For decades, sub-Saharan Africa was a singular focus of American foreign aid. The continent received over $8 billion a year, money that was used to feed starving children, supply lifesaving drugs and provide wartime humanitarian assistance.

In a few short weeks, President Trump and the South African-born billionaire Elon Musk have burned much of that work to the ground, vowing to completely gut the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“CLOSE IT DOWN!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Friday, accusing the agency of unspecified corruption and fraud.

A federal judge on Friday halted, for now, some elements of Mr. Trump’s attempt to shutter the agency. But the speed and shock of the administration’s actions have already led to confusion, fear and even paranoia at U.S.A.I.D. offices across Africa, a top recipient of agency funding. Workers were being fired or furloughed en masse.

As the true scale of the fallout comes into view, African governments are wondering how to fill gaping holes left in vital services, like health care and education, that until recent weeks were funded by the United States. Aid groups and United Nations bodies that feed the starving or house refugees have seen their budgets slashed in half, or worse.

By far the greatest price is being paid by ordinary Africans, millions of whom rely on American aid for their survival. But the consequences are also reverberating across an aid sector that, for better or worse, has been a pillar of Western engagement with Africa for over six decades. With the collapse of U.S.A.I.D., that entire model is badly shaken.

“This is dramatic and consequential, and it’s hard to imagine rowing it back,” said Murithi Mutiga, Africa program director at the International Crisis Group. Mr. Mutiga described the collapse of the agency as “part of the unraveling of the post Cold War order.”

“Once, the primacy of the West was assumed” in Africa, he said. “No more.”

Experts say the agency’s abrupt undoing will cost many lives by creating huge gaps in public services, especially in health care, where U.S.A.I.D. has poured much of its resources.

In Kenya alone, at least 40,000 health care workers will lose their jobs, U.S.A.I.D. officials say. On Friday, several U.N. agencies that depend on American funding began to furlough part of their staff. The United States also provides most of the funding for two large refugee camps in northern Kenya that house 700,000 people from at least 19 countries.

Ethiopia’s health ministry has fired 5,000 health care professionals who had been recruited under American funding, according to an official notification obtained by The New York Times.

“We are in disbelief,” said Medhanye Alem of the Center for Victims of Torture, which treats survivors of conflict-related trauma at nine centers in northern Ethiopia, all now closed.

Of over 10,000 U.S.A.I.D. employees worldwide, barely 300 will remain under changes conveyed to staff on Thursday night. Only 12 will remain in Africa.

The most pressing challenge for many governments is not to replace the American staff members or money, but to save American-built health systems that are rapidly crumbling to the ground, said Ken O. Opalo, a Kenyan political scientist at Georgetown University in Washington.

Kenya, for instance, has enough drugs to treat people with H.I.V. for over a year, Mr. Opalo said. “But the nurses and doctors to treat them are being let go, and the clinics are closing.”

Broader economic shocks are also likely in some of the world’s most fragile countries.

American aid accounts for 15 percent of economic output in South Sudan, 6 percent in Somalia and 4 percent in the Central African Republic, said Charlie Robertson, an economist who specializes in Africa. “We could see governance effectively cease in a few countries, unless others step up to replace the hole left by the U.S.,” he said.

Whether U.S.A.I.D. is truly dead may yet be determined by Congress and the U.S. courts, where supporters have filed a raft of legal challenges. But the Trump administration seems determined to move faster than its challengers.

As Mr. Musk and his team have commandeered the agency’s operations in Washington, shuttering its headquarters and sacking or suspending 94 percent of its staff, its vast aid machinery in Africa has shuddered to a halt.

In major hubs in Kenya, South Africa and Senegal, American aid officials were shocked to find themselves labeled “criminals” by Mr. Musk, then ordered to return to the United States, according to eight U.S.A.I.D. employees or contractors who all spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

On Friday, the Trump administration gave all U.S.A.I.D. staff members 30 days to pack their bags and come home, causing turmoil among families now faced with the prospect of pulling children out of school on short notice. If the federal court that is now reviewing that directive does not overturn it, few will have jobs to return to.

Several U.S.A.I.D. officials noted that Google’s artificial intelligence system, Gemini, had been activated on their internal communications systems recently, and that internal video calls conducted on the Google platform were suddenly set to automatically record.

Officials said they worried that Mr. Musk’s team could use A.I. to monitor their conversations to ferret out dissenters, or to excerpt snippets of conversations that might be weaponized to discredit the agency.

