A new lawsuit is pushing the Trump administration to reinstate USAID’s personal service contractors — stating that both the foreign aid freeze and stop-work order have caused “irreparable injury” to those staff members.
These contractors, referred to in the court documents as USPSCs, perform typical USAID functions but are hired through a separate federal acquisition mechanism. They were some of the first to be removed from the agency weeks ago, and as the U.S. Agency for International Development has continued to be dismantled, their ranks have continued to dissolve.
There are more than 1,000 PSCs who work at USAID, the majority of which have already lost their jobs, been locked out of their accounts, or been suspended from the agency. On Wednesday morning, hundreds more PSCs received generic termination notices — emails that did not explain why staff had been terminated or even include their names, according to a court filing for another related case.
About the author
Elissa Miolene
Elissa Miolene reports on USAID and the U.S. government at Devex. She previously covered education at The San Jose Mercury News, and has written for outlets like The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Washingtonian magazine, among others. Before shifting to journalism, Elissa led communications for humanitarian agencies in the United States, East Africa, and South Asia.
