joining me now is jeremy konyndyk. he's the president of refugees international and the former director of usaid's office of foreign disaster assistance. jeremy, thank you for being here. and maybe we'll get a chance to talk about a number of things that are going on with your agency right now, but the work of your former agency. but the work is not done. i mean, the fact is, there is you just heard from tess. there is going to be so much work to be done. i'm glad to be in phase one of this cease fire deal. i hope it gets to phase two. there are doubts it will get to phase three, but the point is, we're seeing things go at least in the right direction. except that what has been a refugee crisis since 1948 and has only gotten worse over the decades, is about to get worse. >> yes, that's right. the freeze on us foreign aid funding is impacting gaza. i have talked to multiple relief organizations on the ground in gaza who have have found that even after secretary rubio a few weeks ago issued a waiver on humanitarian assist

joining me now a former director of usaid's office of foreign disaster assistance, jeremy konyndyk. now of refugees international. jeremy, thank you for helping us to understand what's going on from your vast experience. elon musk actually called usaid a criminal organization. can you tell us what it does around the world? >> so usaid is the. >> face of american. >> generosity and american. goodwill around the world. >> every usaid. package has a logo. >> on it that says from the. american people. >> and that. >> is that is. >> fundamentally what usaid does. it responds to disasters around the world. the team that i used. >> to. >> run would deploy the. >> first responders after. >> an. >> earthquake, the people who would be pulling victims of the earthquake. >> out of the rubble, saving lives. >> it fights aids, and it fights other global health. >> threats and. >> epidemics around the world. it advances economic development. it rebuilds countries after war. it advances democracy and human rights. you know, a lot. >> of things that help. to advance america's interest in a stronger.

. >> i'd like to bring in jeremy konyndyk. he served as director. for foreign disaster assistance at usaid in the obama administration. he's currently president of refugees international, which has been doing work in the region. >> and. >> in gaza. jeremy, first, just, you know, as someone who has long foreign policy and ngo experience, we've talked a lot about what's been. happening in gaza. your reaction to the president of the united states appearing to announce a policy of u.s. occupation ownership and forced de-population. my jaw is on the floor as much as yours has been. chris, i think to put this in the terms of my field, the president appears to be inciting ethnic cleansing in gaza and aligning us policy and us military force with that. that is an unthinkable thing if he means it. and i you know, it's always a question with trump whether he remotely understands the stakes and the seriousness of the things that come out of his mouth. but it is a deeply serious thing. and if this were to go forward, and particularly with u.s. backing, it would

we're joined now by jeremy konyndyk, a former senior official at usaid. he's also the president of refugees international. jeremy, thank you so much for being with us. first, i just want to get your reaction to what you heard there from donald trump in the oval office, not just saying that he doesn't need congressional approval to scrap usaid, but also making these accusations about fraud and corruption at the agency. >> yeah, there's a lot of disinformation flying around from the administration right now. but to be really clear, what's happening, this is the world's richest man deciding the world's richest country should stop helping the world's poorest people. that is the story here. the president does not have the authority to unilaterally shutter a federal agency that has been established in congressional and congressional statute. >> i wonder what you make of marco rubio then, saying that he's now the acting director of usaid. >> i saw that i suspect that's a sort of gambit for them to get away with saying, well, we haven't destroyed the agency as a l

joining us now is jeremy konyndyk, president of refugees international. g around the world with such detail. what should we know tonight? >> well, i think what. >> we need to know first is this. >> is doing. >> immediate harm. >> to people. >> in many. >> many parts. >> of the world already. >> this is not an. >> issue of the harm will come. >> the issue. >> is the harm is already underway. a few things that i learned just today. every day i'm hearing new, new damage that this is causing. so science magazine is reporting that a phase one trial for an hiv vaccine, which of course would be a miraculous, transformative thing, was about to start and had to be pulled back because of the usaid funding freeze. i heard today from another organization that is providing health services all across darfur that they are beginning to shutter their clinics because the funding has stopped. and, you know, one one thing that's important to understand about the furloughs of all the usaid staff over the last few days, if there were a major earthquake somewhere in the world to

impacts of president trump's efforts to drastically reduce the size of federal government is jeremy konyndyk, a former usaid official under the obama administration. also with us, hagar chemali, former spokesperson for the united mission u.s. mission to the united nations under president obama. hagar, let's start with you. you've worked for the federal government in a range of senior national security and public affairs positions. roughly 2 million federal employees have received this offer. the white house has said they expect as many as 200,000 people to accept it. i think the number right now is about 50,000. what are the impacts that this could have? >> sure, jake. >> well, i was just actually in washington and i was speaking to many of my government friends, and i've learned from them that the majority have accepted this buyout tend to be either those who are retiring soon, those who have moved out of the d.c. area, who don't want. >> to return. >> to the office five days a week, for example. there was a general sense of calm, which surprised me, but that might be because i spoke to mos