Colleagues at the agency have turned to Signal, an encrypted messaging app, this week to share information unofficially. People are being driven by fear, one of them said.

In private, even senior U.S.A.I.D. officials agree that the agency needs an overhaul. In interviews, several recognized the need to streamline its bureaucracy, and even questioned an aid system that relies so heavily on American contractors and fosters a damaging culture of dependency among African governments.

Announcements by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and acting head of U.S.A.I.D., that emergency food and lifesaving aid would be exempted from the administration’s cuts were initially welcomed by employees. But, officials said, it turned out to be largely a mirage. Despite the promise of waivers, many have found it impossible to obtain one.

Worst of all, many said, were the broadsides delivered by Mr. Musk and the White House portraying the agency as a rogue, criminal agency run by spendthrift officials pursuing their personal agendas. Such attacks were false and deeply hurtful to Americans who sought to relieve human suffering around the world, several people said.

In Nairobi, where U.S.A.I.D. has about 250 Kenyan and 50 American staff members, several Kenyans spoke at a tense town hall this week.

They worried that talk at the White House of widespread corruption inside the agency might cause other Kenyans to believe that they, too, had benefited from fraud, said an official who attended the meeting.

Like the Americans present at the town hall, the Kenyans worried they were about to be fired. But there was one major difference between the two groups, the official noted: While the Kenyans were anxious for their livelihoods, the Americans were worried about their country.

Booing during “The Star-Spangled Banner” at sports games in Canada.

“Buy Canadian” signs multiplying at grocery stores amid a brewing boycott of U.S. goods.

Cross-party calls to find new friends and customers on the global stage.

President Trump may have paused his plans to impose crushing tariffs on Canada, pulling the two countries back from the brink of a trade war. But evidence abounds of the damage Mr. Trump has inflicted on the relations between the two nations.

After threatening levies on Canada, and Canada threatening to retaliate, Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday came to an agreement for a 30-day reprieve in the brewing trade war in exchange for new measures to tackle the flow of fentanyl across the northern border.

But the standoff has left many Canadians livid.

And Mr. Trump’s menacing rhetoric, especially his repeated statements that he wants the United States to annex Canada and make it the 51st state, seems to have fractured the fraternal trust that has, for more than a century, been the core of the relationship.

“This has damaged the relationship quite significantly, and there will be a period of sorting out,” said Jon Parmenter, professor of North American history at Cornell. “It has triggered really significant and striking emotional responses. It’s very raw for people.”

Mr. Parmenter noted that being America’s far less populous neighbor has not always been comfortable for Canadians, who are deeply aware of their dependence on trading with the United States and know that so many things emanating from their superpower neighbor — from pop culture to economic downturns — influence their lives.

In the words of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the former Canadian prime minister and father of the current one: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

But, Mr. Parmenter added, rubbing in that dependence the way Mr. Trump has done with his invocation of annexation and repeated complaints about Canada providing little in return to the United States, has touched off a visceral response in Canadian society.

History Matters

While Canada has been described as the United States’ closest friend for over a century, until World War II it was actually closer economically and politically with Britain. The Atlantic province of Newfoundland and Labrador was a British colony until it joined Canada, which it did only in 1949.

Events like the war in Vietnam, the brutal crackdown in the South of protests during the civil rights movement and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Canada strongly opposed, tested that friendship at times.

But it has generally been marked by moments like the Canadian response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.

As flights to the United States were grounded, about 7,000 air travelers aboard dozens of diverted flights, mostly Americans, were taken in by the residents of Gander, Newfoundland, a community of just 11,000 people. The scenes of heartfelt hospitality in one of America’s worst moments were recounted in the Broadway musical “Come From Away.”

In his emotional address to the nation on Saturday, Mr. Trudeau, who made sure to direct his comments to Canadians and American, did not forget those bonds.

He quoted President John F. Kennedy, who said about Canada: “Geography has made us neighbors, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners and necessity has made us allies.”

And he added: “From the beaches of Normandy to the mountains of the Korean Peninsula, from the fields of Flanders to the streets of Kandahar, we have fought and died alongside you during your darkest hours.”

Team Canada

Mr. Trump’s targeting of Canada has forged a rare consensus among Canadians and among politicians who, until last week, were feuding amid one of the country’s most fraught political periods in recent history.

But for Mr. Trudeau, the opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, and other senior politicians, there is only one game in Canadian politics right now: Team Canada.

