WASHINGTON — (AP) — Forced leaves pulling all but a small fraction of staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development off the job around the world began Friday, while employees turned to federal courts to try to roll back the Trump administration's swift dismantling of the six-decade-old aid agency and its programs worldwide.
A judge was holding a hearing Friday afternoon in the lawsuit from federal workers associations, who argue that President Donald Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.
“CLOSE IT DOWN,” Trump said Friday on social media of USAID.
Crews used duct tape to block out the agency’s name on a sign outside its Washington headquarters Friday, and a flag was taken down. Someone placed a bouquet of flowers outside the door.
A group of a half-dozen USAID officials speaking to reporters Friday strongly disputed assertions from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the most essential life-saving programs abroad were getting waivers to continue. With all but several hundred staffers forced out and funding stopped, the agency has “ceased to exist,” one official on the call said.
The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have targeted USAID hardest so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programs.
The administration told remaining USAID officials on Thursday afternoon that it planned to exempt 297 employees from global leave and furloughs ordered for at least 8,000 staffers and contractors, according to USAID staffers and officials.
Late that night, a new list was finalized of 611 employees to remain on the job, many of them to manage the return home of thousands of staffers, contractors and their families abroad, the officials said. Justice Department lawyer, Brett Shumate, confirmed the 611 figure in court.
The USAID officials and staffers spoke on condition of anonymity due to a Trump administration order barring them from talking publicly.
Some of the remaining staffers and contractors, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired employees abroad, would run the few life-saving programs that the administration says it intends to keep going for now.
It was not immediately clear whether the reductions would be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing more workers to return after what the Trump administration says will be a review of which aid and development programs it wants to resume.
Trump and Musk have spoken of moving surviving programs under the State Department.
Within the State Department itself, employees fear substantial staff reductions following the deadline for the Trump administration's offer of financial incentives for federal workers to resign, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. A judge temporarily blocked that offer and set a hearing Monday.
At USAID, among the programs officials said had not received waivers: $450 million in food grown by U.S. farmers sufficient to feed 36 million people, which was not being paid for or delivered; and water supplies for 1.6 million people displaced by war in Sudan’s Darfur region, which were being cut off without money for fuel to run water pumps in the desert.
The administration earlier this week gave almost all USAID staffers posted overseas 30 days, starting Friday, to return to the U.S., with the government paying for their travel and moving costs. Diplomats at embassies asked for waivers allowing more time for some, including families forced to pull their children out of schools midyear.
In a notice posted on the USAID website late Thursday, the agency clarified that none of the overseas personnel put on leave would be forced to leave the country where they work. But it said that workers who chose to stay longer than 30 days might have to cover their own expenses unless they received a specific hardship waiver.
Rubio said Thursday during a trip to the Dominican Republic that the government would help staffers get home within 30 days "if they so desired" and would listen to those with special conditions.
He insisted the moves were the only way to get cooperation because staffers were working “to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order” on foreign assistance. Agency staffers deny his claims of obstruction.
Rubio said the U.S. government will continue providing foreign aid, “but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest."
Democratic lawmakers and others call the move illegal without congressional approval.
The same argument was made by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees in their lawsuit filed late Thursday. It asks the federal court in Washington to compel the reopening of USAID’s buildings, return its staffers to work and restore funding.
Government officials “failed to acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of their actions, both as they pertain to American workers, the lives of millions around the world, and to US national interests," the suit says.
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AP reporters Matthew Lee, Farnoush Amiri and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this report.