Vought, left, with Mark Paoletta, general counsel at the OMB. Photo: Will Oliver/Bloomberg/Getty Images
The first few months of Donald Trump’s second term saw steep cuts and mass layoffs across all sectors of the federal government, led largely by Elon Musk and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought in his second stint as head of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Few agencies were as decimated as the United States Agency for International Development, the federal government’s arm for distributing foreign aid. By 2026, USAID was a shell of its former self. Most of its contracts were terminated and thousands of employees fired as the administration moved to wind down the agency’s operations. A recent study published in The Lancet medical journal predicted that the USAID cuts, in concert with reductions from other western nations, could result in the deaths of 9.4 million people around the world by 2030 and increase the spread of malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis.
Now, reporting indicates the White House has allocated much of USAID’s remaining funds to a very different cause: Vought’s security detail.
Documents analyzed by Reuters reveal the OMB is directing that $15 million of USAID’s remaining operating expenses pay for costs associated with Vought’s protection, which is said to consist of more than a dozen members of the U.S. Marshals Service. One document detailed a September 11 agreement with USAID that $1.6 million would be provided “to cover the costs associated with then Acting USAID Administrator Vought’s security detail through November” with the agency setting aside an additional $13.5 million for costs through the rest of the year.
In a statement to Reuters, OMB spokesperson Rachel Cauley did not deny that USAID funds were being allocated for Vought’s protection. “We are going to continue to use available funds at the three agencies overseen by the director to protect him,” she said, in apparent reference to the OMB as well as USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in which Vought holds temporary leadership roles.
Vought has emerged as one of the administration’s most divisive figures through his work with Project 2025, a right-wing policy road map from the Heritage Foundation, whose proposals ranging from federal workforce cuts to the rollback of environmental regulations have seen implementation in Trump’s second term. And this is not the first time Vought has sought federal dollars to cover his security expenses: GovExec reported in July that Vought also sent the CFPB a $4.7 million bill for his protection costs.
In February, a 26-year-old Maryland man was charged with attempted murder and other related counts after he went to Vought’s Virginia home last year. According to NBC News, footage from a Ring camera captured Colin Demarco on Vought’s porch wearing a mask and appearing to carry a firearm.
AL KAWD, Yemen — In the cramped examination room of this tiny village clinic, Rania Moussa lay on her side and covered her eyes with a pillow, her slight, childlike-frame belying the fact she is 13 years old. It had been days since she had taken an injection of the powerful antibiotics she needs to manage her condition, a type of anemia.
But the clinic, which used to give them for free, now had none to offer; and aid cuts since the U.S. froze assistance last year meant it was unlikely to get them anytime soon. Without the medication, Rania’s mother said, her daughter couldn’t do anything.
“She can’t walk; she can barely move. I had to carry her here. We could get the shots before, but now none of the clinics have them, so I have to buy them from pharmacies,” said Jamilah Omar, Rania’s mother. “We can barely afford food, let alone medications.”
Somehow, Omar scraped together money for the antibiotics, which the clinic staff administered.
In the year since the evisceration of U.S. Agency for International Development at the hands of Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, discussions on its shuttering can devolve into political point-scoring, with advocates and opponents of the Trump administration shouting over each other about the savings made or lack thereof.
Remnants of signage for the U.S. Agency for International Development on the facade of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 29, 2025.
(Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)
But it’s here, in places like the dust-swept grouping of cinder-block houses and dilapidated buildings that make up Al Kawd, where the real-world impact of those cuts can be most clearly felt.
“You feel helpless,” said Areeda Fadhli, the 53-year-old medical assistant managing the clinic, as she shifted the pillow away to look at Rania’s face.
“Imagine your son, your daughter, fading in front of you,” she said. “How do you think that feels?”
Fadhli pointed to some boxes of basic medical supplies squirreled away in a corner.
“It’s the last shipment and it came more than nine months ago,” she said. “We’re trying to stretch them as much as possible.”
The contractions in Yemen reflect a wider ravaging of foreign assistance worldwide. In 2025, the U.S. pledged $3.4 billion in global aid, a fraction of the $14.1 billion funded under President Biden. That includes funds from USAID and other U.S. entities.
And that amount is getting only smaller: Late last year, the Trump administration announced in 2026 it would provide $2 billion to U.N. programs in 17 countries, while pointedly excluding Afghanistan and Yemen.
