Devex Pro special report: The fall of USAID — a timeline of the dismantling of an agency

At the start of the year, the United States Agency for International Development was by many measures the most powerful and influential agency in the world of international aid. It had a workforce of over 10,000, annual spending of more than $30 billion, and a reputation as the fastest and most important funder of humanitarian aid. But in the time since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, USAID’s offices have been closed. Its senior leaders have been sent home. Tens of billions of dollars of aid has been frozen. The pictures have been taken off the walls. Its website and its social media accounts are down. At USAID and its partner organizations, thousands of people — perhaps tens of thousands — have already been laid off. In this exclusive report for Devex Pro readers, we lay out the key events of the last month. The first days The storm clouds began to gather for USAID on Jan. 20, the very first day of the Trump presidency, when he signed an executive order pausing foreign aid for 90 days. Before the election, there had been signs that Republicans wanted big changes — the Project 2025 blueprint for a future Republican administration, a 900-page document published by the conservative Heritage Foundation, warned that cuts were necessary. But even so, the scale of the cuts was unexpected. In the weeks leading up to the inauguration the development sector had been cautiously hopeful that the Republican approach would be similar to that of the first Trump term, which saw foreign aid spending largely preserved. In the first days, confusion swirled. What would the pause mean? USAID partners struggled to find clarity, with few answers forthcoming, and USAID officials told not to talk to anyone. But then, just days later, a thunderbolt struck. The U.S. State Department ordered USAID and its partners to stop virtually all work. In the wake of the stop-work order The stop-work order first caused shock, then panic. The order contained some limited exemptions, particularly for “emergency food assistance.” But with little clarity about what was and wasn’t included in order, USAID’s thousands of partners were left with little idea about how to proceed. Staff and organizations were told that they could apply for a waiver, but many were left baffled by the process of applying for these, and progress in awarding them proved glacially slow. A few days after the initial order, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, received a limited waiver, but aid workers told Devex they were given little clarity about what was and wasn’t included. Implementers and NGOs struggled with the huge questions the stop-work order left them with — not least how to financially survive the next three months, and what the impact would be on vulnerable individuals who rely on USAID support. At times, the confusion reached Orwellian proportions — one briefing on the stop-work order was canceled by USAID staff because giving the briefing itself would count as work. Implementers were concerned not just about new work, but that which they had already done. USAID typically pays for services around three months in arrears, meaning that its partners were owed several billion. USAID promised it would make “equitable adjustments” to compensate, but offered no information about what those adjustments might be. Altogether, according to Devex calculations, the sector faced losses of almost $70 billion: $4 billion in new awards that would not be issued over the 90 days, $56 billion in awards that had already been made and might not now be honored, and several billion more in money owed for work already done. Within the agency itself, USAID staff pushed back against the expectations of the government, but the administration acted swiftly to purge what it saw as disloyalty. By the middle of the week, many of the most senior leaders at USAID had been placed on administrative leave for not complying with recent executive orders. The agency’s chief information officer, Jason Gray, was placed in charge. Almost immediately, the layoffs began at USAID. By the end of the week, around 1,000 institutional support contractors, officially employed by third parties, had been told their services were no longer needed. Both nonprofit and for-profit partners, meanwhile, began planning for layoffs of their own. The wood chipper By this point, the purge had begun in earnest. People from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — the cost-cutting agency headed up by multibillionaire Elon Musk — had entered the building and set to work. More senior individuals at USAID who protested against their orders were themselves forced out. The director of employee relations, who had refused to place senior employees on leave, was himself placed on leave. The director of security, who refused to allow DOGE employees access to areas where they had no security clearance, was similarly offered a chance to spend more time with his family. And up to 100 members of the legislative and public affairs team were told to join them. Over the weekend, the agency’s website was taken down and its social media accounts rendered inactive. Many of the agency’s staff lost access to crucial systems — a particular issue for those working abroad in sensitive environments. Meanwhile, USAID’s financial systems were taken down, meaning that even for programs with waivers, there was now no one to make payments, and no tools to make payments with. In case anyone doubted the intentions here, Musk spent the weekend tweeting out his glee at these events. “USAID is a criminal organization,” he wrote on X, the social media platform he owns. “Time for it to die.” In the small hours of Monday morning, Feb. 3, he followed up. “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” he wrote. “Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” That same day, the agency’s headquarters were closed. As protesters gathered, Democratic lawmakers tried to enter the building, but were told to go to the State Department instead. On Tuesday, Feb. 4, the offices remained closed. Staff were increasingly finding themselves shut out of crucial systems — and more and more were offered buyouts to never come to work again. By the time protesters gathered outside the shuttered offices, the news had gone out: Almost all USAID staff were being purged. The Trump administration dithered over numbers — at first there were to be only 294 people left at the agency. Then it was 611. Either way, USAID was to be reduced to a shadow of its former self. For almost all the other staff, confusion reigned. Staff posted abroad were to be given 30 days to get back home. But there was next to no information about how this might happen. USAID had no way to pay anyone, or to communicate with its staff. No one seemed to have a complete list of all the people to be moved, or any plan to do so. The way ahead Now, the human cost was becoming clear. In Ukraine, where USAID has spent billions supporting humanitarian projects, services ground to a halt. A famine early warning system suddenly went dark. In the Middle East, NGOs working at a camp filled with the families of former ISIS fighters warned that they had no money to do their jobs. Across the aid sector, the impact was still being felt. USAID’s thousands of partners found themselves suddenly flailing to survive. Tens of thousands of jobs were estimated to be at risk. Some of USAID’s largest partners furloughed thousands of workers. Before the review program even began, hundreds of programs were summarily canceled. By the end of the third week after the stop-work order, the fightback had begun in earnest. A flurry of lawsuits hit the courts, and judges began to issue orders to hold up the rapid attack on USAID’s work, first delaying the dismissal of staff, and then, in a ruling of particular note, reversing the stop-work order altogether for work predating Jan. 20 this year. Would even this be enough, however? The worry is that USAID’s systems may already be crippled beyond repair. Even if the lawsuits are successful, will they be enough to reverse what damage has already been done?