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Dozens of senior officials put on leave. Thousands of contractors laid off. A freeze put on billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance to other countries. Over the past two weeks, President Donald Trump’s administration has made significant changes to the U.S. agency charged with delivering humanitarian assistance overseas that has left aid organizations agonizing over whether they can continue with programs such as nutritional assistance for malnourished infants and children. Then-President John F. Kennedy established the U.S. Agency for International Development, known as USAID, during the Cold War. In the decades since, Republicans and Democrats have fought over the agency and its funding. Heres a look at USAID, its history, and the changes made since Trump took office. What is USAID? Kennedy created USAID at the height of the United Statess Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. He wanted a more efficient way to counter Soviet influence abroad through foreign assistance and saw the State Department as frustratingly bureaucratic at doing that. Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act and Kennedy set up USAID as an independent agency in 1961. USAID has outlived the Soviet Union, which fell in 1991. Today, supporters of USAID argue that U.S. assistance in countries counters Russian and Chinese influence. China has its own belt and road foreign aid program worldwide operating in many countries that the U.S. also wants as partners. Critics say the programs are wasteful and promote a liberal agenda. Whats going on with USAID? On his first day in office Jan. 20, Trump implemented a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance. Four days later, Peter Maroccoa returning political appointee from Trumps first termdrafted a tougher than expected interpretation of that order, a move that shut down thousands of programs around the world and forced furloughs and layoffs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since moved to keep more kinds of strictly life-saving emergency programs going during the freeze. But confusion over what programs are exempted from the Trump administrations stop-work ordersand fear of losing U.S. aid permanentlyis still freezing aid and development work globally. Dozens of senior officials have been put on leave, thousands of contractors laid off, and employees were told Monday not to enter its Washington headquarters. And USAID’s website and its account on the X platform have been taken down. Its part of a Trump administration crackdown thats hitting across the federal government and its programs. But USAID and foreign aid are among those hit the hardest. Rubio said the administrations aim was a program-by-program review of which projects make America safer, stronger, or more prosperous. The decision to shut down U.S.-funded programs during the 90-day review meant the U.S. was getting a lot more cooperation from recipients of humanitarian, development, and security assistance, Rubio said. What do critics of USAID say? Republicans typically push to give the State Departmentwhich provides overall foreign policy guidance to USAIDmore control of its policy and funds. Democrats typically promote USAID autonomy and authority. Funding for United Nations agencies, including peacekeeping, human rights, and refugee agencies, have been traditional targets for Republican administrations to cut. The first Trump administration moved to reduce foreign aid spending, suspending payments to various U.N. agencies, including the U.N. Population Fund and funding to the Palestinian Authority. In Trump’s first term, the U.S. pulled out of the U.N. Human Rights Council and its financial obligations to that body. The U.S. is also barred from funding the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, under a bill signed by then-President Joe Biden last March. As a Florida senator, Rubio often called for more transparency on foreign assistance spending, but was generally supportive. In a 2017 social media post, Rubio said foreign assistance was not charity,” that the U.S. must make sure it is well spent” and called foreign aid critical to our national security.” In 2023, Rubio sponsored a bill that would have required U.S. foreign assistance agencies to include more information on what organizations were implementing the aid on the ground. Why is Elon Musk going after USAID? Musks Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, has launched a sweeping effort empowered by Trump to fire government workers and cut trillions in government spending. USAID is one of his prime targets. Musk alleges USAID funding been used to launch deadly programs and called it a criminal organization. What is being affected by the USAID freeze? Sub-Saharan Africa could suffer more than any other region during the aid pause. The U.S. gave the region more than $6.5 billion in humanitarian assistance last year. HIV patients in Africa arriving at clinics funded by an acclaimed U.S. program that helped rein in the global AIDS epidemic of the 1980s found locked doors. There are also already ramifications in Latin America. In Mexico, a busy shelter for migrants in southern Mexico has been left without a doctor. A program to provide mental health support for LGBTQ+ youth fleeing Venezuela was disbanded. In Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala, so-called Safe Mobility Offices where migrants can apply to enter the U.S. legally have shuttered. The aid community is struggling to get the full picturehow many thousands of programs have shut down and how many thousands of workers were furloughed and laid off under the freeze? How much does the U.S. spend on foreign aid? In all, the U.S. spent about roughly $40 billion in foreign aid in the 2023 fiscal year, according to a report published last month by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The U.S. is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance globally, although some other countries spend a bigger share of