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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the Trump administration had finished its six-week purge of programs of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development and he would move the 18% of aid and development programs that survived under the State Department. Rubio made the announcement in a post on X, in one of his relatively few public comments on what has been a historic shift away from U.S. foreign aid and development, executed by Trump political appointees at State and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams. Rubio in the post thanked DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform in foreign aid. President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all of the tens of billions of dollars of U.S. aid and development work abroad. Trump charged that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda. Rubio’s social media post Monday said that review was now officially ending,” with some 5,200 of USAID’s 6,200 programs eliminated. Those programs 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, Rubio wrote. In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping … to be administered more effectively under the State Department, he said. Democratic lawmakers and others call the shutdown of congressionally funded programs illegal, saying such a move requires Congress’ approval. USAID supporters said the sweep of the cuts made it difficult to tell what U.S. efforts abroad the Trump administration actually supports. The patterns that are emerging is the administration does not support democracy programs, they dont support civil society … they dont support NGO programs, or health or emergency response, said Andrew Natsios, the USAID administrator for Republican former President George W. Bush. So whats left? Natsios asked. A group of former U.S. diplomats, national security figures and others condemned what it said was an opaque, partisan and rushed review process and urged Congress to intervene. The facts show that life-saving programs were severely cut, putting millions of people in allied countries at risk of starvation, disease and death, while giving Russia, China and other adversaries opportunities to gain influence abroad as the U.S. retreats, the group, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, said. The Trump administration gave almost no details on which aid and development efforts abroad it spared as it mass-emailed contract terminations to aid groups and other USAID partners by the thousands within days earlier this month. The rapid pace, and the steps skipped in ending contracts, left USAID supporters challenging whether any actual program-by-program reviews had taken place. Aid groups say even some life-saving programs that Rubio and others had promised to spare are in limbo or terminated, such as those providing emergency nutritional support for starving children and drinking water for sprawling camps for families uprooted by war in Sudan. Republicans broadly have made clear they want foreign assistance that would promote a far narrower interpretation of U.S. national interests going forward. The State Department in one of multiple lawsuits it is battling over its rapid shutdown of USAID had said earlier this month it was killing more than 90% of USAID programs. Rubio gave no explanation for why his number was lower. The dismantling of USAID that followed Trump’s order upended decades of policy that humanitarian and development aid abroad advanced U.S. national security by stabilizing regions and economies, strengthening alliances and building goodwill. In the weeks after Trump’s order, one of his appointees and transition team members, Pete Marocco, and Musk pulled USAID staff around the world off the job through forced leaves and firings, shut down USAID payments overnight and terminated aid and development contracts by the thousands. Contractors and staffers running efforts ranging from epidemic control to famine prevention to job and democracy training stopped work. Aid groups and other USAID partners laid off tens of thousands of their workers in the U.S. and abroad. Lawsuits say the sudden shutdown of USAID has stiffed aid groups and businesses that had contracts with it totaling billions of dollars. The shutdown has left many USAID staffers and contractors and their families still overseas, many of them awaiting back payments and travel expenses to return home. In Washington, the sometimes contradictory orders issued by the three men Rubio, Musk and Marocco overseeing the USAID cuts have left many uncertain who was calling the shots, and fueled talk of power struggles. Musk and Rubio on Monday, as Trump had last week, insisted relations between the two of them were smooth. Good working with you, Musk tweeted in response to Rubio’s announcement. Tough, but necessary, Musk wrote of Rubio’s announcement on the cuts. Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
If youve ever been personally victimized by one too many bad jokes from a boss while standing around the water cooler, youre not the only oneand now theres research to substantiate that a boss whos trying too hard to be funny is no laughing matter. The finding that poor attempts at humor from a higher-up might actually affect job satisfaction, and not in a good way, comes from a new study published in the Academy of Management Journal and conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Over the course of several different sessions, the researchers found that leaders who went overboard on puns and jokes drained their employees emotional energy, leading to reduced job satisfaction. The results are clear: When it comes to keeping up rapport at the office, its probably best to drop the Michael Scott act. Pretending to find your boss funny is draining In an initial study, researchers took to the field in Southern China. They paired up 88 managers and employees for a week-long period, during which one group of managers was told to improve general leader-follower interactions, while the other group was instructed to use humor in their interactions with employees, according to an article in the Harvard Business Review. At the end of the week, employees in the latter group reported elevated rates of surface acting”basically, pretending to find their boss funny in order to keep up morale. This additional emotional labor caused these employees to experience elevated levels of exhaustion, and in turn, dissatisfaction with their jobs. Authenticity matters A second study, conducted in the lab, found that there are further variables which can heighten or lessen the negative funny manager effect. This study followed 212 participants at a U.S. business school, who were told they would be part of a series of focus groups at a campus bookstore and then divided into high humor and low humor manager groups. This time, the researchers experimented with two different kinds of leaders, one who wore formal attire and took a more authoritative tone, and another who dressed casually and introduced himself with his first name. Once again, participants in all of the high humor groups were more exhausted and less satisfied. However, their negative feelings were magnified when paired with the more authoritative boss. The moderator had a lot of puns . . . I pretended to laugh to be nice, one participant in the authoritative group recalled. According to the researchers, this difference is attributable to the perceived power difference between the boss and their employees. The wider that gap grows, the more likely it is that excessive jokes will leave a bad taste in everyones mouth. Bosses, keep the puns to a minimum, even if they’re good For managers, these findings demonstrate that humor works best when its coming from an authentic place, rather than being used as a pre-calculated tool to encourage camaraderie. And even in the case of spontaneous humor, it might be best to think twice before you fire off the third pun in a row. Our findings challenge the assumption that leader humor is always a good thing, the researchers write for HBR. When used too frequentlyespecially when followers hold high power distance valuesit can backfire. [. . .] Instead, our results suggest that leaders should focus on fewer, higher-impact humor expressions. Less, in this case, might truly be more.
Category:
E-Commerce
Have your electricity bills skyrocketed this winter? Well, they are about to get even more expensive in three U.S. states as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariff war with Canada. On Monday, Canada’s Ontario province began adding a 25% retaliatory tariff on electricity imported into the U.S., which is estimated to add an extra $69 a month for 1.5 million Americans and businesses in New York, Michigan, and Minnesota (or $277,000 a day, total). President Trumps tariffs are a disaster for the U.S. economy. Theyre making life more expensive for American families and businesses, Ontario premier Doug Ford said in a statement. Until the threat of tariffs is gone for good, Ontario wont back down.” And that’s not all. The new surcharge comes on top of Canada’s nationwide $30 billion in retaliatory tariffs, as our longtime ally and close neighbor to the north fights back against Trump’s barrage of on-again, off-again tariffs, countering with its own cost increases, fully suspending some imports, and has already removed some American-made good from its shelves, including alcohol. It’s a major blow “costing American businesses $1 billion in lost revenue.” On Wednesday, Trump will also levy a 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S., just one more headache for our Canada neighbors. Canada’s newly elected prime minister Mark Carney warned Trump “Canada will win” this trade war with the U.S.: We didnt ask for this fight. But Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves.” And for intents and purposes, it looks like they mean business.
Category:
E-Commerce
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