Devex Newswire: The fight between USAID staff and Trump heats up

At what point do we officially declare USAID dead? President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have done everything in their power (legally or not) to bury it. Do we really need a Sharpie-signed executive order from Trump to formalize its demise? When you erase over 95% of an agency’s workforce, doesn’t that spell the end of said agency?

Probably, but not everyone is ready to concede defeat. We catch you up on another wrenching week for an aid community trying to do everything in their power to fight back.

The battle intensifies

Let’s start with that astonishing 95% figure, which no doubt smashed the hopes of those clinging to the life raft that they might have a job down the line despite the near-blanket administrative leaves, furloughs, and firings.

At first, I was confused. Could I really be reading the numbers correctly?  A 10,000-plus-strong workforce sliced down to barely 300? Surely, there wouldn’t be just 78 staff members left at the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, tasked with processing lifesaving waivers. There’s no way 12 people would cover the entire continent of Africa.

But I read that right.

The very next day, my colleague Elissa Miolene reported that those numbers doubled, which sounds impressive but not really when you consider we’re still talking about a paltry 600 USAID employees being spared.

“It just speaks to the incompetence and complete lack of thought behind the takeover of USAID,” a former USAID official, who spoke to Elissa on the condition of anonymity, said at a virtual press conference organized by former and current USAID staff members on Friday. “If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t have to walk this back and change it.”

“We are unsure if Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio and President Trump are going to abandon us overseas, or abandon us when we land on American soil,” said another USAID staffer in Asia.

Rubio to the rescue? Interestingly, Rubio glided through his Senate confirmation hearing, propelled by the belief that a foreign policy institutionalist wouldn’t be hell-bent on tearing those institutions down. Was that belief misplaced?

I’ve spoken to some who still hope that once the dust settles — and Musk’s attention is diverted elsewhere — Rubio might quietly salvage parts of USAID.

I’m no mind reader, but so far, he’s given no inkling of that. To the contrary, he’s appeared exasperated by the agency.

“I said very clearly during my confirmation hearing that every dollar we spend and every program we fund will be aligned with the national interest of the United States and USAID has a history of sort of ignoring that and deciding that they’re somehow a global charity separate from the national interest,” he recently told reporters.

Read: Trump will double USAID staff numbers to 600, up from 300 yesterday

Plus: The end of foreign aid as we know it

+ Listen: For the latest episode of our podcast series, Devex’s Adva Saldinger, Sara Jerving, and Elissa Miolene break down how the Trump administration dismantled USAID.

Turning to the courts: Some people aren’t waiting around to psychoanalyze Rubio — they’re suing him, along with Trump, the U.S. State Department, USAID, the U.S. Treasury Department, and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the unions representing USAID employees, argues that the Trump administration’s actions to shutter the agency are unconstitutional.

During an emergency hearing last night, that lawsuit gave some USAID employees a brief reprieve. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, blocked Rubio from putting 2,200 employees on leave at 11:59 p.m. Friday, my colleague Adva Saldinger reports.

The order — which Nichols called “very limited” — also requires that the rapid recall of USAID employees serving abroad be halted as the case continues. USAID employees should also have their access to computer systems restored.

But the victory is just the start of a long legal journey — and the stakes are high, not just for thousands of USAID employees, but for the people they help.

The lawsuit details the worldwide impacts of the Trump administration’s actions, highlighting the fact that clinics stopped distributing HIV medication; that humanitarian operations in Syrian refugee camps were forced to stop; and that soup kitchens feeding nearly a million people facing famine in Khartoum, Sudan, were shut down.

“Without judicial intervention it will only get worse,” the lawsuit argues.

Read: Judge temporarily halts plan to put thousands of USAID staff on leave

Plus: Lawsuit seeks to halt dismantling of USAID

Left in the dark: The human toll of USAID's global recall of employees

+ Join us on Monday, Feb. 10, for a Devex Pro briefing with Jim Richardson, who was director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance in the first Trump administration. He will share his perspectives on the aid freeze, USAID reorganization, and what the future of U.S. foreign assistance might look like. Save your spot now.

This event is part of a series to navigate the uncertainties of the aid freeze, exclusively for Devex Pro members. Not yet gone Pro? Start your 15-day free trial now to access the event and all our exclusive offerings!

The global fallout

Aid advocates have not only been making the moral case for not cutting children off from lifesaving HIV treatments, for example, but they’ve been making the national security case as well. And perhaps no place poses a more immediate threat from the aid freeze than Al Hol, a refugee camp in the Syrian desert that houses the wives, children, and families of Islamic State fighters, along with thousands displaced by Syria’s decade-long war.

For years, organizations funded by USAID and the State Department have been responsible for maintaining camps such as Al Hol — providing food, fuel, and essentials for the 40,000 detained there. And for years, experts have warned that if those organizations walk away, the camps will become a recruiting ground for terrorist organizations, Elissa writes.

That’s beginning to look like a distinct possibility. By Monday, the two-week waiver granted to coordinate Al Hol’s relief operations will expire. And even if that waiver is renewed, there’s no guarantee that money will come along with it. The organization leading those operations — the Virginia-based nonprofit Blumont — has not been paid by the U.S. government since Trump’s stop-work orders began.

“The reality is when people suddenly don’t have the food, water, shelter, and opportunities that they have relied on, communities are going to look elsewhere,” a humanitarian official familiar with the situation tells Elissa. “And in those places, it is groups like ISIS who are looking to capitalize on the confusion.”

Read: How the collapse of USAID could unleash ‘an ISIS army in waiting’

(Un)reliable ally: Meanwhile, in Ukraine, another security hotspot that until recently was a major recipient of U.S. aid, the country is bracing for the taps to be turned off all while still trying to fend off Russia’s onslaught.