“We need a Canada First plan that’s good for this country,” Mr. Poilievre, the Conservative opposition leader, said in reaction to the tariff fight. And while Mr. Poilievre has built a big advantage in polls over Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party by highlighting what he describes as the prime minister’s failures, he has momentarily toned down those attacks in recent days to focus on a unifying message.

Mr. Trudeau has leaped at this rally-round-the-flag moment. “In this moment, we must pull together because we love this country,” he said on Saturday evening, when tariffs were supposed to begin in just more than 48 hours. “We don’t pretend to be perfect, but Canada is the best country on earth,” he added.

Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister, who is running to replace Mr. Trudeau as Liberal Party leader, tried to capture the nation’s mood during an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN over the weekend.

“We’re hurt, for sure, because we’re your friends and neighbors, but most of all, we’re angry, and we are united and resolute,” she said, adding “Canada is the true north, strong and free,” an echo of Canada’s national anthem.

Public opinion surveys suggest these politicians are aligned with the public mood: 91 percent of those asked said they wanted a reduction in the country’s reliance on the United States, according to a poll conducted on Sunday and Monday by Angus Reid.

The poll also found a 10 percentage point jump since December in the number of people declaring themselves to be “very proud” to be Canadian, and a similar jump in the percentage of Canadians saying they feel “a deep emotional attachment to Canada.”

Speaking at a campaign event in Windsor, Ontario, Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, who is also running to replace Mr. Trudeau, said he had been traveling around the country seeking support for his campaign and finding the mood of Canadians toward the United States to be “initially confusion and bewilderment.”

But, increasingly, he added, there is “a real enthusiasm and energy to get on with things on our terms, because we don’t want to wake up every morning and check through social media to find out how our country is being affected.”

‘I Feel Really Betrayed’

The prospect of thousands of auto workers being laid off if Mr. Trump’s threatened 25 percent tariff is ultimately put in place has brought fear to many people in Windsor, which is the heart of Canada’s automotive industry and sits just across from Detroit.

And it has even shaken Canadians who once supported Mr. Trump — a minority of the population, according to surveys.

Joe Butler, a trucker who carries new cars and trucks every day from a factory owned by the automaker Stellantis, Windsor’s largest employer, up and down the highway corridor to Toronto, is one of many Canadians with family ties to the United States.

His great-grandparents moved from the United States to Alberta, in Western Canada, where some of his distant relatives still ranch, before his grandfather moved east to Ontario.

During summer school breaks, Mr. Butler joined his father, a long-haul trucker, in the cab during his runs to the United States. “Growing up, I loved the culture of America: the people, the lifestyle, the landscape,” said Mr. Butler, whose cargo usually consists of vehicles assembled in Stellantis factories in Mexico and the United States.

Mr. Trump’s promise to rebuild America, Mr. Butler said, resonated with him. “I was 100 percent behind him as a Canadian,” Mr. Butler said.

“Now I just shake my head and say: Where are you going?” he said. “You just went and completely kicked us in the nuts. It’s scary.”

If the auto industry comes to a halt, Mr. Butler said, he has a small beer, wine and liquor delivery service that he can fall back on for income. But, he added, most of his friends and family members lack such options.

Mr. Butler, who buys the groceries for his family, now boycotts American-made products. And he wants Canada to find a way to cut out the United States as much as possible.

“I don’t care if they close the border, we can live on our own,” he said. “I still love America, and my job depends on the American economy. But now I feel really betrayed.”

President Trump on Friday ordered that all foreign assistance to South Africa be halted and said his administration would prioritize the resettling of white, “Afrikaner refugees” into the United States because of what he called actions by the country’s government that “racially disfavored landowners.”

In the order, Mr. Trump said that “the United States shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa” and that American officials should do everything possible to help “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”

It follows Mr. Trump’s accusation on his social media site on Sunday that the South African government was engaged in a “massive Human Rights VIOLATION, at a minimum.” He vowed a full investigation and promised to cut off aid.

“South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY,” the president wrote in the post. “It is a bad situation that the Radical Left Media doesn’t want to so much as mention.”

The order was stunning in providing official American backing to long-held conspiracy theories about the mistreatment of white South Africans in the post-apartheid era.

Mr. Trump has made repeated claims without evidence that echoed those conspiracy theories. In 2018, he ordered his secretary of state to look into “the large scale killing of farmers” — a claim disputed by official figures and the country’s biggest farmers’ group.

Mr. Trump’s recent comments were in reference to a policy that President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa signed into law last month.

