WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Agency for International Development workers — many in tears — carted away belongings through cheering crowds in a final visit to their now-closed headquarters Thursday as the Trump administration's rapid dismantling of the congressionally authorized agency moved into its final stages.
Notices sent out in mass mailings this week are terminating over 90% of USAID's contracts for humanitarian and development work around the world, and the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a judge's order requiring the administration to release billions of dollars in foreign aid.
The administration notified most USAID staffers in recent days that they were on leave or being fired, then gave thousands of those who worked in the Washington headquarters 15-minute time slots to clear out their desks under the escort of federal officers.
Some staffers wept as they carried out grocery bags and suitcases with what was left from their life's work.
“Heartbreaking,” 25-year-old Juliane Alfen said, carrying a small bag with a stuffed rabbit sticking out. Like hundreds of colleagues, Alfen received a form notice Monday that her firing “was in the best interest of government.”
“I felt like we made a difference,” Alfen said. “To see everything disappearing before our eyes in a matter of weeks is very scary.”
Supporters shouted encouragement and waved signs outside or drove by tapping their car horns. A little girl stood next to her mother holding a handwritten sign saying, “I am proud of you Daddy.” A woman who left the building loaded down with bags burst into tears at the cheers greeting her. A small crowd enveloped her in hugs.
USAID has been one of the biggest targets of a broad campaign by President Donald Trump and cost-costing chief Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to slash the size of the federal government.
Their actions have left only a small fraction of USAID employees on the job, slashed $60 billion in assistance overseas and upended decades of U.S. policy that foreign aid helps American interests abroad by stabilizing other countries and building alliances.
Trump and Musk have called USAID programs out of line with the Republican president’s agenda and asserted without evidence that its work is wasteful. In addition to its scope, the effort is extraordinary because it has not involved Congress, which authorized the agency and has provided its funding.
Already, organizations reported that thousands of USAID contracts for HIV programs in South Africa were permanently canceled. And despite an assertion from Musk that funding to fight Ebola outbreaks had been restored, The Associated Press obtained a termination notice for a project by the Baylor College of Medicine Children's Foundation that was poised to respond to Ebola cases in Uganda.
Others warned of profound strategic implications from USAID's shutdown.
“The American people deserve a transparent accounting of what will be lost — on counterterror, global health, food security, and competition,” Liz Schrayer, head of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes U.S. diplomatic and humanitarian efforts, said in a statement.
Devon Behrer, a USAID worker hired just three months ago, said helping carry out that work had always been her dream.
“My plan was to come here and go into development work. My plan went up in smoke Monday,” she said.
The way people’s lives were being swept away was “incredibly disrespectful," Behrer, 34, added. "There seems to be a lack of acknowledgment that we’re human.”
Staffers had pressed for weeks for permission to reenter the building to collect work shoes, family photos and other belongings. Some took flowers from a bucket on their way inside to place at a memorial wall honoring 99 USAID workers killed in the line of duty over the agency’s six decades. Staffers said security stopped them from placing the flowers.
Randy Chester, vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, a union representing USAID staffers, said he and others gathered outside “to say thank you for your service. We appreciate everything you’ve done and all the sacrifices you’ve made in service to your country.”
His is among several groups suing the Trump administration over the staff cuts and more than monthlong freeze on foreign assistance. While the administration’s efforts to slash the size of the federal government are embroiled in various lawsuits, court challenges to halt the shutdown of USAID have been unsuccessful so far.
Late Wednesday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a judge's order that had given the Trump administration a deadline this week to release billions of dollars in foreign aid. Chief Justice John Roberts said that order will remain on hold until the high court has a chance to weigh in more fully.
The court’s late-night intervention is a temporary step as the justices consider the case, but their eventual determination could be pivotal in the increasingly fraught legal battles playing out nationwide.
It halted a decision from a federal judge who said the administration had given no sign of complying with his nearly two-week-old order to pause the funding freeze. Trump paused foreign aid in an executive order on his first day in office.
A report from the Congressional Research Service this month said congressional authorization is required “to abolish, move, or consolidate USAID.” Republicans, who hold slim majorities in the House and the Senate, have made no pushback against the administration's actions.
That includes placing 4,080 staffers who work across the globe on leave Monday. That was joined by a “reduction in force” affecting an additional 1,600 employees, a State Department spokesman said.
It’s unclear how many of the more than 5,600 USAID employees who have been fired or placed on leave work in Washington. A notice on the agency's website said staff at other locations will have the chance to collect their personal belongings at a later date.
Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly said in a statement that targeting USAID employees was “unwarranted and unprecedented.”
Connolly, whose district includes a sizable federal workforce, said they're part of the “world's premier development and foreign assistance agency” who save “millions of lives every year.”
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Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurst and Nathan Ellgren in Washington contributed.
Gary Fields And Ellen Knickmeyer, The Associated Press
