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WASHINGTON: Trump administration changes have upended the US agency charged with providing humanitarian aid to countries overseas, with dozens of senior officials put on leave, thousands of contractors laid off, and a sweeping freeze imposed on billions of dollars in foreign assistance.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the pause on foreign assistance Thursday, saying “the US government is not a charity.”
Aid organizations say the funding freeze — and deep confusion over what US-funded programs must stop work as a result — has left them agonizing over whether they could continue operating programs such as those providing round-the-clock nutritional support to extremely malnourished infants and children, knowing that closing the doors means that many of those children would die.
Current and former officials at the State Department and the US Agency for International Development say staffers were invited to submit requests to exempt certain programs from the foreign aid freeze, which President Donald Trump imposed Jan. 20 and the State Department detailed how to execute on Jan. 24.
Three days later, at least 56 senior career USAID staffers were abruptly placed on administrative leave.
Three officials said many of those put on leave were lawyers involved in determining what programs might qualify for waivers, helping write proposals and submitting those waiver requests as they believed they had been invited to do.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. A Trump administration directive that aid organizations interpret as a gag order has left them unwilling to speak publicly for fear of permanently losing US funding.
In an internal memo Monday about the staffing changes, new acting USAID administrator Jason Gray said the agency had identified “several actions within USAID that appear to be designed to circumvent the President’s Executive Orders and the mandate from the American people.”
“As a result, we have placed a number of USAID employees on administrative leave with full pay and benefits until further notice while we complete our analysis of these actions,” Gray wrote.
A former senior USAID official said those put on leave had been helping aid organizations navigate the “confusing process” to seek waivers from the aid pause for specific life-saving projects, such as continuing clean water supplies for displaced people in war zones.
Others were identified as having been involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programming, which the administration has banned.
On Thursday, a USAID human resources official who tried to reverse the action, saying there was no justification for it, was himself placed on leave, according to two of the officials who had viewed internal emails and verified them as authentic. Reporters from ProPublica and Vox first reported the emails on X.
The State Department and White House didn’t respond to messages seeking comment about the staffing changes.
The new leaders at USAID also abruptly laid off contractors who made up about half the workforce in the agency’s humanitarian bureau Tuesday, knocking them out of systems so that some vanished in the middle of videoconferences, the former senior official said. The targeted institutional service contractors do everything from administrative and travel support to grant processing and data analytics.
The staffing changes came three days after the State Department issued guidelines last Friday for implementing Trump’s executive order freezing foreign assistance for 90 days. The department says it’s reviewing the money the United States is spending to ensure it adheres to administration policy.
The guidelines initially exempted only military aid to Israel and Egypt and emergency food programs but also said program administrators and implementors could apply for waivers for programs that they believe would meet administration standards.
On Tuesday, Rubio issued a broader waiver for programs that provide other “life-saving” assistance, including medicine, medical services, food and shelter, and again pointed to the possibility of waivers. Rubio pointed to the broadened exemptions in an interview Thursday with SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly.
“We don’t want to see people die and the like,” he said.
Rubio said there would be a program-by-program review of which projects make “America safer, stronger or more prosperous.”
The step of shutting down US-funded programs during the 90-day review meant the US was “getting a lot more cooperation” from recipients of humanitarian, development and security assistance, Rubio said. “Because otherwise you don’t get your money.”
The State Department said that since the aid freeze went into effect, it has approved dozens of waivers, although many were returned because they did not include enough detail. It said waiver requests for programs costing “billions of dollars” have been received and are being reviewed.
The department did not specify how many waiver requests had been denied but said thus far its actions had stopped more than $1 billion from being spent on programs and projects that are “not aligned with an America First agenda.”
Even with the broadening of exemptions for life-saving care, uncertainty surrounds what US-funded programs legally can continue. Hundreds of thousands of people globally are going without access to medicine and humanitarian supplies and clinics are not getting medicine in time because of the funding freeze, aid organizations warn.