The law, known as the Expropriation Act, repeals an apartheid-era law and allows the government in certain instances to acquire privately held land in the public interest without paying compensation — something that can be done only after a justification process subject to judicial review.

The order from Mr. Trump came a day after Mr. Ramaphosa delivered his State of the Nation address with a defiance that appeared to be a reference to the American president’s accusations.

“We will not be bullied,” he said. The South African leader vowed to stand united in the face of what he called “the rise of nationalism and protectionism.”

“We will speak with one voice in defense of our national interest, our sovereignty and our constitutional democracy,” he said.

In addition to the halt in foreign aid, Mr. Trump ordered officials to provide “humanitarian” assistance to Afrikaners and to allow members of the white South African minority to seek refuge in the United States through the American refugee program.

Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the South African government has taken a willing-seller approach to try to transfer the ownership of more land to the country’s Black majority. The new law, with limited exceptions to that approach, came as many Black South Africans have argued that Nelson Mandela and other leaders did not do enough to force the white minority to give up wealth that had been accrued during apartheid.

South Africa’s colonial regimes were particularly brutal in dispossessing Black people of their land and forcefully removing them. Despite the efforts of postcolonial governments, the result remains clear to this day: White South Africans, who make up 7 percent of the population, own farmland that covers the majority of the country’s territory.

In an earlier executive order, Mr. Trump had demanded a three-month pause in the United States’ refugee program, blocking the admission of desperate people fleeing war, economic strife, natural disasters or political persecution. Friday’s order appeared to make white South Africans an exception to the broader halt.

While it is not clear whether he had an influence on the president’s order, Elon Musk, the billionaire who has become a close adviser to the president, is from South Africa. In 2023, Mr. Musk posted similar far-right conspiracy claims about South Africa on X, the social media platform he owns.

“They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa,” Mr. Musk wrote.

Mr. Ramaphosa and Mr. Musk spoke by phone after that social media post, with the South African president trying to clarify what his administration has called “misinformation” peddled by Mr. Trump.

In much of South Africa, Mr. Trump’s attacks in recent days inspired a rare bit of political unity, with leftist, centrist and even some far-right activists all saying that the American president’s characterization of the land transfer law was wrong.

His comments amplified a long-held grievance among some white South Africans who claim they have been discriminated against by the Black-led government after apartheid. But Mr. Trump’s comments also angered many South Africans, who saw the law as a necessary means of redressing historical injustice.

Since 1994, when South Africa became a democracy, the country has enjoyed a close relationship with the United States. Barack Obama visited there several times during his presidency, including when he attended the memorial service for Mr. Mandela, who had been imprisoned for 27 years before becoming the country’s president.

But Mr. Trump’s actions on Friday made it clear that he does not view the relationship in the same way.

South Africa received more than $400 million in aid from the United States in 2023, almost all of which went to funding efforts to fight H.I.V. and AIDS. The government has said that American funding makes up about 17 percent of its budget for battling H.I.V.

Far-right white Afrikaners applauded Mr. Trump’s attacks on South Africa’s government in recent days.

Ernst Roets, the executive director of the Afrikaner Foundation, which lobbies for international support of the interests of Afrikaners, said that while the government was not seizing land, it was trying to create a legal and policy framework to be able to do so.

The expropriation law opens the door to abuse, Mr. Roets said, because the government “can justify a lot of things under the banner of public interest.” But even Mr. Roets and his group had not called on Mr. Trump to broadly cut aid to South Africa, instead seeking targeted actions against government leaders.

After Mr. Trump first commented about land confiscation, the South African government tried to broker a conversation between its foreign minister and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, according to Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States. But the Trump administration did not respond, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national governing party has swept to victory in an important regional election in India’s capital, where voters previously rejected Mr. Modi’s Hindu-first platform for nearly three decades even as it expanded its footprint elsewhere across the vast country.

By late afternoon on Saturday, the counting of most of the votes in elections for New Delhi’s regional assembly showed that the Bharatiya Janata Party was comfortably forming the government with over 40 seats.

The incumbent Aam Aadmi party, which has governed the capital area for the past decade but has increasingly struggled against Mr. Modi’s efforts to crush it, was trailing with about 20 seats.

A party needs 36 seats in the 70-seat assembly to form the government.

“Development wins, good governance triumphs,” Mr. Modi said in a celebratory message on X.

Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, conceded the election in a video message, saying: “Whatever the people’s mandate, we accept it most humbly.”

The political fight over who governs the capital region has come to epitomize the cutthroat nature of Indian politics.

