The Trump Administration is set to put all remaining civil servants at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on administrative leave, a move that will impact thousands of employees at the rapidly-dwindling agency.
According to The Hill, the decision was confirmed by an internal notice from the Office of the Administrator, declaring that the move will go into effect at midnight on Monday. In addition, 2,000 other employees will be fired as part of the White House’s ongoing “reduction-in-force” (RIF) efforts against the agency.
President Donald Trump has not even nominated someone for the position of Administrator, the head of the agency; he has instead appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as Acting Administrator, further confirming the president’s plans for any form of leadership at the agency to be temporary.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols declined to uphold a temporary block that had been issued against the Trump Administration’s plans to fire USAID workers. Judge Nichols declared in his ruling that the USAID employees who filed the lawsuit had “overstated” the negative impact of potential layoffs.
“The record now reflects that no USAID employee stationed abroad has been or imminently will be required to return to the United States within thirty days,” said Judge Nichols. “Rather, as matters presently stand, USAID employees stationed abroad have been given a choice.”
Following this legal victory, the White House moved ahead with its plans to fire even more USAID employees. An anonymous USAID official claimed that the layoffs of contractors led to a reduction in staff that ranged from 40% to 60%.
“There is no one left to do any work,” said the anonymous official.
Another anonymous USAID staffer described the layoffs as “psychological torment,” admitting that “we are, for now, dead.”
USAID has come under greater scrutiny since President Trump returned to office, with a focus on the agency’s excessive spending on foreign aid that seems almost completely unrelated to American national security. In one of the most egregious examples highlighted by the White House, USAID had spent over $50 million sending shipments of condoms to Gaza.
President Trump vowed on the campaign trail to dramatically reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, firing workers whose jobs are determined to be redundant or unnecessary, and to even abolish entire agencies that are found to be wasteful. The president has delegated much of the work in slashing federal jobs and spending to billionaire Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In addition to USAID, the Trump Administration has also targeted the Department of Education (ED) for total abolition. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has also claimed that President Trump intends to abolish the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).