Foreign aid represented the best Americans can be
Alex Natsios on the dismantling of USAID and what we lost
Editor's Note: January 24, 2025 marks one year since the U.S. government issued a Stop Work Order that abruptly halted U.S. foreign assistance. To mark this moment, Global Development Interrupted is publishing three GDI Insights written by people who built their careers in U.S. foreign assistance and lived its sudden disruption. This is the first. Ellen Mills' reflection publishes Friday, followed by Catherine Baker's on Saturday, the anniversary of the Stop Work Order.
Amid sensationalist headlines, a shameless misinformation campaign, and toxic politics, we allowed one of our best institutions—the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—to be demolished in a matter of weeks. This travesty began exactly one year ago, in January 2025. Despite being a self-described cynic, I generally maintained that Americans were better than this. I worked on USAID programs for various implementing partners for almost 19 years, and like many of my fellow former aid workers, I could nitpick USAID’s flaws and where it could have been reformed to better serve others and our interests. I do not think for a moment that Donald Trump and Elon Musk cared about any of this, and they convinced a lot of usually decent people to go along with their attack on compassion. I truly hope we are better than this, but what I have watched unfold in the last year has changed my worldview.
The USAID logo, a handshake accompanied by America’s stars and stripes, and its slogan, “From the American People,” adorned food-aid grain bags and gave life-saving assistance to people in some of the most acute humanitarian crises in the world. That impact was unquantifiable but profound. Late in the spring of 2025, I heard a Republican from South Dakota’s agriculture sector also share this point at an event where conservative Senator Mike Rounds was the keynote speaker. Yet, like his peers, he did nothing to save USAID or reverse the damage.
Along with a devoutly Christian upbringing, I grew up seeing the USAID logo all around me. Permanently imprinted in my memory are photographs of my dad, Andrew Natsios, wearing a baseball cap with that USAID logo, surrounded by children living through famine. This was in the 1990s when he ran USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance under President George H.W. Bush, leading humanitarian aid in some of the most severely under-resourced places in the world. I’d see that logo on the Ronald Reagan Building where I’d visit my dad in the early 1990s and again in the early 2000s, when he ran USAID as its Administrator under George W. Bush. Together, among many other accomplishments, they launched the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which is estimated to have averted more than 25 million deaths from HIV.
I have tried to continue our family’s legacy of aid work, spending the majority of my 19-year experience with USAID programs, from partnering with private industry in Egypt to help young people earn meaningful work, to leading a disaster response team into Haiti, days after the 2010 earthquake. Not only did I build lasting relationships with host country partners abroad, but I saw in many of my fellow aid workers the best that we can be as Americans, whether they were employees at USAID, non-profit organizations, or private contractors.
Many of my friends and former colleagues represent our greatest qualities and values as Americans: hard-working, unpretentious, and practical; mission-driven rather than money-driven; guided by deeply held moral commitments to service and decency, regardless of the people we served, their race, creed, or ethnicity. Many also represent courage and worked right alongside our armed forces; some were killed in the line of duty. Reflecting on my own worldview, I look back at how often I tried to make the case for aid work based on U.S. strategic interests. I still think that matters, but I believe moral calling is far more important and significant at this point. When wealthy men like Donald Trump and Elon Musk lack the basic decency to consider how cutting life support programs will kill people, geopolitical analysis makes little sense. Why are people’s lives so secondary?
An attack on compassion
In February 2025, I sat behind my dad as he testified before a profoundly fractured Congress–the left faltering through disorganization, the right relying on the calculated repetition of lies to justify USAID’s dismantling. We knew they were lying; they knew they were lying; but many uninformed Americans did not. If I had to pick a single moment when I personally experienced America’s most pronounced moment of decline, it was this. Our congresspeople were supposed to represent our great country, which had spent several decades providing a level of humanitarian aid unprecedented in human history. I will never forget or diminish my dad’s courage standing up to what were supposed to be his fellow Republicans.