Mudslinging rival parties have been competing for votes with handouts and with pressure tactics that include A.I.-heavy disinformation campaigns and outright jailings of politicians.

Meanwhile, delivery of basic government services for a region of more than 20 million people appears increasingly paralyzed. Residents in large stretches of the capital region lack drinking water on tap, instead relying on tankers sent into poor neighborhoods. The river that cuts through Delhi is deeply contaminated, and the air grows severely polluted every winter.

The Aam Aadmi Party, which was born out of an anticorruption movement that indirectly helped Mr. Modi reach national power in 2014, had hoped to win a third term.

But in recent years, much of the party’s top leadership was jailed by central investigating agencies that report to Mr. Modi in connection with accusations of an excise scam. Before last year’s parliamentary elections, Mr. Kejriwal, the A.A.P.’s leader and the chief minister of Delhi, was arrested on accusations of corruption involving the city’s liquor policy, in a case that is still pending.

Mr. Kejriwal continued to govern the capital from his cell. Once released on bail, he stepped aside from leading Delhi. He elevated a lieutenant as chief minister while trying to appeal to his support base, contending that Mr. Modi’s central government was deliberately denying Delhi residents the delivery of basic services to portray the A.A.P. as a failure and open the way for the B.J.P.

Mr. Modi’s strategy centered on challenging A.A.P.’s image as an anticorruption party of the common person. And he has said that if his party came to power in the capital, it would not make “any excuses or blame others for the problems related to Delhi’s health, traffic, electricity, water, transport.”

Opposition parties have accused the election commission, which regulates campaigning and oversees the vote, of creating an uneven playing field that favors Mr. Modi’s party.

A day before the Delhi results, several leaders of an opposition coalition raised questions about another important election in the state of Mahrashtra, where the B.J.P. won handsomely after strong-arm tactics had reshaped the political landscape. The opposition contended that the number of registered voters in the election had exceeded the state’s adult population.

The election commission did not immediately address the discrepancy, but said it “would respond in writing with full factual & procedural matrix.”

One result of the daily bickering in the capital region has been a paralysis of routine governance, affecting vital issues like controlling pollution and providing access to water, garbage pickup and health care.

That was clear during a visit to Kusumpur Pahari, a slum on the edge of one of the poshest areas of Delhi, in the days ahead of the vote. The arrival of a water tanker resulted in commotion as women and children jostled to the front, large containers in hand. Nearby, trash was piled outside the public toilet complex as residents complained about the lack of municipal services.

While Mr. Kejriwal still enjoys support in such working-class neighborhoods whose voters have long been the core of his party, the B.J.P.’s efforts also appeared to be finding traction.

“I have never seen anything but a struggle to get in queues for water,” said Vijay Prakash, 25. “At least Kejriwal has got toilets constructed and ensures we get water tankers.”

Others, like 68-year-old Lalita Devi, were doubtful. “Who knows, if someone new comes, maybe they will make better arrangements for us?”

Much of the campaign between the rival parties has been an effort to outdo each other in generosity to various sectors of the voting public.

The A.A.P. has highlighted its improvement of Delhi’s schools and promised financial assistance to women, free health care to older people and transportation subsidies to students.

The B.J.P.’s promises have included even handsomer handouts. It has vowed monthly financial help to women about 20 percent higher than what the A.A.P. is offering, a subsidy on gas cylinders, and a monthly pension for older people. It has also promised life and accident insurance for taxi drivers, in the past a core group of Mr. Kejriwal’s supporters.

The campaign has also included colorful ways of getting at each other.

The B.J.P. sent a truck around the city bearing a replica model of what it said was the “palace of mirrors” that Mr. Kejriwal has built for himself, highlighting in particular an outsized “toilet made of gold” — an effort to undercut the A.A.P. chief’s image as a common man and an anticorruption crusader.

Mr. Kejriwal’s party, on the other hand, showed Mr. Modi’s party as a vulture in its campaign ads, out to stop the facilities offered by him to Delhi residents.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi.

The students meet a day a week for lessons in a tiny underground classroom that teachers call the beehive, for the buzzing of all the children packed inside.

Holding classes above ground in this part of Ukraine, in the city of Balakliya near the front line, is considered too dangerous because of the ever-present threat of Russian missiles and drones. Children spend most of their time in online classes and take turns going to school underground.

