Washington —
On Sunday, the Trump administration announced it was placing most of all staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development in leave status worldwide, as it is rescinding 2,000 positions worldwide among the US-based staffs.
The transfer was the most recent and perhaps largest step yet in what President Donald Trump and savings partner Elon Musk claim they are attempting to achieve—rationing the 60-year-old development and giving agency as a part of a strategy to shrink the government, and the federal workforce, in general.
The decision is made following a federal judge this Friday authorizing the administration to proceed with the action to move thousands of USAID personnel from the workforce both in the U.S. and internationally. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied issuance to the employees of the request for the restriction of their access to the government in an ad hoc manner.
"As of 11: By 59 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 23, 2025, all USAID direct hires (with the exception of those whose duty assignments are for those things essential to the mission, core leadership, or special programs) will be placed on administrative leave on a worldwide basis, as per the IT information to USAID personnel reported by The Associated Press.
In the meantime, the agency announced a round of layoffs, the commencement of which resulted in the dismissal of 2,000 US front-line staff. The possibility of several Washington-based staff members being placed on paid leave, only for them to become finally jobless soon after, is what it would trigger.
The U.S. government's appointee director of USAID, deputy administrator Pete Marocco, has now stated that he will keep in the service around 600 mainly US-based personnel, partly to organize travel arrangements for USAID personnel and families back in other countries.
However, neither USAID nor State Department returned any requests for comment.
The push continues a monthlong effort to extinguish the agency, including closing the Washington, DC, headquarters and shutting down thousands of aid and development programs around the world after efforts to halt all foreign aid. Both Trump and Musk have argued that USAID services are ineffective and are part of a liberal cause.
Lawsuits charging relief administration elements' unions, along with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractors, and other respondents allege that the executive branch lacks both constitutional power to terminate independent agencies or congressionally chartered programs, and congressional authorization to do so.
Schemes of the current U.S. administration complicate decades of U.S. foreign policy, under which foreign assistance and development programs have benefited US national interests by securing and strengthening countries and economies and by developing relationships, a powerful tool of soft power for the United States to obtain foreign leverage.
The layoff and retirement notices are being added to thousands of USAID contractors receiving non-person names of termination in only a week, according to copies AP saw.
The opaqueness of the notification letters sent to USAID contractors (without naming or positions of the ones receiving the letter) could hinder the eligible evicted workers in claiming unemployment benefits, workers said.
A second judge to a second case in the same matter pertaining to USAID has put a temporary hold on an order to freeze aid to the nations last week and reasoned that despite a court order, the administration had continued to withhold payments despite his court order, and that it must, at a minimum, reimburse any such funds to programs serving the nations.
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