What I keep coming back to is that Americans may indeed be better, but perhaps they believed Elon Musk’s lies that thousands of people wouldn’t die. But reports emerged quite quickly—and continue to do so—showing the grim reality of cutting USAID. I attended Belmont University’s weekly chapel service in March 2025, amid USAID’s dismantling. One of the faith leaders of this Christian university made impassioned comments about a broader attack on compassion. The main speaker that day was a Christian missionary doctor who had spent most of his adult life building a health clinic in one of the poorest places in Central Africa. He directly spoke about the consequences of USAID cuts in a powerful and memorable way, sharing that many of the local communities he serves survived because of USAID support during periods of malnutrition.
The misinformation machine
Many voters said they objected to USAID on budgetary grounds, having been led to believe–incorrectly–that it accounted for over 20 percent of the federal budget. In fact, USAID’s entire budget amounted to roughly six dollars per American taxpayer per year. You can’t even buy a gallon of milk with six dollars these days. If we had built a foreign aid mechanism that comprised 20 percent of the federal budget, I would absolutely be concerned. This brings up one of the most critical and fundamental challenges and possible explanations for why the United States is in crisis right now: media and misinformation.
Nefarious groups are winning the influence battle by leaps and bounds, whatever the fundamental culprit may be. At best, it is too easy to self-produce content and spread uninformed nonsense. At worst, there is an organized propaganda machine deliberately misleading people. I have friends who primarily consume right wing media and/or absorb what they hear on nonsense manosphere podcasts as truth. I’ve observed this in some very bizarre and alarming ways. One close friend, who is generally very decent and even nonconfrontational, reveled in Elon Musk’s attack on USAID, even as my wife and I lost our jobs and careers. He was so convinced that “government bloat” was causing his problems that the moment the topic arose, his tone and language changed in an almost Pavlovian way. Other friends who listen to conservative talk radio will suddenly start spouting slogan-like phrases and language that sound nothing like their normal word choice or tone—using out-of-character language, calling human beings “illegals” like they are some kind of vermin.
Joe Rogan has followers in the tens of millions across the most influential social media platforms. He took the word of one grossly ill-informed, former State Department employee, Mike Benz, to form his opinion of USAID. Rogan’s booking agent was responsive when I tried to get my dad on the show to counter the false claims he was promulgating about USAID, but he wouldn’t have him. I attribute it to a fear of how silly Andrew Natsios would have made Joe Rogan look; but frankly, it may also have been a deliberate decision to knowingly push lies and propaganda. The reality is that millions of people choose to listen to this over more sound, thoughtful reporting or analysis.
Stories of decency
If there is one element of hope I have clung to in the last few months, it is being reminded of how decent we can be. In addition to a certain cynicism I shared earlier, I do not enjoy attention, particularly on the internet; so when I started my weekly podcast, Unsung Americans, I did so reluctantly. Through the podcast, I’ve tried to reset the narrative about what American foreign aid really did and why it mattered, not unlike Global Development Interrupted, through stories from the most experienced aid workers who actually implemented the work abroad. I continue to hope that the stories reach far beyond the echo chamber that is my world of former foreign aid workers. Hearing the hopefulness and sharing the real stories of all my guests are what remind me of how decent we can be.
I wish I had a better answer than hosting Unsung Americans, and I don’t for a minute delude myself into thinking there is or will be widespread reach and impact. But if I can make a small step forward to reach some people that are willing to listen and change their minds, it is worth it.
And if not, if all I manage to do is celebrate the great work we used to do within our community of former aid workers, I can live with that too.
Alex Natsios spent 19 years working on USAID programs as a project manager, program designer, technical writer, and senior leader. He worked in multiple countries supporting programs across sectors like economic growth, conflict stabilization, and disaster recovery, both as a US-based backstop and field implementer based overseas. Alex’s father, Andrew Natsios, served as USAID Administrator from 2001 to 2006. Alex supported his father’s advocacy efforts throughout 2025 following USAID’s untimely dismantling, and now hosts the weekly podcast, Unsung Americans, which showcases field stories from former aid workers that target everyday Americans.
Thanks for posting this. An unusual perspective and an important one.