USAID workers uncertain as lawsuit hits Trump administration over cuts : NPR

Unions representing foreign service officers and federal employees at the United States Agency for International Development are suing the Trump administration to halt efforts to dismantle the agency and freeze foreign aid.

“These actions have generated a global humanitarian crisis by abruptly halting the crucial work of USAID employees, grantees, and contractors. They have cost thousands of American jobs. And they have imperiled U.S. national security interests,” the lawsuit, filed in a Washington D.C. federal court on Thursday evening, said.

The lawsuit argues only Congress can dissolve the agency and calls the Trump administration’s actions “unconstitutional and illegal.”

The unions are asking the court to block efforts to shut down USAID operations and put staff on leave, to restore funding and to reopen the agency’s offices.

As the blockage in funding and staffing for USAID now works its way through the courts, USAID workers are still reeling from, and preparing for, the upheaval caused by this week’s announcements at the agency.

Senior staff submitted a list of around 600 people to State Department leadership whose work around the world they deemed essential and could not be disrupted.

But Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved less than 300 for exclusion from a broad policy that will put a large percentage of the 13,000+ workforce on administrative leave by Friday at midnight.

That’s according to multiple sources who shared copies of internal emails describing the forthcoming decisions with NPR on the condition of anonymity.

“There is no bottom to this stupidity,” said one USAID staffer who asked to speak anonymously for fear of reprisal from the Trump administration.

“Might as well shut it all down. 290 people won’t be able to do anything,” said a USAID official, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

In the Middle East Bureau, in both Washington D.C. and overseas, only 21 employees will be actively working at the end of the day on Thursday. The Africa Bureau will retain 12 people, four in Washington and eight in different regional hubs.

The Global Health Bureau, currently staffed at 147 people, and whose strategic priorities are to prevent child and maternal deaths, control the HIV/AIDS epidemic and prevent the spread of infectious diseases, will be reduced to 77 people.

During a joint press conference with the president of the Dominican Republic on Thursday, Rubio defended the Trump administration’s actions and reiterated that employees overseas have options, including extending beyond the 30-day window to return to the U.S., due to extenuating circumstances.

“We’re not trying to be disruptive to people’s personal lives,” Rubio said in Santo Domingo. “We’re not being punitive here. But this is the only way we’ve been able to get cooperation from USAID.”

“I’d have preferred not to do it this way,” he added. “When we tried to do it from the top down by getting cooperation from the central office and USAID, what we found instead are people trying to use the system to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order. We found people that were uncooperative in terms of giving us information and access.”

Still, at least 1,400 USAID employees had already lost access to their federal email accounts by Tuesday, and were unsure of how they’d receive updates on the ongoing status of their employment, according to the USAID official who worried over the cuts.

Another USAID staffer who provided access to an internal email and commented on the “stupidity” of the disruptions to the agency said that during a virtual staff meeting on Monday, people started leaving one by one as their access was cut off.

“It was like from a horror film,” they said.

It’s unclear how locally hired non-American employees in USAID overseas bureaus will be impacted by the ongoing reduction in the active workforce. The current administrative leave program appeared not to apply to locally employed staff.

However, the same staffers who spoke to NPR about the emails explained that USAID’s foreign service officers are being instructed to focus only on their return home, while grant money is rapidly being eliminated. If local staff are removed, the staffers continued, they could be impacted in their home countries, like Ukrainians who might be conscripted into military service if they are no longer doing relief work with USAID.

Managers condemned the ongoing culling of the agency by the Trump administration in emails to employees on Thursday afternoon.

In a message to the Middle East team, a senior official in the Middle East Bureau wrote that the “risk to safety and security of staff and families, to USG property, to the life-saving programs and activities we implement is unacceptably high.”

“I counsel you to elevate your concerns directly to your Chiefs of Missions to alert them to the risks they are taking on with the manner in which this drawdown is being carried forward,” he continued, calling the reduction in force a “stunning and irresponsible approach to the drawdown”

Democratic members of Congress have said the White House does not have the legal authority to shut down USAID as an agency. However, by removing funding and shrinking active staff to the bare bones, the Trump administration could avoid Congressional oversight or an official action by Congress to close the agency.

In his remarks Thursday, Rubio emphasized that the Trump administration will still be issuing foreign assistance.

“The United States will be providing foreign aid,” he said. “But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest.”