaid didn't write an op-ed. He picked up the phone, pitched his hometown library, and told the room about the families and students he'd met over 11 years of public service, and what's been lost since the cuts.

His advice for others who want to do the same? Start with your library. It's the easiest door to walk through.

Read his full story and his step-by-step guide for hosting your own community talk 👇
https://oneaidcommunity.org/2026/09/12/guest-blog-a-talk-about-usaid-at-my-library/

📣 Join us for the last two monthly sessions of "A Support Series for the International Assistance Community" brought to you by OneAID and Somatic Experiencing International

🌏 September 14 at 12pm ET: "The Role of Anger in our Healing Processes" with Dr. Glyndie Nickerson, Somatic Experiencing International Faculty

🌍 October 19 at 12pm ET: "Returning to Joy and Empowerment" with Dr. Imke Hansen, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Executive Director of Libereco Partnership for Human Rights which operates in Ukraine and Belarus

✅ Sign up at https://tinyurl.com/SupportSeries

🇳🇵 What happens when a country faces a catastrophe—but the international response it once relied on is no longer there?

A new New York Times report from Nepal puts a human face on the consequences of shrinking foreign aid. After the 2015 earthquake, USAID deployed a 128-member disaster response team and pledged $10 million in humanitarian assistance. After this summer’s catastrophic floods—which have killed more than 1,300 people and left at least 5,000 missing—U.S. humanitarian assistance totals $3.6 million, targeted to 10,000 households.

The impact extends far beyond the immediate emergency. NGOs that once received USAID funding have shut down programs, while tens of thousands of survivors still need medicine, food, blankets, clothing and shelter. Meanwhile, rebuilding damaged homes, schools, roads and bridges is expected to cost billions.

🔗 Read the full story: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/09/world/asia/nepal-floods-usaid-trump-relief.html

Nepal’s Flood Relief Workers Feel the Pain of Trump’s Cuts to U.S.A.I.D. The agency played an important role in responding to earlier disasters like the 2015 earthquake. But the U.S. and other countries have pulled back, Nepali officials and humanitarian groups say.

🇸🇩 Sudan’s health system is on the brink of collapse—and international funding cuts are making a devastating crisis even worse.

After the U.S. closed USAID, dozens of organizations providing healthcare in Sudan were unable to secure replacement funding. Existing USAID-funded grants ran out in June, while European governments have also reduced international assistance.

The consequences are already being felt:

• More than 33 million people in Sudan need medical assistance amid the war that began in April 2023.
• Global international aid fell 21.3% in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to the OECD.
• In central Darfur, MSF saw hospital admissions increase 22.5% between January and April 2026 compared with the same period in 2025.
• 45 healthcare centers in the region had stopped receiving funding by May.
• In Tanedba camp, home to 18,400 displaced people, maternity and surgical services closed after a humanitarian organization left—forcing pregnant women needing emergency surgery to travel three hours for care.
• In Um Rakuba camp, the number of aid organizations has fallen from 35 in 2021 to fewer than 10, serving roughly 17,000 people, most of them women and children.

When health facilities close, patients don’t simply disappear. They travel farther, arrive sicker, face overcrowded hospitals, and encounter dwindling supplies of essential medicines.

Sudan’s war is already one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Global leaders must not allow the collapse of humanitarian funding to compound the suffering.

As world leaders gather for the UN General Assembly, the message should be clear: protect humanitarian assistance, protect healthcare, and protect the millions of Sudanese people who depend on both.

🔗 Read the full BBC report: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62m8247yleo

Sudan's healthcare system on brink of collapse after cuts, medical charity MSF warns Médecins Sans Frontières is urging world leaders to increase funding to help the millions who need aid.

Several months ago, OneAID supported the New Hampshire chapter of Writers for Democratic Action in their call for stories from federal workers and contractors impacted by DOGE cuts. Through this initiative, they hoped to honor their work and educate the public about the scope of government work by sharing personal stories of those who served the American people.

