The Trump administration is working to dismantle USAID, a foreign aid government agency, saying it wastes taxpayer dollars. A federal judge has ordered a temporary halt to that funding freeze, but some Penn State researchers say the damage is already done.
“Everybody's standing on the ledge about to jump off," said David Hughes, the director of the USAID Innovation Lab on Current and Emerging Threats to Crops at Penn State.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, is a government agency that looks to improve health and education overseas, as well as decrease poverty and hunger.
The Trump administration halted nearly all USAID programs, shut down its website, and put almost all its workers on administrative leave.
Hughes said his lab at Penn State got a stop-work order last month, halting their work in 12 countries. Much of their work involves preventing diseases and pests from destroying crops.
“That (stop-work order) has led to the loss of jobs, and the actual estimate may be 40 or 50 people who've lost a job as a direct consequence of this," Hughes said. "Here at Penn State, nobody has lost a job.”
Hughes said his lab is continuing to perform essential work, with the understanding that they may not get funding from their $39 million contract with USAID. He said it will be up to Penn State to find other funding streams if that happens.
While USAID funds foreign aid, Hughes said this research is also vital to farmers in the United States.
“We have one program which is helping farmers grow more food, and controlling against an invasive caterpillar," Hughes said.
That program also gets funding from a private donor, which Hughes said is helping to keep it going. He said if they did have to lay people off, it would take years to get the program running again. That’s why he hopes researchers will keep calm and wait to see what happens with funding in order to prevent long-term disruptions to research.
Hughes also said the general public shouldn't see USAID as a partisan issue. He said he has long been critical of the program as a whole and wants to see it improve.
"I think what people should realize is that (USAID) was started by Kennedy in 1961, and had always intended to advance American interests," Hughes said. "I think it should do a better job of leveraging American science."
Hughes said food insecurity across the world has increased in the past few years, despite efforts from USAID programs to combat the issue.
"Imagine we were sending our kids to school, and every kid in the class got an F for five years in a row," Hughes said. "We would evaluate whether the teachers are in the best position to do it."
Hughes said he is optimistic for the future of programs like his, even though many of his colleagues do not share that viewpoint.
