State Department creates new humanitarian bureau after shuttering USAID

Published March 20, 2026 6:13pm ET



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.

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