Rabii Nasr, a nurse, cleans a child’s wound at a hospital in Yemen’s Abyan province. Her injury did not require stitches, which was fortunate because the hospital had run out of stitches and surgical thread.
(Nabih Bulos/Los Angeles Times)
Other wealthy nations are following suit, with Germany more than halving its humanitarian budget for 2026 compared with last year. France is planning to reduce development assistance by nearly 40%, and the U.K. is shrinking aid expenditures from 0.5% to 0.3% of its gross national income by 2027.
The Trump administration offered different justifications for cutting foreign assistance. President Trump alleged there were “billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse” while DOGE officials boasted about the cost savings. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said USAID did not serve, and in some cases harmed, the “core national interests of the United States.”
Administration officials brought no evidence of corruption and cited examples of waste that proved to be inaccurate, such as Trump’s assertion that $100 million was spent on condoms to the militant group Hamas in Gaza.
In any case, observers say the funds earmarked for foreign development assistance in the Biden era amounted to less than 1% of the federal budget.
Last year, the U.S. slashed funding for Yemen from USAID and other sources from $768 million — amounting to half of the country’s humanitarian response budget in 2024 — to $42.5 million. The result, the U.N. says, is that 453 health facilities have faced partial or imminent closure across the country, including hospitals, primary health centers and mobile clinics.
The Lancet, the esteemed British medical journal, published a study in July that estimated the cuts to USAID could result in 14 million otherwise preventable deaths worldwide by 2030. The estimates were based in part on the lifesaving effects of USAID’s past work on food security, HIV treatment, medical care and other services.
The cuts already deeply hit Yemen, a country that is no stranger to tragedy. A calamitous civil war — which began in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital and spurred a furious assault from a Saudi-led coalition — made Yemen in years past the site of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes.
Though Yemen has since been surpassed in devastation by other conflict spots, 19.5 million people — slightly less than half of the population — needed humanitarian assistance in 2025, with the majority of them food insecure, the U.N. says.
This year, with political upheaval persisting throughout the country, the expectation is that number will increase to 21 million; it’s a situation made more difficult by the Trump administration’s 2025 designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization.
A soldier walks by the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, on Wednesday.
(Osamah Abdulrahman / Associated Press)
The designation, humanitarians say, in effect outlaws aid deliveries to areas under Houthi control, where 70% of the population resides. At the same time, the Houthis have detained 73 U.N. staff members and confiscated vehicles and telecommunications equipment, leaving the U.N. unable to operate.
“You have the perturbations of the conflict and increased humanitarian needs at the same time as a challenging funding environment constrained the delivery environment,” said Julien Harneis, the U.N.’s resident coordinator in Yemen. “So all the conditions are coming together for a very difficult year.”
For aid organizations in Yemen that relied on U.S. largesse, the aim has shifted to preserving whatever remains of their operations.
An aid worker who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing remaining assistance flows said the organization he worked for had shut down one of its two offices, fired 250 out of 300 employees and suspended support to dozens of health centers. The organization’s portfolio had shrunk from roughly $32 million to $2 million.
“Yes, we have other donors from Europe and Canada, but it doesn’t equal even 5% of what the Americans would give,” he said.
Some organizations have tried tailoring proposals to fit Washington’s regional priorities, including countering Iran and Al Qaeda, or by excluding terms that under the Trump administration have in effect become verboten.
“Anything focusing on gender, feminism, or LGBT protection: A statement with any of those concepts wouldn’t get sign-off,” he said.
To get a sense of what a difference a year makes, last January, before the aid cuts, Fadhli was about to extend the operations of the Al Kawd clinic from 12-hour shifts to 24.
Three doctors — an OB-GYN specialist and two general practitioners — already made the daily 52-mile journey from Aden, the main city in Yemen’s south, to Al Kawd to treat about 300 patients every day. Medical assistants, chosen from local village women, received $100 a month and training sessions to work in the clinic and help serve the community’s needs.
The clinic had enough basic medications for three months, and there was funding to procure specialized medicine for patients with complicated illnesses.
“People come here because they have no money, but before we could offer them solutions to their problems,” said Dr. Umayma Jamil, the 37-year-old OB-GYN specialist who is the last remaining physician in the clinic. She comes only once a week, paid for by whatever funds the clinic can cobble together.
Now, Jamil said, she will give a diagnosis, prescribe medicine and then see the patient return with the same complaint.
“I ask them, ’Did you get medicine?’ And they say they can’t because there’s no money,” Jamil said.
