How Trump gutted America’s $40 billion aid agency in two weeks
Summary
The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development appears to be a test case for the new administration.The cuts came so fast that one dismissed employee had to be rehired to process other employees’ time sheets.
Photos of projects that the U.S. Agency for International Development had funded around the world—girls playing soccer in South America, families getting food in eastern Africa—were gone, and in their place were strips of nails and empty picture frames against white walls.
Over the course of less than two weeks, the Trump administration largely dismantled the work of a 10,000-person, $40 billion foreign-assistance agency and the thousands of people in nonprofits and other groups that work with it. By Monday, it had closed the agency’s main building and pulled down its website. On Tuesday, all of USAID’s Washington facilities were closed, as the agency prepared to put nearly all of its remaining 1,400 staffers on administrative leave, two officials said.
USAID appears to be a test case for whether the Trump administration can effectively restructure a decades-old agency without meeting much legal or political resistance. So far, the answer seems to be yes.
Some outside groups say they can’t get paid for work they have already done. The few officials who remain are forwarding past-due invoices, trying to walk a line between potentially violating a directive from President Trump and violating federal contracting rules.
Stefanie Leigh Plant, a 40-year old contractor for USAID’s global health program, was fired via email, with her health insurance severed three days later. “That’s when the incredulity began setting in," she said.
Photos were removed from USAID’s office walls.
USAID was established in 1961 to fund efforts to manage disease outbreaks and reduce child mortality, among other aid programs. It has been kept as a distinct agency from the State Department for decades in part to avoid giving the appearance that aid was directly tied to diplomatic requests.
That goal has run headlong into Trump’s America First approach and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is seeking to trim billions of dollars in government spending. The Trump administration has started to fold USAID into the State Department, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio stepping in as its acting administrator. Senate Foreign Relations Chair Sen. Jim Risch (R., Idaho) said he would support merging the two. Some Democratic lawmakers who support USAID tried to enter the building Monday but were shut out by security guards. “Is DOGE in there?" one of the lawmakers asked.
“You cannot wave away an agency that you don’t like or that you disagree with by executive order or by literally storming into the building," Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) said.
The White House said in a statement Monday that for decades USAID has been “unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous—and in many cases, malicious—pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats."
Longtime USAID officials acknowledged that the process for delivering aid could be inefficient. The Trump administration pointed to examples of U.S. dollars being used to fund diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Serbia and a transgender opera in Colombia.
Representatives of USAID and DOGE didn’t respond to requests for comment. A State Department spokesperson declined to comment beyond Rubio’s recent statements.
As DOGE representatives canvassed the building, some USAID staff weren’t sure who was working for that operation, suspecting that some might be dressed in suits and others in puffer jackets.
Some of the Trump administration’s actions, such as furloughing contractors, have been broadly legal, but others appear to be impinging on Congress’s authority, said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Center for Global Health Policy and Politics at Georgetown University.
“They see the U.S. aid agencies and infrastructures as weaker than the rest of the government, so they are trying to see what they can get away with," Kavanagh said.
After Trump was elected in November, USAID employees knew changes were coming, but veterans of prior Republican administrations had found changes to their programs less drastic than feared.
When Trump on Jan. 24 not only paused new foreign-aid funding, but also issued a stop-work order—preventing outside groups from using U.S. funding they had already received—it became clear this time would be different. Groups that relied on USAID funding laid off hundreds of staffers.
Work that was halted, according to employees and contractors, included the U.S.’s efforts to stop the spread of an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, an outbreak of the Marburg virus disease in Tanzania, and a multicountry outbreak of Mpox.
Most employees of a field hospital in Gaza were abruptly terminated last week, said Adam Hamawy, a plastic surgeon working nearby. The hospital administrator sent a text message to the terminated staff, saying they would be paid a final $400.
Waivers have now been granted to allow certain emergency humanitarian programs to get funds, although employees and recipients said they had received limited guidance about how to interpret which programs qualify. “This is not about getting rid of foreign aid," Rubio said Monday on Fox News. “There are things we do through USAID that we should continue to do, that make sense."
Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), one of the lawmakers protesting the USAID shutdown Monday, said the stop-work order halted the deliveries of firewood to Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines.
On Jan. 27, some 60 senior career employees, including the ethics and employment lawyers, were put on administrative leave and escorted out of the Ronald Reagan building in downtown Washington, forced to hand over the security badges they needed to swipe out.
Lawmakers were barred from entering USAID headquarters on Monday.
Nicholas Gottlieb, the agency’s director of employee and labor relations, later sent an email saying that after review, he found the decision to put dozens of senior employees on leave unjustified and that there had been no evidence of misconduct. Two hours later, he emailed to say that he himself had been put on leave, according to employees.
On Jan. 28, hundreds of contractors were laid off.
Last week, the order came down that all artwork throughout the organization would have to be removed. USAID officials expect that there will be a future notice putting more staff on administrative leave.
Termination notices often arrived outside normal working hours. Some contractors started hearing that their colleagues had lost their jobs in the morning and watched the hours tick by until their notices arrived at night. For some overseas, dismissal has meant trying to figure out how to get back to the U.S. with their families.
On Saturday, DOGE representatives sought access to sensitive systems at USAID’s building in Washington. Security officials at the agency initially resisted the DOGE team’s requests, which some people familiar with the confrontation said included demands for access to personnel information. The security officials, John Voorhees and his deputy, then were put on administrative leave for not complying, people familiar with the episode said.
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper," Musk said on social media. “USAID is a criminal organization."
Vivian Salama contributed to this article.
Write to Joel Schectman at joel.schectman@wsj.com, Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com, Laura Kusisto at Laura.Kusisto@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com