WASHINGTON — Across the globe, workers from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are feeling the impact of the Trump administration’s recent decisions. On Thursday and Friday, thousands of employees who have been dismissed or placed on leave have a short window to retrieve their personal items and vacate their workplaces. This comes after 4,080 staff members were placed on leave earlier in the week, accompanied by a “reduction in force” that is set to affect another 1,600 employees, according to a State Department representative.
The USAID has become a significant focus in the current administration’s drive to drastically cut the size of the federal government. This initiative, supported by the Department of Government Efficiency and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, has led to substantial reductions in the agency’s workforce. President Donald Trump and Musk aim to close down the foreign aid entity, critiquing its programs for not aligning with the president’s policy objectives and alleging, without substantiation, that its efforts are inefficient. Notably, this broad overhaul has proceeded without the involvement of Congress, which originally sanctioned and financed the agency.
A recent Congressional Research Service report underscored the necessity of congressional authorization for actions like the abolition or restructuring of USAID. Despite this requirement, there has been little resistance from the Republican-controlled Congress to the administration’s initiatives. The administration has escalated these actions by declaring the termination of over 90% of USAID’s foreign aid agreements, wiping out $60 billion in U.S. global assistance.
Details remain sparse regarding the proportion of the agency’s 5,600 affected employees who work out of its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the agency’s online notice informs offsite staff that opportunities to gather personal belongings will be available at later dates. For those departing, specific times have been assigned for security screenings and supervised access to former workspaces. Employees were instructed to surrender all agency-issued property unless they are only on administrative leave, in which case they keep items like diplomatic passports until their separation is finalized.
A sense of affront pervades many USAID workers due to the government’s stipulations on reclaiming personal effects. Security protocols even list prohibitions on weapons such as “spear guns” and “hand grenades,” with each former employee granted only a brief 15-minute visit to their workstations.
As the government pushes forward with its contraction plans, legal disputes have emerged. However, attempts to legally pause the closure of USAID have not prevailed. In a recent twist, a federal judge mandated the administration to release billions in U.S. foreign aid, citing non-compliance with a court order from two weeks prior that mandated loosening a funding freeze. Yet, a Supreme Court intervention late Wednesday postponed the judge’s order, with Chief Justice John Roberts indicating a more comprehensive review by the court.
This legal confrontation stems from a lawsuit by nonprofits challenging the suspension of foreign aid disbursements by USAID and the State Department, a freeze initiated through a presidential executive order on Trump’s inauguration day targeting what he deemed misaligned and unwarranted expenditures.
Congressman Gerald Connolly, representing Virginia, expressed strong objections to the actions against USAID employees, describing them as “unwarranted and unprecedented.” Connolly praised the agency’s workforce as a vital component of the “world’s premier development and foreign assistance agency,” renowned for saving “millions of lives every year.”