“It’s natural to be frustrated, but I don’t know what to do. It’s not in my hands.”
The effects of such a drastic scaling down of aid aren’t restricted to smaller facilities; they extend even to major medical institutions such as Al-Razi, the main hospital in Abyan province, serving more than 30,000 people every year.
Children are dying, and more children will die later this year
— Julien Harneis, U.N. resident coordinator in Yemen
Dr. Muhsen Abdullah, the surgeon who heads the emergency room, spoke with a weary tone of a ward without surgical thread or stitches, and anesthesiologists forced to ask patients to purchase their own anesthetic.
“Surgical perishables, antibiotics, even iodine and rubbing alcohol — all this the patient has to buy from the outside before they come in for surgery. It’s ridiculous,” he said, adding that some patients postponed procedures because they couldn’t afford postoperative treatment.
Around him were additional signs of disrepair: an X-ray examination board without a functioning backlight, and a dust-covered ultraviolet sterilization machine that hadn’t worked in months.
With humanitarian groups operating under extremely tight budgets, there’s little they can do when epidemics hit — assuming they can detect them in the first place, because much of that information relied on health centers reporting outbreaks.
“Now we have no reports. Zero,” the aid worker said. For example, he said, cholera cases in Yemen would appear to be fewer than last year, although suspected numbers are far larger.
“How can they tell you anyway? There are no kits to test.”
In Al Kawd, Fadhli and Jamil have already detected a few cases of cholera in the village. It’s a terrifying prospect, they said, because the disease transmitted by infected water killed a few dozen people — most of them children — last year. But with no money for quarantine or medications, there isn’t much they can do, so they expect the outbreak to get worse.
That’s in line with predictions from Harneis, the U.N. resident coordinator, who said aid groups in Yemen were anticipating an increase in epidemics “which we won’t be able to control, and an increase in mortality and morbidity, particularly affecting young children.”
“Children are dying, and more children will die later this year,” he said. And once such outbreaks hit, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay within the confines of Yemen, he added. “Epidemics don’t stop at the border.”
This month, the U.S. completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, a decision, the group said, that made “both the United States and the world less safe.”
Many in the aid community acknowledge USAID wasn’t perfect and understand complaints that it could be used to promote ideas the Trump administration denounces as “woke.”
But they nevertheless lament the rollback of their work. One person likened it to America’s abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan and leaving the field open for the Taliban to destroy all of USAID’s projects.
“OK, you could say USAID was unsustainable, but there’s an argument to be made you shouldn’t close the tap completely,” said the aid worker, adding his employer has been operating in Yemen since 1994.
“With this move, you’ve destroyed the work of decades.”
The U.S. Department of Education will start to be dismantled on Tuesday, with some parts of the agency moving to offices in the Department of Labor and elsewhere, according to the Washington Post. It’s a wildly unlawful move, since a president can’t unilaterally decide to destroy an agency created by Congress. But President Donald Trump chose a pretty convenient day to do it.
The Washington Post reports that it’s still unclear what offices from the DoE may be salvaged, but it could include the Office for Civil Rights, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Indian Education program.
Social media accounts for the Department of Education and the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, shared a video with the caption “The clock is ticking…” The video features clips of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush talking about how they wanted to abolish the agency.
Just because previous presidents wanted to abolish the agency doesn’t mean that Trump is allowed to do it without approval from Congress. The fact that other presidents were unable to do it should give some hint at how far outside the law Trump is operating.
Why is Trump making his move on the Department of Education today? As it happens, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote Tuesday on releasing the so-called Epstein Files—the documents held by the U.S. Department of Justice about the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019. Trump has fought tooth and nail to keep the files from being released—perhaps because he was a close friend of Epstein—though he changed his tune Sunday after it became clear the House vote is likely to pass.
“As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, rambling on further.
It’s not true that Trump said the files should be released on Friday while he was on Air Force One. In fact, when Trump was asked about the files by a Bloomberg reporter, he snapped back, “Quiet! Quiet, Piggy.”
Trump also said on Air Force One that Democrats are the ones who should be investigated. The president had previously tweeted that he ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into connections between Epstein and Bill Clinton, along with other Democrats.
The White House reportedly believes they’ve found a workaround when it comes to the illegal move to dismantle the Department of Education. Federal law requires all of these programs to be housed at the Department of Education. But the Washington Post reports they’re going to try making other government agencies run the Education Department programs “under a contract with the Education Department.”
