Forced leave starts for thousands under Trump plan to gut foreign aid agency
Under Donald Trump’s plan, the agency is to be left with fewer than 300 workers out of thousands.
Forced leave began worldwide on Friday for most employees of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), as federal workers’ associations turned to the courts to try to roll orders that have dismantled most of the agency and US- funded aid programmes around the world.
Under Donald Trump’s plan, the agency is to be left with fewer than 300 workers out of thousands.
Two current USAid employees and one former senior USAid official told The Associated Press of the administration’s plan, presented to remaining senior officials of the agency on Thursday.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because of a Trump administration order barring USAid staffers from talking to anyone outside their agency.
The agency is being slashed back from more than 8,000 direct hires and contractors. They, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired employees abroad, would run the few life-saving programmes that the administration says it intends to keep going for now.
It was not immediately clear whether the reduction to 300 would be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing more workers to return after what the Trump administration says is a review of which aid and development programmes it wants to resume.
The administration this week gave almost all USAid staff posted overseas 30 days, starting on Friday, to return to the US, with the government paying for their travel and moving costs.
Workers who choose to stay longer, unless they received a specific hardship waiver, might have to cover their own expenses, a notice on the USAid website said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a trip to the Dominican Republic on Thursday that the US government will continue providing foreign aid.
“But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest,” he told reporters.
The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), have targeted USAid hardest so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programmes.
Since President Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, a sweeping funding freeze has shut most of the agency’s programmes worldwide, and almost all its workers have been placed on administrative leave or furloughed.
Mr Musk and Mr Trump have spoken of eliminating USAid as an independent agency and moving surviving programmes under the State Department.
Democratic politicians and others call the move illegal without congressional approval.
The same argument was made by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees in their lawsuit, which asks the federal court in Washington to compel the reopening of USAid’s buildings, return its staff to work and restore funding.
Government officials “failed to acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of their actions, both as they pertain to American workers, the lives of millions around the world, and to US national interests”, the suit says.