“When they come, they often ask me, ‘Can we see our former classroom?’” said Inna Mandryka, a deputy principal. The teachers, she said, never imagined children longing for school so much.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was intended to undermine the country’s future in many ways, stamping out language and culture, destroying infrastructure and leveling whole cities with bombs in the country’s east.

Disruption to the education of Ukraine’s 3.7 million schoolchildren is one of the most serious challenges for the country. Classes have been repeatedly interrupted, leaving many students far behind academically, experts say. Children are also losing their soft skills, such as communication and conflict resolution, from being unable to interact enough with other students.

Providing classes of any kind has been a huge obstacle for the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.

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Serbia’s authoritarian leader should be riding high, lifted by economic growth that is four times the European average, falling unemployment and steadily rising wages.

Instead, President Aleksandar Vucic, battered by three months of nationwide street protests, is struggling to weather his biggest political crisis in more than a decade of strong-arm rule.

Leading the charge against him have been students in wealthy cities like Belgrade, the capital. To try to get them off the streets, the government said in December that it would offer young people state-subsidized loans of up to about $100,000 to buy apartments.

Student representatives had a blunt response: Keep your money.

Also joining the protests have been older, less privileged Serbs, people on whom Mr. Vucic previously counted for support by providing their villages with new roads, sports halls and other facilities.

When students in Belgrade marched for 60 miles last week through villages and small towns on their way to Novi Sad, a thriving northern city on the Danube River, Dusko Grujic, 68, a farmer, cheered them on.

Serbia’s economy, Mr. Grujic said, standing next to his aged tractor piled with bales of hay, is not as robust as official statistics suggest, and food prices are too high. But he added that his main gripes were about corruption, highhanded officials and Mr. Vucic’s tendency to cast all criticism as the work of foreign agents and traitorous political rivals.

The protests began in November after 15 people were killed by the collapse of a concrete canopy at a newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad, a tragedy that students and opposition politicians blamed on shoddy work by contractors tied to corrupt officials.

Supporters of Mr. Vucic responded to demands for the prosecution of those responsible with a crude insult: They put up banners and posters that featured a red hand giving the middle finger on bridges and buildings in several cities.

Milan Culibrk, a prominent economics commentator who writes for Radar, an opposition-aligned weekly, said it was a bad move in a country where people tend to act politically “on their emotions, not their wallet” and only inflamed the situation.

He recalled that Slobodan Milosevic — Serbia’s dictator during the Balkan wars of the 1990s — handily won an election in 1993 despite hyperinflation that had prices more than doubling every two days by tapping a rich vein of nationalism.

A big paradox today, Mr. Culibrk said, is that many of those who have benefited most from Serbia’s strong economy have joined the protests, while those who have not, mainly rural residents and state employees, have tended to stay home.

The economy matters, Mr. Culibrk said, but so long as people are not starving, “other things matter much more.”

One thing that matters deeply to Mr. Grujic, the farmer, is not having to see so much of Mr. Vucic on television. The president appears at the top of nearly every news bulletin, hailing Serbia’s economic gains on state television and on fawningly loyal private channels like Pink and Happy.

“If even my son appeared this much on TV, I’d tell him: ‘Please stop,’” Mr. Grujic complained. “Vucic, Vucic, Vucic — all day, every day.”

Opposition politicians, struggling to compete on the economy, point to inflation, which is falling but still high at over 4 percent. They also dispute the accuracy of statistics that show Serbia’s economy grew nearly 4 percent last year and is on track to expand even more this year, compared with less than 1 percent in the European Union. Serbia applied to join the bloc in 2009 but remains far from being accepted as a member.

Marko Cadez, the president of Serbia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, dismissed opposition quibbling over economic figures as a sign of desperation.

“Look at where the economy is today compared with where it was 10 years ago,” Mr. Cadez said. “They are completely different worlds, night and day.” He pointed to a surging high-tech sector and to more than $5 billion in direct foreign investment last year, more than double the figure when Mr. Vucic came to power.

Unlike in the formerly Soviet republic of Georgia, where weeks of antigovernment protests by demonstrators waving European Union flags have been driven in a large part by hostility to Russia, Serbia’s unrest has little to do with the country’s uncertain geopolitical orientation between East and West.

Maritsa Jovanovic, a former civil engineer who cheered students blocking three key bridges in Novi Sad last weekend, said she had left her job as an engineer in a state agency because of pressure to sign off on documents for projects that violated the law.

