USAID Is Gone. Its Democratic Legacy Shouldn’t Be.
July 1 marked the official end of USAID. Much attention, rightly so, has focused on the humanitarian cost—14 million projected deaths by 2030 due to cuts in global health and disaster relief, according to a recent Lancet article. A quieter casualty was USAID’s mission to promote “resilient, democratic societies”—a goal harder to measure than vaccine doses or trade growth, but just as vital.
Those who heard last week's This American Life episode “Some Things We Don’t Do Anymore,” may recall Act Two’s profile of USAID’s HIV work in Eswatini. Life expectancy rebounded from 41 to 60 years and the number of deaths from AIDS went down by half. But the piece also raised concerns: Did USAID create a parallel health system that let government corruption go unchecked?
This coverage was important—but frustrating for democracy specialists like me. Missing from the conversation was USAID’s long-standing work to strengthen transparency and accountability. In some of the world’s most corrupt countries, USAID democracy programs were watered down or absent due to earmarks, shifting priorities, or geopolitical tradeoffs. But in Europe & Eurasia, USAID had relatively consistent funding to strengthen rule of law, civil society, free and fair elections, and press freedom. During my time in the Bureau, I helped advocate for, design, and manage our media development efforts. Here's what I learned:
𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻 #𝟭: 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿.
In a 2021 speech, then-USAID Administrator Samantha Power argued that corruption is development in reverse, scaring away investors, deepening inequality, and fueling conflict. Across Eurasia, USAID supported the journalistic infrastructure to expose it. From 2009 to 2025, we funded The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. OCCRP's work has earned nearly 300 local, national, and international reporting awards, and contributed to the seizure or freezing of at least $10 billion in assets and nearly 800 arrests, indictments, and sentences since 2009. OCCRP estimates that for every $1 in U.S. government funding, it has returned $100 to the U.S. taxpayer in fines and penalties levied by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Treasury against banks and companies.
USAID also supported groundbreaking investigative journalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where one story helped reveal $5.8 million in procurement fraud; in Moldova, where local outlets uncovered $1 billion in public funds stolen by politicians; and in Serbia, where KRIK exposed links between organized crime and political elites. We learned that the key to such results is investing in teams, tools, and training–long-term commitments that, while resource-intensive, are essential to watchdog journalism.