Nobody knows if this is going to be allowed to stand, but USAID was similarly dismantled in late January and early February, just after Trump started his second term. Dozens of lawsuits were filed, but the judicial system is clearly not equipped to handle a president who breaks things and just deals with the fallout, as the New York Times recently noted. President Trump’s decision to destroy the East Wing of the White House in a surprise move is a perfect example of that.
The House is currently discussing the vote over the Epstein files, but even if they vote to release the files, it still needs to be taken up by the Senate. After that, it also needs to be signed by the president. And even after that, there’s a question of what Trump will actually allow to be released. Again, the president doesn’t see himself as bound by the law. Congress can pass all the laws it wants to compel the release, but that doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily happen.
It seems like a given that dismantling the Department of Education will attract plenty of lawsuits. Whether those lawsuits actually accomplish anything is another question. Experts have pointed out that even if courts found the dismantling of USAID to be unlawful and ordered it reconstituted, it’s not something you could necessarily accomplish. Most people who worked at USAID have looked for new jobs and moved on with their lives.
It’s a lot easier to destroy something than it is to build it back up. And that’s not just true of USAID, the Department of Education, and the East Wing. It’s true of everything being dismantled in the U.S. right now. And if you zoom out to the broadest historical view possible, it will likely take generations to rebuild the things being broken right now.
The Rio Cobre overflows its banks near St. Catherine, Jamaica, on October 28, 2025, as Hurricane Melissa tore into the island.
RICARDO MAKYN
AFP via Getty Images
When catastrophic Hurricane Dorian became the strongest storm ever to hit The Bahamas six years ago, submerging the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama under floodwaters, the U.S. government was among the most generous of responders.
Washington, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, deployed search-and-rescue teams, airlifted over 50 metric tons of critical relief supplies from a warehouse in Miami and dispatched a disaster team. The $33 million response included seaplanes the humanitarian agency chartered to ferry responders and visiting lawmakers to the devastation.
That was during the first Trump administration — before USAID was dismantled.
Now, as Hurricane Melissa threatens Cuba, the southern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands after battering Jamaica with 185 mph winds and torrential rains on Tuesday, people re bracing not only for the storm’s aftermath, but also for the stark reality of recovering without the safety net that USAID once provided.
The scale of support seen after Dorian will almost certainly not be repeated this year.
“My fear after this hurricane passes is that that’s only going to be the tip of the iceberg. Food, water, shelter. If all of that is disrupted, then it’s going to take time to put it back in place. And USAID was that safety net in the past,” said Andy Ingraham, a prominent Fort Lauderdale businessman who serves as president of The Bahamas Diaspora Association and is president and founder of the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators & Developers.
A man looks at a fallen tree in St. Catherine, Jamaica, on October 28, 2025, as ferocious winds and torrential rain from Hurricane Melissa tore into Jamaica. RICARDO MAKYN AFP via Getty Images
Miami Democratic U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, who helped secure American assistance after Dorian, told the Miami Herald that with USAID’s dismantling, “there is real uncertainty about whether help will come,” in the aftermath of Melissa.
“I have consistently opposed efforts by the administration to gut USAID. The administration must be ready to fill any gaps and move resources immediately to support Jamaica and other affected nations,” she said. “In Congress, I stand ready to approve the funds required to help them recover.”
Ahead of Melissa’s landfall on the southwestern coast of Jamaica on Tuesday, Caribbean emergency responders said they were awaiting to hear from the U.S. government about what will take the place of USAID.
The storm is the first major natural disaster to hit the region since the Trump administration dismantled USAID earlier this year. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency’s functions would be absorbed by the State Department.
The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration was given the responsibility for international disaster relief. But much of the staff in that bureau was later laid off.
The White House referred an inquiry about its plan for hurricane assistance to the State Department.
A spokesperson for the department said there won’t be a decision on aid deployment “until a need is identified.”
“The State Department maintains warehouses around the world from which we can distribute lifesaving aid in the aftermath of natural disasters,” a State Department spokesperson told The Miami Herald. “The department has pre-positioned emergency relief supplies in six warehouses that will allow for the distribution of emergency relief supplies to people affected by the storm.”
Residents evacuate under pouring rain from Playa Siboney to safe locations ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Melissa, in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, on Tuesday. YAMIL LAGE AFP via Getty Images
A former senior official at USAID said that agency would act as a lead and coordinate the U.S. government response during these disasters.