their budget on it. Foreign assistance overall amounts to less than 1% of the U.S. budget. What do Americans think of foreign aid? About 6 in 10 U.S. adults said the U.S. govrnment was spending too much overall on foreign aid, according to a March 2023 AP-NORC poll. Asked about specific costs, roughly 7 in 10 U.S. adults said the U.S. government was putting too much money toward assistance to other countries. About 9 in 10 Republicans and 55% of Democrats agreed that the country was overspending on foreign aid. At the time, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults said the government was spending too little on domestic issues that included education, health care, infrastructure, Social Security, and Medicare. Polling has shown that U.S. adults tend to overestimate the share of the federal budget that is spent on foreign aid. Surveys from KFF have found that on average, Americans say spending on foreign aid makes up 31% of the federal budget rather than closer to 1% or less. Could Trump dissolve USAID on his own? Democrats say presidents lack the constitutional authority to eliminate USAID. But its not clear what would stop him from trying. A mini version of that legal battle played out in Trumps first term, when he tried to cut the budget for foreign operations by a third. When Congress refused, the Trump administration used freezes and other tactics to cut the flow of funds already appropriated by Congress for the foreign programs. The Government Accountability Office later ruled that violated a law known as the Impoundment Control Act. Its a law we may be hearing more of. Live by executive order, die by executive order, Musk said on X Saturday in reference to USAID. Ellen Knickmeyer and Meg Kinnard, Associated Press Associated Press writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.
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Apple rolled out its newest iPhone app called Invites, which lets iCloud+ subscribers create and share invitations to anyone, regardless of whether they have an Apple account or Apple device. Hosts have control over the events. They can choose what details they want included in the invite preview, like a home address and what image to use as a background. The event page also integrates the Maps and Weather apps so that attendees know how to get there and what the forecast will be. Within an event, attendees can manage RSVPs, contribute to Shared Albums dedicated to specific events, and collaborate on Apple Music playlists. Invites is available on the App Store starting today for iPhone models running iOS 18 or later, and it can also be accessed through the web. Apple’s iCloud+ service starts at 99 cents a month. The launch appears to put the app up against the extremely popular Partiful, a third party event planning event that made Google Play’s Best App of 2024. Partiful, popular among Gen Z, also has simple user interfaces and is free to use. Invites is also competing against other platforms, like Paperless Post and evite. Apple Invites brings together capabilities our users already know and love across iPhone, iCloud, and Apple Music, making it easy to plan special events,” Apple’s Brent Chiu-Watson said in a press release.
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In recent years, pay transparency has grown increasingly common as many states have passed legislation to help arm workers with more data as they enter into salary negotiations. Across 14 states and many more localities, employers are now required to either provide explicit salary ranges in job postings or share that information during the hiring process. That means some of the biggest employers in the country now have to disclose compensation data in states like California and New York. But according to a new report from compensation platform Beqom, despite all this progress, many workers still feel like pay transparency isn’t within reach and that they have little insight into how their compensation is being determined. Of the nearly 2,000 people surveyed, which included workers in both the U.S. and U.K., only 38% said they understood how their compensation was calculated. Over half of respondents also said they believed their performance reviews were subjective, which in turn could impact their compensation. When it comes to pay equity and transparency, many workers said that their employers did not adequately report data on pay disparities: Nearly 60% of U.S. employees said their company did not disclose information on gender-based pay gaps. More than half of workers also believed that their employer was not taking meaningful steps to address those pay gaps. Inflation also continues to be a major concern: Just 40% of respondents in the U.S. said their salaries were adjusted to match inflation in 2024. Wage stagnation was also a source of frustration for all respondents: Almost half of them said their pay had not increased in the last year and cited it as a top concern, alongside a lack of pay transparency. The findings on pay equity also underscore just how halting progress has been on combatting the gender pay gap. While pay transparency laws were intended to help mitigate pay gaps on the basis of race and gender, the data indicates that there has been limited movement on a broader scale: In fact, the gender pay gap actually increased in 2023 for the first time in 20 years, with women earning 83 cents on the dollar compared to men. While wages actually increased overall, men benefitted more than women did. Even as the gap has narrowed over the years, experts have also said it’s unlikely that the gap will disappear altogether due to a combination of factors, from fluctuations in the workforce to the motherhood penalty. But employers do have a role to play in helping women and other underrepresented employees reach parity in the workplace, from conducting pay equity audits to embracing pay transparency whether or not it’s mandated by lawand making sure they demonstrate a commitment to addressing those issues.
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