WASHINGTON — As part of the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, thousands of employees who have been terminated or placed on leave will have a limited time on Thursday and Friday to clear their desks.
USAID put 4,080 employees worldwide on leave beginning Monday. According to a State Department spokesperson in an email, this was accompanied by a “reduction in force” affecting an additional 1,600 employees.
USAID has emerged as a primary target in President Donald Trump and Trump advisor Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s broader initiative to reduce the size of the federal government. These actions leave a small number of USAID employees still working.
Trump and Musk have acted swiftly to close the foreign aid agency, claiming its programs are incompatible with the Republican president’s agenda and alleging, without proof, that its operations are wasteful. Besides the scale, their effort is remarkable because it has bypassed Congress, which established and funds the agency.
A Congressional Research Service report from earlier in the month stated that congressional authorization is needed to “abolish, move, or consolidate USAID.” However, the Republican-controlled House and Senate have not opposed the administration’s actions. Furthermore, the administration states it is eliminating over 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in U.S. assistance around the world, leaving virtually nothing to fund.
It is uncertain how many of the more than 5,600 USAID employees who have been fired or placed on leave are located at the agency’s Washington headquarters. According to a notice on the agency’s website, staff at other locations will be able to collect their belongings later.
The notice detailed instructions for when specific employee groups should arrive to undergo security screening and be escorted to their former workstations. Those being terminated must return all USAID-issued property. Employees on administrative leave were instructed to keep their USAID-issued materials, including diplomatic passports, “until they are separated from the agency.”
Many USAID employees considered the administration’s conditions for retrieving their possessions to be disrespectful. According to the notice, employees were prohibited from bringing weapons, including firearms, “spear guns,” and “hand grenades.” Each employee is allotted only 15 minutes at their former workstation.
The administration’s efforts to cut the federal government are facing numerous lawsuits, but legal challenges to temporarily halt the USAID shutdown have failed.
However, on Tuesday, a federal judge gave the Trump administration a deadline this week to release billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, stating that it had shown no indication of complying with his nearly two-week-old court order to ease the funding freeze. Late Wednesday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked that order, with Chief Justice John Roberts stating that it will remain on hold until the high court has a chance to weigh in more fully.
That court action stemmed from a lawsuit filed by nonprofit organizations over the cutoff of foreign assistance through USAID and the State Department. Trump froze the money through an executive order on his first day in office, targeting programs he considered wasteful and incompatible with his foreign policy goals.
Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly stated that the attack on USAID employees was “unwarranted and unprecedented.” Connolly, whose district includes a sizable federal workforce, described the aid agency workers as part of the “world’s premier development and foreign assistance agency” who save “millions of lives every year.”