USAID gave billions of dollars to support a wide swath of programs, including lifesaving humanitarian assistance, health systems, equipment to restore heat and electricity supplies after Russian attacks, farmers and food exporters to supply grain worldwide, and anti-corruption and European integration reforms.

Now, NGOs on the ground are feeling the aid freeze, writes Devex contributor Gabriella Jóźwiak.

Ivona Kostyna, co-founder of Veteran Hub, a national support service for soldiers, veterans, and their families, had to effectively shut down her organization but was able to get outside funding to resume operations. Still, she’s not optimistic.

“It will be a huge challenge for us to find sustainable funding that will last years, not months,” she said. “That’s something that was very crucial about U.S. funding. Until last Saturday, we saw the U.S. as an ally that you could rely on.”

Read: What loss of USAID funding could mean for Ukraine

Waivering in Afghanistan: The situation is just as dire, if not more so, in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is (or at least was) the largest donor, making almost $21 billion available to the country since it withdrew its military forces in 2021.

Rubio has granted waivers that would allow “life-saving humanitarian work” to continue in Afghanistan — but that hasn’t eased the confusion and fear.

One humanitarian official in Afghanistan tells my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz that their U.S. government agency partners are gone. When they joined their weekly meeting with counterparts at the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance about the waivers, no one showed up.

Moreover, even if they resume operations, NGOs can’t afford to take the risk of assuming they will be reimbursed by the U.S. given the ambiguous wording of the waivers — another common complaint.

“The waiver from the State Department says it covers ‘subsistence assistance,’ but we’re not quite sure exactly what that means,” the humanitarian official tells Jesse.

Rubio firmly dismissed such concerns during a trip to Costa Rica, saying he had “issued a blanket waiver” for programs that are “lifesaving.” He mentioned food, medicine, or “anything that is immediate and urgent” as qualifying. “I don’t know how much more clear we can be than that,” he said.

“If some organization is receiving funds from the United States and does not know how to apply for a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization.”

Read: NGOs in Afghanistan left guessing on waivers as humanitarian aid stalls

No one on the other line: Rubio’s words likely sound tone-deaf to the thousands of organizations trying to navigate the waiver process with a practically nonexistent USAID staff to help them.

Last week, some programming under the U.S. President’s Emergency Relief for Aids Relief, or PEPFAR was granted a waiver. And yesterday, my colleague Sara Jerving Devex obtained a copy of waiver guidance for other types of global health programming, including tuberculosis, malaria, acute risks of maternal and child mortality, severe acute malnutrition, and other life-threatening diseases and health conditions.

But USAID has placed almost all global direct hire staff on leave, and USAID staffers tell Devex that disbursements to implementing partners have not gone out, so partners cannot resume the lifesaving work even with the waiver.

“Leaving behind just a few people in countries overseas to manage these very complex grants and awards is completely irresponsible,” a USAID employee in the global health bureau who has been told they will be placed on administrative leave tells Sara. “Decimating Usaid’s staff and at the same time expecting them to deliver the resources for these minimal life-saving services is a recipe for disaster.”

Read: What's included in the USAID global health waiver

ICYMI: Some PEPFAR programs get waiver to restart operations

+ For more content like this, sign up to Devex CheckUp, our weekly newsletter with front-line and behind-the-scenes reporting on global health.

Brits buck the trend: Before the U.S. clampdown on aid, the United Kingdom was notorious for gutting its own aid apparatus. But could things finally be changing after years of unrelenting cuts?

Perhaps.

The U.K. is delivering significantly more bilateral aid than expected this year — including a 10% increase for countries in Africa — after avoiding budget cuts widely feared just months ago, my colleague Rob Merrick reports.

A long-delayed funding breakdown for the 2024-2025 financial year ending in March shows £3.2 billion (almost $4 billion) allocated for regional programs — compared with an anticipated £2.7 billion, and double the £1.58 billion spent in 2023-2024.

Speaking to Rob, U.K. Development Minister Anneliese Dodds argues that the settlement would “provide stability after some very turbulent years,” saying: “We’ve avoided any reduction to planned budgets.”

Read: UK bilateral aid rises sharply after predicted cuts averted

Failed blueprint: “Turbulent” is a diplomatic understatement. When the much-revered Department for International Development was “merged” into the U.K.’s mighty Foreign Office, it became a shell of itself. That doesn’t augur well for USAID, which is also in the process of being absorbed into the State Department, where it too may be defanged.

Rob lists six lessons on what the U.S. might expect based on the U.K.’s development experiment — none of which inspires much hope.

One important lesson: Expertise vanishes, and may never return. One study found that even today, a quarter of positions overseeing major U.K. development programs remain unfilled, while a second found remaining staff members were “disempowered and demoralized.”

And just think: DFID didn’t shed 95% of its workforce right off the bat — like USAID has.

Another lesson that applies to the USAID-State merger: diplomacy and development are two distinct skill sets. “Diplomacy requires languages and understanding of negotiating skills and trade-off management, and you're always dealing with short-term issues. Development, by contrast, is about money and project management and expertise, and often about the long term,” says Mark Lowcock, formerly DFID’s top civil servant.

So maybe we should stop calling it a merger and start calling it what it is — a hostile takeover?

Andrew Mitchell, the former U.K. development minister, would probably agree.

Recalling the chaotic death of the U.K.’s dedicated aid department five years ago, he remarks: “I learned as a young banker in the City [of London] that there is no such thing as a merger: one side wins and the other side loses.”

Read: 6 lessons for the US from the UK's aid department's traumatic demise

Dismantling without a merger: How Trump and Musk undermined USAID

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