“We all just want institutions to work as they are supposed to,” she said. Echoing the feelings of many protesters, Ms. Jovanovic said she thought that the United States and Europe had mostly turned a blind eye to Serbia’s ills under Mr. Vucic in pursuit of their own geopolitical and economic interests.

After the canopy at Novi Sad railway station collapsed in November, Mr. Vucic initially insisted that the structure had not been part of the renovation work.

Then Zoran Djajic, an engineer who had worked on the station, said publicly that a Serbian contractor hired by the Chinese consortium in charge of the renovation had ignored design specifications and dangerously added tons of extra concrete to the canopy.

“Somebody decided to add extra weight on top, and nobody checked whether the canopy could bear it,” Mr. Djajic said in an interview in Belgrade. “This was not an accident.”

When Mr. Djajic went public in November, pro-government media outlets vilified him. But his revelations helped set off what has since become Serbia’s biggest outpouring of public discontent since the protests that toppled Mr. Milosevic in 2000.

Students, followed quickly by many others, began demanding that those responsible for the railway station tragedy be held to account and that all contracts and other documents relating to the renovation be made public. Since then, the government has released thousands of documents, more than a dozen people have been charged over the disaster and the prime minister, a longtime ally of Mr. Vucic, recently resigned.

But the protests show no sign of slowing.

Srdjan Bogosavljevic, a pollster, says it is still too soon to count out Mr. Vucic. “If you ask people if they support students, everyone will say they support them,” he said. “There is no way not to support calls for better institutions and a better life.”

But, he added, this has not translated into a significant fall in Mr. Vucic’s ratings or a surge of support for opposition parties — only intensified hostility between rival political camps.

“Serbia was always polarized, but now this is far more extreme,” he said, adding that people are either very much for Mr. Vucic or very much against him. “You can’t find people who are neutral.”

Dragan Djilas, the leader of the main opposition party, said it would be tough to beat Mr. Vucic’s governing party in an election given that it controls the electoral process and access to state and many private media outlets denied to his foes. “Under these conditions, Vucic will always win,” he said.

Students and their supporters say their goal was never to topple Mr. Vucic.

“Nobody is talking about taking down the president,” said Jelena Schally, who fled Serbia with her family to Iceland during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. “We just want prosecutors and the courts to do their job.”

She returned home several years ago to open a small business offering yoga classes in Brdez, a village near Novi Sad, and was shocked to find that her country, despite having improved drastically economically, still lacked a functioning legal system.

“I know what a normal democratic country looks like from my time in Iceland, and this is not it,” she said after cheering protesters marching past her village.

President Trump’s executive order freezing most U.S. foreign aid for 90 days has thrown into turmoil programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases, run clinical trials and seek to provide shelter for millions of displaced people across the globe.

The government’s lead agency for delivering humanitarian aid, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., has been hit the hardest. Mr. Trump has accused the agency of rampant corruption and fraud, without providing evidence.

The Trump administration ordered thousands of the agency’s workers to return to the United States from overseas; put all of the agency’s direct hires, including its roster of Foreign Service officers, on indefinite administrative leave; and shifted oversight of the agency to the State Department.

On Thursday, the Trump administration announced plans to gut the agency’s staff, reducing U.S.A.I.D.’s work force of more than 10,000 to perhaps a few hundred. On Friday, a judge temporarily blocked elements of the Trump administration’s plan to shut down the agency, though the aid freeze remains in effect.

Critics say Mr. Trump’s executive order will cause a humanitarian catastrophe and undermine America’s influence, reliability and global standing.

How much foreign aid does the U.S. provide?

In total, the United States spent nearly $72 billion on foreign assistance in 2023, which includes spending by U.S.A.I.D., the State Department and programs managed by agencies like the Peace Corps.

As a percentage of its economic output, the United States — which has the world’s largest economy — gives much less in foreign aid than other developed countries.

U.S.A.I.D. spent about $38 billion on health services, disaster relief, anti-poverty efforts and other programs in fiscal year 2023. That was less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

Who are the recipients?

Mr. Trump’s freeze on U.S. foreign aid does not apply to weapons support for countries like Israel and Egypt, and emergency food assistance is also exempt.

In 2023, the last year for which full data is available, Ukraine, which has been waging a war against Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, received $16.6 billion, the most U.S. assistance of any country or region. The bulk of that went to economic development, followed by humanitarian aid and security.

Israel — which was attacked by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023, setting off a 16-month war in Gaza — received the second-highest amount of U.S. assistance: $3.3 billion in 2023, mainly for security.

