The Trump administration’s ongoing effort to shut down or massively cut the U.S. Agency for International Development is putting the future of a major Catholic relief agency at risk, despite the Republican portraying himself as an ally to Catholics on the campaign trail.
Catholic Relief Services, founded in 1943 by U.S. Catholic bishops, is the single largest recipient of funds from the development agency, which funds around half of the religious aid group’s $1.5 billion budget.
Leaders of the group, where layoffs have already begun, warned staff of major changes because of the political climate, according to an email obtained by the National Catholic Reporter.
"We anticipate that we will be a much smaller overall organization by the end of this fiscal year," the relief agency’s president and CEO Sean Callahan told staff on Monday.
Observers of the Catholic group argued that the White House’s attacks on the U.S. aid agency, which have included Trump adviser Elon Musk claiming without evidence the administration is a “criminal organization,” go against bedrock Christian and American principles of supporting the less fortunate.
"CRS is the Gospel at work and reflects the best of American values," John Carr, former executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, told the National Catholic Reporter.
Catholic Relief Services provides emergency and disaster assistance, as well as funding programs related to water, sanitation, agriculture, health and other areas serving an estimated 200 million people across over 100 countries.
On the campaign trail Trump, as well as Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, sought to portray themselves as allies to U.S. Catholics.
During an October rally, Trump claimed Kamala Harris was “very destructive to Christianity and very destructive to evangelicals and to the Catholic Church,” while Vance told supporters that Harris was the candidate “of anti-Christian and anti-Catholic bigotry,” and would further U.S. Catholics’ feeling of being “abandoned.”
As evidence, they pointed to the Democrat’s pro-abortion stances, as well as her questioning of judicial nominees about their membership in a Christian fraternal organization, and a leaked FBI memo the agency later disavowed describing efforts to probe links between radical Catholic groups and the far-right.
During the campaign, Trump told an interviewer, “I stand for everything that you stand for and that the church stands for.”
The pitch paid off. The Trump campaign won the group handily, carrying Catholics by an estimated 20-point margin, according to exit polls, flipping the group from their 2020 support of Joe Biden.
Nonetheless, the alliance with Catholics does not seem to extend to their U.S.-funded relief work, with Musk claiming the U.S. development agency and its partners are part of a “radical-left political psy op.”
“[Trump] agreed we should shut it down,” Musk said during a live discussion on X Spaces. “It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm in it. What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair. We’re shutting it down.”
In recent days, senior staff at the administration have been placed on leave, contractors have been fired, staff have been barred from agency headquarters, and the Trump White House has instituted a 90-day pause on foreign aid.
“We were inundated with a barrage of hostile, threatening messages,” one staffer told The Independent. “I think they were designed to instill fear.”
The campaign to slash the U.S. aid agency has prompted protests from Democrats, who rallied outside agency headquarters and have threatened to withhold future State Department confirmations until the group’s funding is restored.
