North Carolina will be disproportionately negatively impacted by the unconstitutional gutting of USAID because North Carolina is a leading state in the international development field and hundreds of North Carolinians' livelihoods depend on USAID funding

I'm really concerned by the harm that Trump and Elon Musk's destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will cause to the country and to North Carolina in particular. USAID was the world's largest humanitarian agency (whenever we help another country after a disaster, it's USAID), and USAID contracted with numerous NC-based businesses, to include RTI International and FHI 360, which employ hundreds of USAID-focused international development experts in the Triangle alone.

Additionally, USAID worked to address underlying issues of poverty, bad health, low education, and so on in other countries, helping to improve them so that they are safer, more secure, and more prosperous, which helps us in North Carolina by addressing reasons why people might migrate illegally, or helping tamp down conflicts or potential for terrorism that might require North Carolina-based troops to deploy into harm's way. USAID partnered for years with civilian-military affairs teams at Fort Bragg, as well as other USMIL during their deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

USAID was a premier destination for North Carolina universities' technical experts from fields as wide-ranging as engineering, forestry, agriculture, education, governance, and so forth, to serve as Foreign Service Officers overseas and as technical experts in Washington. Duke in particular offers a world-class Masters in International Development Policy that is a destination for the best and brightest international development professionals from around the world, many of whom would go on to work for USAID in Washington or overseas, or work in their home governments and partner with USAID.

There are many impacts being felt in North Carolina by the new administration's recent shakeups, and USAID is a relatively small one, but North Carolina punches above its weight in the international development field and the elimination of the largest humanitarian assistance agency on the planet will impact North Carolina more than most states.

Please call your NC congressman and Tillis and Budd and ask them to stand up for Congress' control of the purse strings and for NC jobs. And for folks who want to learn more about authority to dismantle an agency unilaterally, this article tells a good well-researched story: https://www.justsecurity.org/107267/can-president-dissolve-usaid-by-executive-order/