Ethiopia, Somalia and Nigeria received more than $1 billion each in 2023, mostly for humanitarian aid.

In Latin America, Colombia was the top recipient of U.S. aid, $705 million, in 2023.

How is the money spent?

U.S. foreign aid can be structured as direct financial assistance to countries through nongovernmental organizations; military support; food and medical aid; or technical expertise.

Foreign aid can be a form of soft power, serving a country’s strategic interests, strengthening allies and helping to prevent conflicts.

In the case of U.S.A.I.D., money has gone toward humanitarian aid, development assistance and direct budget support in Ukraine, peace-building in Somalia, disease surveillance in Cambodia, vaccination programs in Nigeria, H.I.V. prevention in Uganda and maternal health assistance in Zambia. The agency has also helped to contain major outbreaks of Ebola.

Contrary to a claim by Mr. Trump, U.S. money has not been used to send condoms to Gaza for use by Hamas, health officials say. In a statement late last month, the International Medical Corps said that it had received more than $68 million from U.S.A.I.D. since October 2023 for its work in the enclave but that “no U.S. government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms.”

Instead, the group said, the money was used to operate two field hospitals, treat and diagnose malnutrition, deliver more than 5,000 babies and perform 11,000 surgeries.

Why was the freeze ordered?

For years, conservative critics have questioned the value of U.S. foreign aid programs. The Trump administration argues that the halt to foreign aid is necessary to examine whether U.S. funds are being wasted.

“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a recent statement. “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”

On his Truth Social platform Friday, Mr. Trump wrote, “CLOSE IT DOWN!” He has asserted without evidence that the agency was “run by radical lunatics.”

Mr. Rubio, who previously spoke out in support of the agency, has taken aim at the organization, faulting its employees for “deciding that they’re somehow a global charity separate from the national interest.”

He has insisted, however, that the takeover was “not about getting rid of foreign aid.” He said during a recent Fox News interview, “We have rank insubordination” in the agency, adding that U.S.A.I.D. employees had been “completely uncooperative, so we had no choice but to take dramatic steps to bring this thing under control.”

What have been the effects of the aid freeze?

As organizations across the globe reeled, the Trump administration switched gears. Mr. Rubio announced that “lifesaving humanitarian assistance” could continue but that the reprieve would be “temporary.”

But by then, hundreds of senior officials and workers who help distribute American aid had already been fired or put on leave, and many aid efforts remain paralyzed.

Dozens of clinical trials in South Asia, Africa and Latin America have been suspended. The freeze left people with experimental drugs and medical products in their bodies, cut them off from the researchers monitoring them and spread fear.

In South Africa, for example, the freeze shut down a U.S.A.I.D.-funded study of silicone rings inserted in women to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection.

About 2.4 million anti-malaria bed nets, manufactured to fulfill U.S.-funded orders and bound for countries across sub-Saharan Africa, were stuck in production facilities in Asia. Those contracts are frozen because the U.S.A.I.D. subcontractor that bought them is not allowed to talk to the manufacturer under the terms of the freeze.

In Uganda, a national anti-malaria program suspended spraying insecticide into village homes and halted shipments of bed nets for distribution to pregnant women and young children.

And in Syria, the executive order threatens a U.S. program supporting security forces inside a notorious camp, known as Al Hol, in the Syrian desert that holds tens of thousands of Islamic State members and their families, Syrian and U.S. officials said.

What was the reaction to the Trump order?

U.S.A.I.D. officials have been bracing for a drastic reduction to their ranks since contractors started being let go just days after the Trump administration’s stop-work order. But Democratic lawmakers say the moves to dismantle the agency or merge it with the State Department are illegal.

Two unions representing U.S.A.I.D. employees on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump, Mr. Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the agencies they lead. The suit argued that the reduction in personnel and the cancellation of global aid contracts were unconstitutional and violated the separation of powers.

It sought an injunction to stop the firing and furloughing of employees and the dismantling of the agency. It argued that U.S.A.I.D. cannot be unwound without the previous approval of Congress.

“What we’re seeing is an unlawful seizure of this agency by the Trump administration in a plain violation of basic constitutional principles,” said Robin Thurston, the legal director for Democracy Forward, one of two advocacy organizations that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees. He added that the administration had “generated a global humanitarian crisis.”

On Friday afternoon, after a hearing, Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he would issue a temporary restraining order pausing the administrative leave of 2,200 U.S.A.I.D. employees and a plan to withdraw nearly all the agency’s overseas workers within 30 days.