Feb. 13 (UPI) — President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s plans to shut down parts of the government continue to expand, placing focus on the system of checks and balances.

Despite mounting litigation against the Trump administration, he continues to move forward, announcing his wishes for Musk — head of the Department of Government Efficiency — to continue gutting government agencies.

The goal, according to Trump and Musk, is to eliminate wasteful federal spending. However, there is little evidence that any of DOGE’s work so far has any meaningful impact on eliminating waste, fraud or abuse of government funds.

Foreign aid and the federal budget

The Trump administration seeks to furlough thousands of humanitarian aid workers as he folds the United States Agency for International Development into the State Department. The move, combined with an executive order to freeze foreign aid, will cost lives, cause the spread of disease and increase inequity, experts told UPI.

A federal judge has paused the administration from cutting about 2,200 USAID employees temporarily. The agency was set to retain less than 300 essential employees while putting the rest on administrative leave. District Judge Carl Nichols made the decision to stop the cut before its Friday deadline, but at least 500 workers were not spared.

Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., introduced legislation to shield USAID from Trump and Musk’s purge of federal workers. She is a former State Department employee.

“Eliminating USAID will be a death sentence for millions of people. It means no more food for the millions of Sudanese refugees who’ve fled civil war, no more medical care for displaced Palestinians, no more HIV treatment on the African continent, no more Ebola screenings of passengers at airports, and so much more,” Jacobs said in a statement. “People will starve, babies will die, and poverty will skyrocket. Not to mention, Elon Musk’s elimination of USAID is completely illegal.”

The impact on the world is immeasurable, according to aid workers who spoke with UPI. The impact on the federal payroll is much easier to measure. Foreign aid accounts for around 1% of the federal budget, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

In Trump’s first day in office, he put a 90-day pause on all U.S. foreign development assistance, removing a key funding source for non-government organizations that deliver a wide array of humanitarian aid across the world.

The funding is used by organizations that bring food, clean water and medical supplies to war-torn countries and countries fraught with food insecurity and disease. Without funding, some organizations are unable to deliver the life-saving services they provide.

A stop work order halts organizations from doing things like giving HIV treatment to adults and children exposed to the disease, weakens the response to the Marburg virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Ebola outbreak in Uganda and blocks access to maternal care to thousands of pregnant women around the world. Food, medicine and vaccines are left to waste.

In the places where those services are stopped, bad actors are likely to fill the void.

“It’s a very real concern,” Kelly Ryan, president of Jesuit Refugee Service USA, told UPI. “The United States has been a leader in assistance since the second world war. There are many rivals to the U.S. and many others would love to step in and influence refugees and others. It’s in the United States’ interest to support refugees and others in humanitarian crises.”

Jesuit Refugee Services USA has a presence in 58 countries where it supports refugees. It has received stop work orders due to the day-one executive order signed by Trump, specifically halting its population, refugees and migration funding.

“We’re trying to find ways to do our lifesaving work,” Ryan said. “In the context of our work, we’ve had to lay off hundreds of people in precarious places across the world. There’s no safety net if the U.S. government would not carry on its activities.”

Organizations like Ryan’s will turn to donors and a diverse slate of funding sources to continue with their missions.

The lack of presence by the United States also sends a message on the global stage. The United States has been the largest bilateral donor in the world toward international aid programs.

Increasing inequity

Plan International is a non-government organization that works to address gender inequality and prepares youths in 80 countries to be successful adults. It does this by promoting equal access to education, protecting children from violence and increasing access to health and reproductive services.

Kate Ezzes, director of programming at Plan International, said the organization will lean on a “strong philanthropic base” to continue its work. Its direct outreach to private and institutional donors from its global offices can keep the organization moving forward but the loss of assistance from the United States still creates a gap.

The organization places a special focus on girls and young women. Its programs help them achieve financial resiliency. With the education, skills and access to health services, they have a greater chance to avoid harmful practices like genital mutilation and child marriage, Ezzes said.

The Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid has put much of this work in more than 50 countries at risk.

“There are hundreds of millions of individuals from newborn children through adulthood receiving benefits from foreign assistance coming from the U.S.,” Ezzes said. “120 million girls will no longer have access to education. Those centers and those schools are either not being built or closing. That pathway, which is a pathway to freedom for those girls and women, is closed to them.”

Ezzes adds that without these services, those girls and women are vulnerable to human trafficking.

“These girls are already living in a fragile context and education is a lifeline to them,” she said. “Education creates a safe space for girls.”

According to Ezzes, USAID has helped nearly 5 million women access education, jobs and skills training.

One of the recurring themes across Trump’s policies on foreign aid and refugee programs is that he wants the government’s actions to reflect the United States’ national interest. Ezzes and Ryan said their work and the work of USAID clearly meets that goal. Withdrawing from the humanitarian arena will have the opposite effect.

“Educated and economically stable societies help global security. Fragile states are more vulnerable to conflict, extremism and instability,” Ezzes said. “The needs didn’t change from one day to another.”

‘No precedent in modern American politics’

The president’s effort to downsize government agencies makes good on one of his biggest campaign promises, according to Meena Bose, dean of Hofstra University’s public policy program and director of presidential studies. Presidents have attempted to increase the efficacy of agencies in the past.

What is different in this case is Trump’s approach.

“This is kind of a hatchet approach to doing so but I think it has a certain appeal to the president’s constituencies,” Bose told UPI. “He’s getting things done, cutting through red tape.”

Presidents have long sought to make the government more efficient. The Hoover Commission in 1947 brought recommendations to reorganize the government to President Harry Truman. He pushed those recommendations forward with the Reorganization Act of 1949.

Former Vice President Al Gore approached government efficiency with the implementation of the National Performance Review.

President Bill Clinton appointed Gore to lead the review, examining the work of 24 of the nation’s largest government agencies in search of ways to make them more effective. It received bipartisan support and was heralded as a success.

Congress was heavily involved in both of these examples, passing legislation to implement recommendations.

“There’s no precedent in modern American politics for the approach of the Trump administration,” Bose said. “As far as the scope and approach and the actions, as well as the decision making authority of someone appointed by the president with no experience in public service in Elon Musk — that is what makes these recent decisions unprecedented.”

Federal agencies have withstood changes in the Oval Office due to the separation of powers and presidents’ unwillingness to break from the norms of governance. Time will tell if Trump and Musk are successful in shutting down parts of the government.

The only certainty is even the temporary freeze on foreign aid and humanitarian assistance will be difficult to reverse. Aid workers now face uncertainty over their career paths. They will look for other options, whether it is during the 90-day freeze of federal funds or a potential four-year shutdown.

“The initial damage, as far as hindering the work of research and development in other countries, it’s not so easy to start back up,” Bose said. “There are consequences for people who no longer have positions.”