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USAID contractors and NGOs are suing the Trump administration over its foreign aid freeze, calling it an unconstitutional use of executive power.
Also in today’s edition: IOM is scrubbing its website of newly verboten language, and tips for job searching if you’ve been let go from USAID.
+ We're gathering insights from across the sector to understand what this unprecedented USAID shutdown and 90-day aid freeze means on the ground. Share your perspective to help us document this critical inflection point. Take our survey. All answers will be confidential.
Full court press
U.S. President Donald Trump's foreign aid freeze has devastated USAID’s partners, forcing mass layoffs and shutting down lifesaving programs. Now, major for-profit implementing partners and NGOs are fighting back in court, challenging the freeze as unconstitutional and seeking to unfreeze billions in stalled — and past-due — funding.
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“We believe that this is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court,” says Robert Nichols of the Nichols Liu law firm. The suit “is going to carry water for this industry.”
Fearing retaliation, many USAID partners stayed silent — until now. The lawsuit argues the administration’s actions caused “grievous irreparable harm” and violated federal law.
The freeze has left millions of people without aid. Programs tracking violence in Burkina Faso, treating disease in Bangladesh, and protecting minors in Central America have been halted.
Furthermore, USAID contractors are collapsing. Democracy International furloughed all 95 U.S. employees and 92% of overseas staff. DAI let go of 383 U.S. staffers and breached the terms of hundreds of leases and other contractual arrangements. Chemonics has furloughed 750 U.S.-based staff members and expects more layoffs.
“The reality on the ground is even more dire than those directives would suggest,” the complaint states, arguing the freeze exceeds executive authority. Chemonics, which runs USAID’s massive Global Health Supply Chain Program, says the Trump administration’s stop-work orders have stranded $150 million of health commodities in warehouses, while another $88.5 million of supplies are caught in transit. Not delivering those commodities on time, it adds, could result in more than half a million deaths from HIV/AIDS, malaria, and unmet reproductive health needs — including 215,000 pediatric deaths.
The legal battles are escalating — there are now three lawsuits challenging the administration's actions freezing foreign aid and dismantling USAID. A hearing in one of them is scheduled today and more suits are expected.
Read: Major new lawsuit filed by USAID contractors, NGOs challenges aid freeze
ICYMI: Chaos, staff cuts have 'degraded' USAID's ability to vet terrorist ties
General disarray
As lawsuits heat up, the Trump administration is apparently not letting up on its targeting of USAID.
The agency’s inspector general was fired Tuesday night, “with no reason given,” according to an official familiar with the situation.
Paul Martin has served as USAID’s inspector general for just over a year. His office monitored USAID programs for waste, fraud, and abuse — the type of activities Trump has said run rampant at the agency, my colleague Elissa Miolene writes.
Martin’s firing came in the form of an email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office, just a day after his office published a report that found the dismantling of USAID had curtailed the agency’s ability to vet humanitarian awards for terrorist links and monitor aid distributions in high-risk areas.
Read: USAID’s inspector general fired with ‘no reason given’
Jim class
Over the weekend, a makeshift tombstone appeared outside USAID headquarters: “RIP USAID, 1961-2025.” But is the agency really dead? Not so fast, said Jim Richardson, former director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance.
“This is certainly not the end of foreign assistance,” Richardson said during a recent Devex Pro event, noting courts and Congress still have their say. “Everybody knew what USAID was working on — it’s all public,” he said, adding that while he disagreed with former U.S. President Joe Biden’s policies, foreign assistance remains vital.
A USAID-State Department merger is also on the table, and Richardson assumed that's the way things will go. It’s not a new idea. However, during the first Trump administration, the president “didn’t really care,” Richardson quipped, adding that merging the two wouldn’t save much money and that the agencies operate “radically differently.”
Read: The end of USAID? For this Republican aid expert, it's too early to tell (Pro)
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Deep cuts
The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration is quietly removing references to DEI, gender-based violence, and LGBTQ+ rights from its website, ostensibly to avoid funding cuts from the Trump administration.
The current U.S. administration has derided diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives as “woke” ideology and blocked funding for related programs in multiple countries. The administration’s aid freeze has also forced IOM to lay off 3,000 employees in the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, or USRAP. “I wish I could say this is the end of the difficult decisions ahead. But I cannot,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope in an internal newsletter seen by Devex Senior Global Reporter Colum Lynch.
The funding cuts have also halted U.S. refugee resettlement, which had reached a 30-year high under Biden. Trump's executive order now favors admitting white Afrikaners. It is also cutting aid to South Africa due to its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and because of the government's land expropriation law, which the Trump administration claims discriminates against white farmers.
IOM isn’t the only U.N. agency on the Trump administration’s radar. Jonathan Shrier, acting U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, told delegates at an opening of the U.N. Women executive board meeting Tuesday that “DEI and related initiatives such as those rooted in ‘critical race theory’ are immoral and discriminatory.”
The remarks underscored the administration’s intention to aggressively promote its conservative social and religious views at the United Nations. They also set the stage for a confrontation with Washington’s traditional liberal Western partners, who have invested years of diplomatic work, alongside U.S. Democratic administrations, aimed at solidifying global support for a liberal worldview, Colum writes.
“We urge UN Women to focus on efforts to ensure the equality of women and girls, and insist upon avoiding a focus on radical causes such as DEI and gender ideology, neither of which will improve the functioning of UN Women and both of which are demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls,” Shrier said.
Read our scoops:
• UN migration agency expunges website of DEI catchphrases
• IOM sends out 3,000 pink slips in mass layoffs
Next steps
Weeks of chaos from the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID have left employees and partners in limbo. To help, Devex hosted a career emergency webinar featuring sector leaders, including former USAID Administrator Gayle Smith.
“While this is big for each of you … this is big for all of us,” Smith reassured. “This isn’t a one-off. We will be with you all the way through this.”
Panelists urged professionals to lean on networks and take action, Devex Careers Editor Justin Sablich writes. Scott Beale, former Peace Corps global operations chief, added that opportunities “won’t necessarily knock on your door, but if you knock on someone else’s door, some of those doors will eventually open.”
Despite challenges, development professionals remain in demand. “There are going to be spaces … emerging quickly tomorrow that need your talents,” said Fatema Sumar of Harvard’s Center for International Development.
Watch the full event recording: Career emergency — what to do if you’ve lost your USAID job
+ Join us today for a Devex Career event that will help you reframe meaningful career growth as a process of discovering and enacting the impact you want to make. Save your spot now.
In other news
Google Maps and Apple Maps rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America for U.S. users, following a government directive. [The New York Times]
The U.S. retreat from global commitments gives the EU a chance to strengthen ties with Africa — but is it ready to lead on health, climate, and geopolitics? [DW]
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is cutting $900 million from a federal education research agency that tracks the progress of America's students. [VOA]
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About the author
Helen Murphy
Helen is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor at Devex, where she edits coverage on global development in the Americas. Based in Colombia, she previously covered war, politics, financial markets, and general news for Reuters, where she headed the bureau, and for Bloomberg in Colombia and Argentina, where she witnessed the financial meltdown. She started her career in London as a reporter for Euromoney Publications before moving to Hong Kong to work for a daily newspaper.
