By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and SAMY MAGDY
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has notified the World Food Program and other partners that it has terminated some of the last remaining lifesaving humanitarian programs across the Middle East, a U.S. official and a U.N. official told The Associated Press on Monday.
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The projects were being canceled “for the convenience of the U.S. Government” at the direction of Jeremy Lewin, a top lieutenant at Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whom the Trump administration appointed to oversee and finish dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to a letter sent to USAID partners and viewed by the AP.
About 60 letters canceling contracts were sent over the past week, including for major projects with the World Food Program, the world’s largest provider of food aid, a USAID official said. An official with the United Nations in the Middle East said WFP received termination letters for Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Some of the last remaining U.S. funding for key programs in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and the southern African nation of Zimbabwe also were affected, including those providing food, water, medical care and shelter for people displaced by war, the USAID official said.
The Trump administration had pledged to spare those most urgent, lifesaving programs in its cutting of aid and development programs through the State Department and USAID.
The Trump administration already has canceled thousands of USAID contracts as it dismantles USAID, which it accuses of wastefulness and of advancing liberal causes.
The newly terminated contracts were among about 900 surviving programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had notified Congress he intended to preserve, the USAID official said.
There was no immediate comment from the State Department.
Magdy reported from Cairo.
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