So I heard some rumors about US policy affecting Rust. That Rust formely got money from USAID, and also the thing about the US government should promote memory safety (or smth like that?) was removed.
Could that be relevant to this story, or is that a complete sidetrack?
This has absolutely nothing to do with the US government. This current drama started before January 20th.
Rust has never as far as I'm aware or can tell via google recieved money from USAID. Though amusingly there has been money invested by USAID to combat it's namesake - a category of fungus - from destroying coffee plants.
What you're probably thinking of with regards to the US government is that the Trump administration has been deleting all sorts of websites and guidance, and one of the things deleted was a report by the White House Office of the National Cyber Director calling on developers to use memory safe languages [0]. Various other similar documents (e.g. randomly picked via google [1]) still exist and it's unlikely that this document was deleted because of its contents and not because the white house was just destroying the entire category of things related to the ONCD - even the landing page 404s [2].
That report was just a "this is a good idea", I don't believe it ever came with any funding or support.
It wouldn't surprise me if other similar things were deleted too, that's just the one I saw hit the news, so I'm guessing that's the news you saw.
Could that be relevant to this story, or is that a complete sidetrack?
Edit: Asking because the timing is curious.