The administration of US President Donald Trump on Thursday presented a plan to dramatically cut staffing worldwide for US aid projects as part of its dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), leaving fewer than 300 workers out of thousands.
Late on Thursday, US federal workers associations filed suit asking a federal court to stop the shutdown, arguing that Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.
Two USAID employees and one former senior USAID official said the administration’s plan was presented to remaining senior officials of the agency on Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to a Trump administration order barring USAID staffers from talking to anyone outside their agency.
Photo: Reuters
The plan would leave fewer than 300 staffers on the job out of what are currently 8,000 direct hires and contractors. They, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired international staffers abroad, would run the few life-saving programs that the administration has said it intends to keep going for the time being.
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 programs it wants to resume.
The administration earlier this week gave almost all USAID staffers posted overseas 30 days, starting yesterday, 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 Web site said on Thursday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a trip to the Dominican Republic on Thursday said that the US government would 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, have targeted USAID hardest so far in an unprecedented challenge to the federal government and many of its programs.
Since Trump’s inauguration, a sweeping funding freeze has shut down most of the agency’s programs worldwide, and almost all of its workers have been placed on administrative leave or furloughed. Musk and Trump have spoken of eliminating USAID as an independent agency and moving surviving programs under the US Department of State.
Democratic lawmakers and others have called 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 staffers 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 said.
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