SkyCity admits the 'huge toll' the NZICC has taken on them, the hospitals continue to be full or delayed as Trump holds up thousands of global aid projects.
Video / NZ Herald
Donald Trump revoked Joe Biden’s security clearance and escalated efforts to dismantle USAid.
Trump froze aid to South Africa and named himself head of the Kennedy Centre.
A federal judge paused Trump’s plan to put 2200 USAid workers on paid leave.
President Donald Trump revoked his predecessor Joe Biden’s security clearance today in a blizzard of new orders, while escalating his campaign to dismantle the US humanitarian agency charged with helping the world’s poorest and extending American influence around the globe.
In a new series of rapid-fire power plays, the 78-year-old billionaire also froze aid to South Africa, where his top donor Elon Musk was born, and named himself head of one of the country’s premier cultural venues, the Kennedy Centre.
“There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,” Trump said on his Truth Social network, adding that he was “immediately” revoking the Democrat’s security clearances and ending his daily intelligence briefings.
Tributes are placed beneath the covered seal of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) at the agency's headquarters in Washington, DC. Photo / AFP
US Presidents are traditionally given the right to receive intelligence briefings even after they step down.
Trump also stepped up his assault on the United States Agency for International Development (USAid), which distributes humanitarian aid globally.
“THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!” he wrote on his Truth Social app about USAid, without offering evidence.
USAid has received the most concentrated fire since Trump launched a crusade led by Musk – the world’s richest person – to downsize or dismantle swathes of the US Government.
Today (Friday local time), Musk – who with Trump has spread blatantly false information about USAid’s finances – reposted photos of the agency’s signage being removed from its Washington headquarters.
The Trump administration has frozen foreign aid, ordered thousands of internationally-based staff to return to the United States, and begun slashing the USAid headcount of 10,000 employees to around only 300.
Labour unions are challenging the legality of the onslaught. A federal judge today ordered a pause to the administration’s plan to put 2200 USAid workers on paid leave by the weekend local time.
US President Donald Trump hosts a dinner for US Republican Senators at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. Photo / AFP
Democrats say it would be unconstitutional for Trump to shut down government agencies without the legislature’s green light.
Soft power
The United States' current budget allocates about US$70 billion ($123b) for international assistance, a tiny fraction of overall spending.
But it gets a big bang for its buck. USAid alone runs health and emergency programmes in around 120 countries, including in the world’s poorest regions, boosting Washington’s battle for influence against rivals such as China.
“We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in US history,” Samantha Power, the USAid chief under former President Joe Biden, wrote in a scathing New York Times opinion piece.
Hard-right Republicans and libertarians have long questioned the need for USAid and criticised what they say is wasteful spending abroad.
Also today, Trump named himself as chairman of the Kennedy Centre, suggesting the stately white marble entertainment complex overlooking the Potomac River did not reflect his own values.
Demonstrators gather outside of the Office of Personnel Management in Washington, DC on February 7 to protest federal layoffs and demand the termination of Elon Musk from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Photo / AFP
“Just last year, the Kennedy Centre featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth – THIS WILL STOP,” he wrote on Truth Social, without explaining what show he was referring to.
Trump has repeatedly attacked gender-nonconforming people.
He also followed up today on a promise to freeze US aid to South Africa, citing a law in the country that he alleges allows farmland to be seized from white farmers, despite Johannesburg’s denials.
Musk has frequently criticised the South African Government.
While Democrats have struggled to find footing to halt the budget-slashing moves, court challenges are slowly taking shape.
An attempt by Trump to overturn the constitutional guarantee to birthright citizenship has been blocked by a judge, and yesterday another judge paused an attempt to offer mass buyouts to federal workers, pending arguments on Monday local time.
Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, ran into controversy last week with reports he and his team were accessing sensitive Treasury Department data and systems.
An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced”, US media reported.
Adding to the drama, one member of the DOGE team resigned after it emerged he had advocated racism and eugenics on social media.
Today, following backing for the sacked 25-year-old from Trump, Musk said he would reinstate the staffer.
Vice-President JD Vance weighed in, saying he did not think “stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life”, while criticising the reporter who unearthed the posts for trying to “destroy people”.
