Filenews 11 July 2025
The White House hailed H.R. 1, or the Great Beautiful Bill, as a "once-in-a-generation legislation" that puts "America First."
Most of the public debate focused on extending tax cuts for the wealthy, soaring federal debt, and massive cuts in Medicaid spending. However, it is equally important to analyze the bill's impact on America's standing abroad as an advocate for the world's poorest people, and the "soft power" influence it provides.
This law is not President Donald Trump's first attack on America's humanitarian leadership. On the day of his inauguration, he issued two executive orders concerning U.S. refugee programs. One, titled "Re-evaluating and Readjusting U.S. Foreign Aid," states that America's "foreign aid industry and bureaucracy" was not aligned with American interests and acted in ways contrary to the country's values. It called for a 90-day pause in aid and a review of the relevant programs to ensure their "effectiveness and coherence" with U.S. foreign policy.
The other, the "Adjustment of the United States Refugee Program," states that the U.S. cannot absorb refugees without endangering Americans or jeopardizing their access to taxpayer-funded resources. The Trump administration has indefinitely suspended the refugee reception program, which helps resettle refugees in partnership with private donor groups — one of the most successful public-private humanitarian programs and partnerships in U.S. history. The government has also excluded more than 22,000 people who had already been approved, including Afghans who had worked with the U.S. during the war in their homeland.
By the end of March, the White House had cancelled 5,341, or about 86 percent, of U.S. foreign aid programs — even though Congress, which controls the federal government's purse, had approved their funding. Researchers at Boston University's School of Public Health estimate that the loss of U.S. aid has led to 176,000 deaths during this period and may exceed 320,000 by the end of the year. However, the savings from cutting refugee aid programs are minimal — about 1 percent of U.S. spending allocated to international affairs.
The British medical journal The Lancet reported last month that budget cuts and the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development Assistance (USAID) — whose programs have saved about 91 million lives over the past two decades — could cause 14 million deaths in low- and middle-income countries by 2030.
The impact of U.S. cuts will be felt for many generations, undermining the potential for a constructive immigration policy at home and diminishing U.S. power and prestige abroad. Meanwhile, China has taken advantage of the situation by funding its own humanitarian aid programs, particularly in the strategically important Indo-Pacific region, as well as in Africa and South America.
I work with the Jesuit Refugee Agency (JRS)/USA, a branch of a 45-year-old non-governmental organization that has helped refugees from 57 countries. It serves the world's most deprived populations, including unaccompanied children, people with disabilities and the chronically ill. Her work, and the work of similar NGOs, has fostered a safe and productive world that respects human life and dignity.
Feed the Future has worked in 20 countries to lift 23.4 million people out of poverty, lift 5.2 million households out of hunger, and lift 3.4 million children out of the threat of malnutrition. During the 2024-2025 school year, JRS Chad served 32,975 children from Sudan in 21 refugee camps, offering them educational support and, by extension, child protection. The U.S. President's Malaria Initiative, launched under George W. Bush, has helped save 11.7 million lives and prevented 2.1 billion cases of malaria since 2000, mostly in children under the age of 5 in African countries.
The president's executive orders hit hundreds of such NGOs, bankrupting humanitarian and development programs that operate on minimal margins and forcing them to lay off staff in some of the world's poorest communities. The government offered exemptions from the cuts if the beneficiaries could prove that they were engaged in "life-saving" activities, but there was no concrete follow-up to our requests for exemptions, and even programs that were terminated and then reinstated, faced delays in funding and will no longer receive advances necessary to cover the initial costs.
Now, the budget legislation will make it much more difficult to revitalise humanitarian aid and refugee programmes in the coming years. The White House also asked Congress to retroactively cancel more than $9.4 billion in Congress-approved spending, including $1.3 billion from two of the main refugee assistance programs funded by the State Department. The president will abolish these accounts in 2026 and merge the unallocated balances into a new International Humanitarian Aid or IHA account. The White House has stated that the new IHA fund will support disaster relief/recovery only "when it fulfils the President's foreign policy goals."
Cuts to aid agencies don't just cost lives; they represent an attack on traditional U.S. values. The budget law redirects $170 billion to U.S. immigration agencies, which already account for two-thirds of all federal law enforcement spending. This is despite the fact that illegal arrivals at the southern border have fallen to near-record levels over the past 18 months, which makes the need for massive additional appropriations for the wall, detention facilities, technology, staffing and military deployment unnecessary.
It's a dangerous time for America and the world, and Congress and the courts need to weigh the situation. A first step would be for lawmakers to take action and ensure that the government returns Congress-approved funding to humanitarian organizations this year. Payment for contractually committed work is a key objective of the lawsuit brought by a coalition of partners implementing external assistance programmes. A second step would be to ensure that these organizations can continue their work in the future so that the U.S. continues to lead the way in saving lives and promoting a world with more stability, peace and prosperity.
