Watch live: House panel convenes hearing on USAID amid DOGE overhaul

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a hearing Thursday morning looking into what GOP leadership has called the “betrayal” of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The panel comes as President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by billionaire Elon Musk, has set its sights on overhauling the federal agency amid its crackdown of government spending. The administration’s perceived efforts to dismantle USAID have sparked criticism across the board, with a group of House Democrats earlier this week unveiling legislation to stop the move.

Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, seemingly gave a thumbs up to placing USAID under the State Department’s purview, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio was named the acting leader.

“After receiving formal consultation about the State Department’s potential reorganization of USAID, I’m excited to work with President Trump and Secretary Rubio to fix our broken foreign assistance system,” he wrote last week in a statement.

William Steiger, former chief of staff at USAID under Trump’s first term, is among the witness list.

Thursday’s hearing is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. EST.

Watch the live video above.

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https://www.youtube.com/embed/aM4rrpiApIE

Ted Cruz snaps as Dem invokes  famous 2013 clash: ‘You’re not Dianne Feinstein’



Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) interrupted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Tuesday to tell the Texas Republican she felt "personally aggrieved" by his lecturing — only to have Cruz fire back by invoking the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, snapping, "You're not Dianne Feinstein."

The blowup came after Cruz delivered a lengthy monologue at a hearing on the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais ruling — a 6-3 decision gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — accusing Democrats of believing Black candidates can only win in gerrymandered districts.

"The Democrats are fond of telling this story that is, and I wish I could find a kinder way to say it, a flat-out lie," Cruz said, rattling off Black Republican lawmakers elected in majority-white districts: Sen. Tim Scott, Reps. Burgess Owens, Byron Donalds, John James, and Wesley Hunt.

"In the Democrats' world, you're not Black if you're not a liberal Democrat," Cruz declared. "There is an arrogance to African American voters."

The Texas Republican then accused Democrats of being the real gerrymandering offenders, demanding to know how many Republicans represent New England in the U.S. House.

"Zero. Zero," Cruz said. "They've drawn every district in a naked gerrymander, and yet they're very upset that their illegal pursuit of power has now been stopped by the Supreme Court."

That's when Hirono cut in.

"Point of personal privilege," she said. "I feel personally aggrieved to sit here and to be lectured by my colleague from Texas."

Hirono then reached back more than a decade to invoke a now-famous clash between Cruz and Feinstein, who memorably told a freshman Cruz during a 2013 hearing on gun safety that she was "not a sixth grader."

"This reminds me of the time when he was first elected to the Senate, and the Judiciary Committee had a hearing on gun safety, and he felt a need to lecture Dianne Feinstein," Hirono said. "And she said to him, something along the lines of, 'I did not sit here on this committee for however many years she did, only to be lectured by you.'"

"And that is how I feel," Hirono continued. "So why don't you just stop lecturing the rest of us? Just because you think you are the smartest person in the world doesn't mean the rest of us agree with that."

Cruz didn't let it go.

"I knew Dianne Feinstein. I served with Dianne Feinstein," he shot back. "And you're not Dianne Feinstein."