Summary
A Congressional Research Service report states Trump lacks the authority to abolish USAID, as congressional approval is required.
It explains that a 1998 law briefly allowed reorganization but expired in 1999. While past administrations have modified USAID’s functions, they consulted Congress.
Lawmakers are concerned about Trump’s executive order pausing foreign aid and potential USAID-State Department consolidation.
To be fair, every President has done this. Every president issues last-second pardons to friends, family, cronies, whoever when they’re literally on their way out the door, when they no longer have to worry about the political blowback of such actions.
And in Biden’s defense, a lot of the people he pardoned were people who either were already known to be or expected to be on Trump’s hit list, and he was taking pre-emptive action to ensure they wouldn’t be jailed on (no pun intended) trumped up charges. Garland’s DOJ already spent an inordinate amount of time and resources on what amounted to a political persecution of Biden’s son on relatively minor and inconsequential charges in order to give a supposed appearance of impartiality. What do you think would happen to these people under the Trump administration once he started the Trump Revenge Tour if he hadn’t?
(And I’m not excusing Hunter Biden’s actions. But let’s be realistic. We all know the reason he was charged in the first place. The DOJ isn’t going to waste that much time and resources over a weapons possession charge by a cocaine addict that literally happened a decade or so prior. That was a political hit from start to finish by a man who thanked Biden for the AG position by slow-walking Trump investigations while simultaneously finding something to charge his own son with in order to appear “independent”.)