“When you see a storm of this scale, it is so large and so devastating that it really can overwhelm the capacity of the government. Historically, a country like Jamaica has been able to count on U.S. support,” the official said.
Typically, staff at USAID would start hurricane preparations in June, which included meeting with local officials, building networks between Caribbean nations, and conducting exercises with the U.S. military to help with logistical needs.
These systems, which are now very frayed, “helped save lives and reduce the cost of these emergencies.”
Some USAID staff with hurricane response experience were folded into the State Department but, the official added, “they are very buried in bureaucracy and don’t have the partner networks, tools and resources they would have at USAID.”
Other Democrats on Capitol Hill have expressed concern.
Gregory Meeks, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Joaquin Castro, ranking member of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, and Yvette D. Clarke said on Monday, the U.S. “must stand with Jamaica and the entire Caribbean before, during, and after Hurricane Melissa makes landfall.”
A congressional aide later told the Herald/McClatchy newspapers that while it makes sense for the U.S. government to evaluate the need immediately after the hurricane’s landfall, lawmakers have had no information on whether the State Department has pre-positioned any supplies or resources like boats.
“We haven’t been briefed yet by State on the disaster response setup, so we don’t really know the details of how many staff they have available, what kind of advanced planning they’re doing,” the aide said.
One source familiar with the situation said Jamaica has requested support from the United States.
“We understand that State has activated a Disaster Assistance Response team and plans to deploy staff to the Dominican Republic, Bahamas and Jamaica,” the person said. “We do not know whether supplies were pre-positioned or what resources have been made available for the response.”
The Trump administration has been much more selective in deciding what disaster it responds to. In August, for example, the administration sent no aid after an earthquake in Afghanistan.
Amid the questions about the U.S humanitarian response, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations have been touting their readiness to respond, not just in Jamaica but in Haiti — where three people died before Melissa reached hurricane strength — and in Cuba. Melissa was expected to make landfall Tuesday night or Wednesday morning in the eastern part of the island.
Working the phones
Ingraham, who is Bahamian, said he is concerned about the region not being able to rely on USAID in the way countries have been accustomed to. However, he believes the U.S. government will “do something to help in the region as great partners.”
“The fact that they have a lot of assets in the Caribbean now, I’m sure some of those may be directed to help Jamaica, The Bahamas and some of the other islands that have been impacted,” he said, referring to warships the U.S. has deployed to the southern Caribbean to combat narco-trafficking.
Small island nations have neither the infrastructure nor the money to withstand the devastation from a major hurricane, Ingraham said.
“For us in the Caribbean, it’s not a good time. The only salvation that we have, quite frankly, is the private sector,” he added.
On Tuesday, as Melissa tore off rooftops in the Jamaican communities of Westmoreland and Black River, and drenched agriculture farmland under floodwaters, Ingraham began working the phone, asking contacts if they could spare airplanes to begin evacuations from the southern Bahamas. Among them was Fort Lauderdale based Tropic Ocean Airways, which dispatched one of its seaplanes. Other companies helped with fuel, and the Bahamian government removed bureaucratic red tape to get the help to the islands.
“I think we go back to the same old adage,” Ingraham said. “We’ve got to plan for the hurricane instead of reacting to the hurricane. We’ve been down this road…. We understand hurricanes. They’re going to come, they’re going to drop a lot of rain, they’re going to have a lot of wind damage. We just need to plan, if we got to evacuate people, let’s plan in advance. If we need assets, let’s organize those assets so they’ll be ready at a moment’s notice.”
Miami Herald staff writers Antonio María Delgadoand David Goodhue contributed to this report.
This story was originally published October 28, 2025 at 8:42 PM.
Jacqueline Charles has reported on Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean for the Miami Herald for over a decade. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, she was awarded a 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize — the most prestigious award for coverage of the Americas.
After the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year, one woman who was fired has found a new space for advocacy work.
After the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year, one woman who was fired has found a new space for advocacy work.
“I was out of a job. And so during that period, I was quite in shock, depressed,” said Tina Balin, who is now a policy director at the Alliance for American Leadership.
She was walked out of her job at USAID earlier this year and said she was lost and, “trying to figure out what to do next with my life, because that was more than a job, it was a belief system.”
The Alliance for American Leadership is a bipartisan nonprofit that started in May as a response to the dismantling of USAID.
