The State Department has created a new bureau to handle disaster and humanitarian response efforts worldwide, a move that comes as the Trump administration remakes and scales back the now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development.
Early in his second term, President Donald Trump, working with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, worked to close USAID, the agency that oversaw much of the federal government’s humanitarian and development assistance abroad. That effort included firing roughly 2,000 of its employees, canceling more than 80% of its grants, and folding its functions into the State Department.
The newest of those efforts came on Friday. According to Reuters, the Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response was established by the agency to coordinate U.S. efforts on natural disasters, humanitarian crises, food security, and agricultural research.
The bureau will be staffed by roughly 200 employees, operate across 12 global hubs, and receive roughly $5.4 billion in annual funding, far below the scope of its predecessor.
Created by President John F. Kennedy during the Cold War, USAID was designed to streamline foreign aid and counter Soviet influence abroad. Before its closure, the agency managed roughly $40 billion annually and operated in about 130 countries, with programs in conflict-afflicted regions such as Ukraine, Sudan, the West Bank and Gaza, and Nigeria.
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The new humanitarian bureau sits within the department’s undersecretariat for foreign assistance, humanitarian affairs, and religious freedom, which currently lacks a Senate-confirmed leader and is being overseen by Jeremy Lewin, a former DOGE staffer.
Ryan Shrum, Lewin’s chief of staff, is expected to lead the bureau on an interim basis.
