(Advance copy of draft) Shutting Down U.S.A.I.D. and the Voice of America: Real World Consequences, and the Author's Experiences--PART TWO (U.S. Agency for International Development)
Author’s Note
The people who are doing this should be in prison.
First, Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office.
Second, he should be prosecuted for trying to overthrow the Constitution.
Whether the Supreme Court decision in Trump v. U.S. (2024) holding that the president cannot be prosecuted for his “official acts” will prevent Trump from being prosecuted for intentionally violating the Constitution and the law is open to doubt. The question may be the subject of a future Supreme Court case which will provide the justices an opportunity to reverse their holding in Trump v. U.S.
Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, and others implementing this policy do not appear to be protected from prosecution by the holding in Trump v. U.S. They should be prosecuted as soon as the Democrats control the Justice Department.
***
The Dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (
BACKGROUND
See,
1)James Rowles, ”A lawless government seeks to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); CONNECT THE DOTS: Coup d'état in progress,” Trenchant Observations, February 3, 2025.
I am an old A.I.D. hand, one of those who worked on projects when the Agency was staffed by highly-qualified experts in international development, usually stationed in countries that were the beneficiaries of A,I.D. development programs.
Over time, the core mission of fostering international development got diluted, as USAID programs were diverted to being a part of the U.S. war-fighting effort in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, where such programs absorbed a huge amount of the Agency’s budget.
That focus was also diluted by programs which directly supplied humanitarian assistance to populations in need.
The original focus on international development had the goal of building institutions and programs that would simultaneously further economic development and contribute to the development of democratic governments dedicated to the rule of law. Both goals were viewed as complementary.
1) One of the first A.I.D. projects I worked on was a land-titling project in Ecuador, in 1985. As the legal member of a nine-person project development team that was in country for nine weeks, I wrote a 100-page paper describing in detail the precise steps that would be taken by land-titling teams moving through the countryside to provide small farmers titles to lands that they worked. Research, also funded bt A.I.D., had shown that land titles would enable small farmers to obtain credit for agricultural inputs (e.g., seeds) and lead to a growth in productivity. The program was intended to meet the demand of small farmers for land and was one element of broader programs aimed at land reform, which was believed to be an important component of building democratic governments in Latin America. The land-tiling program was authorized for $100 million but never implemented, for reasons of which I am unaware.
Nonetheless, the project is a good example of the kind of work A.I.D. was doing in pursuit of its central goal of fostering economic development.
***
James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harv Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He studied the history of Nazi Germany at Stanford, and has studied and worked on human rights, judicial reform, and access to justice projects in many countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and in Afghanistan and Russia. At Harvard Law School, he taught a course on “Law, Human Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Latin America”.
At the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the OAS, he worked on human rights cases involving forced disappearances, executions, and torture in a number of authoritarian countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recent Books by the Author
James P. Rowles, The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (2024). Available on Amazon, and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
James P. Rowles, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump (2024). Available on Amazon,and from IngramSpark by clicking on a link here.
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