Executive Director Asher Moss said their goal is to, “pressure Congress to try to restore foreign aid programs.”
“What’s happening now is that people who have long understood the importance of these programs, both for American national security and how we’re viewed around the world, are finally getting the chance to talk with the American people openly about why these programs are critical,” he said.
They now have more than 700 advocates across all 50 states. Balin said she’s grateful for the opportunity to continue advocating for foreign policy.
“I’m happy to have a home here where I can continue to advocate for the need for foreign aid, and explaining why it is such an important issue for Americans — not just our role around the globe, but our (own) growth and prosperity,” she said.
Moss said the alliance is continuing to expand, and that people like Balin are making a difference for the organization.
“Now, it’s just about growing from there. And I think that’s going to be continuing to do our normal outreach, person to person, as well as growing our campus chapters. Just getting to see more people recognizing what the alliance is doing and why it’s important to work together across the aisle on an issue that we all care about as Americans,” he said.
Balin said the organization was put together at the right time. “Right away, I knew I had to be a part of this movement,” she said.
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After losing his six-figure job as a federal contractor last year, Quentin Adams, of Bowie, Maryland, now delivers food and online orders to make ends meet.
Last year, Quentin Adams, of Bowie, Maryland, was living his dream, developing websites and apps as a contractor for the federal government.
But when that job ended, it began one of the darkest chapters in his life.
“They called me in the office and said, ‘Yeah, your last day will be Friday.’ This was like Thursday. And I’m like, ‘What?’” Adams said.
Adams, 61, had spent over a year building web applications for USAID as a contractor. He was let go unexpectedly last year, prior to this year’s DOGE cuts. While the exact reason for his departure wasn’t made clear, he was told there was no money left to continue his role.
At the time, Adams was earning a six-figure salary. Now, he is delivering food and online purchases for Uber Eats and DoorDash to survive.
“I go from that to $300–$400 a week, not being able to afford a car note, not being able to afford a mortgage,” he told WTOP.
He said the emotional toll of not being able to get back into a job in his field weighs heavily.
“It’s hard. It’s touching my faith,” Adams said, adding that his church’s reverend helps keep him encouraged.
Despite 28 years of experience in software development, Adams has applied to many jobs he said with no success. At first, he believed the holiday season was to blame, but come January he realized similar positions were far and few between.
“I realized I put in application after application on job boards, and I guess there’s so much competition, we’re all vying for the same job,” he said.
“I have software development skills; I have some business skills; I have some project management skills, but I can’t seem to get a job,” he said.
While Adams lost his job last year, this year’s DOGE cuts have flooded the job market with thousands of newly displaced federal workers and contractors, making it even harder for him to find a position similar to the one he held.
Experts say the surge in federal layoffs has intensified competition for tech and contracting roles, especially in the D.C. region, where many rely on government work.
Adams recently received a job offer, but now fears it is off the table due to the current government shutdown.
As he continues to work gig jobs, he worries about losing his car and falling deeper into financial hardship.
“Sometimes I wonder, what’s the end result? Yesterday, I started looking at bankruptcy possibilities,” Adams said. “If I file bankruptcy, what does that do for my potential clearance and getting my next job?”
Still, he is thankful for the income he earns through deliveries.
“It’s something. At least it puts money in my gas tank,” he said.
And he remains hopeful.
“Keep hope alive. Stay close to prayer,” Adams said. “Keep trying.”
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Hamas’s shock troops poured across Israel’s border two years ago, kidnapping, raping and killing civilian men, women and children. Israel’s bitter experience offers lessons America should learn before our own moment of reckoning.
The most important is that the hypothetical war can actually happen. Even if we’re intellectually prepared, there’s a risk that years of relative peace has lulled us into a false sense of security. The Israeli defense establishment never truly believed Hamas would launch a full-scale invasion. They viewed Gaza as a chronic but manageable problem—one for diplomats and intelligence officers, distant from the daily concerns of citizens. Israeli politicians and generals also spoke of open conflict with the Iran-led Islamist axis much like their American counterparts speak of China and a Taiwan crisis—the pacing threat and the most likely test, yes, but ultimately a question for tomorrow. Then tomorrow came.
Trump tries to cancel nearly $5 billion in previously approved foreign aid funding – CBS News
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The Trump administration has told Congress that it plans to cancel previously approved funding for foreign aid. CBS News congressional correspondent Nikole Killion has more details.