They deliberately sought out different types of federal employees from different agencies, from civil service and foreign service to the less visible federal contractors. Their detailed stories, linked below, make starkly clear what cuts to the U.S. government have taken from us as a country and what has been lost globally.

As OneAID's Catherine Baker writes in her submission: "One of the ways that USAID countered extremism in the field was by bringing people together and stopping the dehumanization...This only happens when you put faces and names on a community, and you hear their stories, and you see yourself in their stories and experiences. As former federal workers and related contractors, we have to keep doing this now for ourselves — telling our own stories — no matter how old it feels more than a year after USAID was shut down, no matter how tired we are and no matter what risks we may be taking, because if we don't try to control the narrative of what's being said about us, it will be controlled for us."

🔗 Read the interviews and submit your own here: https://www.writersfordemocraticaction.org/fws-2026

Federal Workers Speak — Writers for Democratic Action Federal Workers Speak ‍When DOGE first took a chainsaw to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025, the New Hampshire WDA Chapter began gathering stories from former federal workers. We hoped to honor their work and educate the public about the scope of government work by sharing ...

🇳🇵 What does it cost when we cut disaster preparedness before the disaster arrives?

More than 1,100 people died after a massive glacier and rock landslide triggered catastrophic flooding in Nepal and China on August 26.

The tragedy could not have been prevented by one program. But CNN reports that in January 2025, the Trump administration cut funding for Project SERVIR-Hindu Kush Himalaya, a joint initiative involving USAID, NASA and ICIMOD that had worked since 2010 to identify and monitor landslides, flooding and other hazards across the Himalayas.

The cuts halted work on landslide situational awareness, prevented completion of slope-motion detection technology, and ended operational flood-inundation mapping.

The program likely could not have predicted this particular glacial collapse. But it was building the science and infrastructure needed to prepare communities for the next disaster.

And scientists warn there will be a next one.

At a time when warming temperatures are increasing risks from landslides, flash floods and glacial outburst floods, investing in early warning and resilience isn't a luxury. It's prevention.

We cannot stop every natural disaster. But we can decide whether communities face them with better information, better technology and more time to prepare.

That is what foreign aid can make possible.

🔗 Read the CNN report: https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/02/climate/nepal-disaster-grant-canceled-trump

The Trump administration cut funds for natural hazards monitoring in Nepal | CNN In January 2025, the Trump administration cut off a grant to a long-running program that aimed to identify and monitor landslide hotspots in Nepal.

🇳🇵A disaster response measured in hundreds of thousands — when millions are needed.

The death toll from devastating floods and mudslides in Nepal has surpassed 1,000, with 4,400 people still unaccounted for. Yet the United States initially announced just $500,000 in emergency assistance—a figure humanitarian experts called “pitiful” and “embarrassing.”

The U.S. has since increased its commitment to $3.6 million, which will provide food assistance to 10,000 affected households for up to three months, along with blankets, mosquito nets and emergency shelter supplies.

But experts say the response illustrates what the United States lost when USAID was dismantled as an independent agency in 2025. Former USAID disaster-response chief Mark Ward noted that Nepal had one of USAID’s strongest disaster-management relationships, with U.S. experts working alongside Nepalese authorities to prepare for and respond to recurring catastrophes.

Now, India and China are leading regional relief efforts.

This isn’t simply about the size of a check. It’s about whether the United States has the people, expertise, relationships and infrastructure to respond rapidly when disaster strikes—and whether leaving that space open strengthens America’s competitors.

As Ward put it: “The United States is safer when the world is more stable.”

🔗 Read the full story from The Guardian and consider what the erosion of U.S. disaster-response capacity means—not only for people facing catastrophe abroad, but for American security and global stability: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/02/nepal-flood-aid

‘Pitiful’: experts condemn initial US aid contribution for Nepal flood victims Sum of $500,000 has been increased as death toll passes 1,000 but specialists decry Trump dismantling of USAID