Trump’s demand that aid workers return home sparks outrage in Washington and anxiety overseas
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WASHINGTON — Frustration boiled over Wednesday among supporters of the United States’ lead aid agency at a Washington rally, and anxious aid workers abroad scrambled to pack up households and families, after the Trump administration abruptly pulled almost all agency staffers worldwide off the job and out of the field.
The order issued Tuesday followed 2½ weeks that have seen the Trump administration and teams led by billionaire ally Elon Musk dismantle much of the U.S. Agency for International Development, shutting down a six-decade mission intended to shore up U.S. security by educating children, fighting epidemics and advancing other development abroad.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been touring Central America on his first visit in office, defended the actions against USAID while saying, “Our preference would have been to do this in a more orderly fashion.”
Rubio has to balance aggressive Trump policies with Latin America’s willingness to cooperate. The Panama Canal will be contentious.
As it was, Rubio said, the administration would now “work from the bottom up” to determine which U.S. aid and development missions abroad were in the national interest and would be allowed to resume. “This is not about ending foreign aid. It is about structuring it in a way that furthers the national interest of the United States,” he said in Guatemala City.
In Washington, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of others rallied outside the Capitol to protest the fast-moving shutdown of an independent government agency. “This is illegal and this is a coup,” cried U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs, a Democrat from San Diego.
“We are witnessing in real time the most corrupt bargain in American history,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) shouted to supporters at the rally, referring to Musk, his support for President Trump and his role in challenging USAID and other targeted agencies. Musk put more than $200 million toward Trump’s reelection.
“Lock him up!” members of the crowd chanted. Frustration was also directed at the Democratic lawmakers, who have promised court battles and other efforts but have been unable to slow the assault on USAID. “Do your job!” the crowd yelled.
Scott Paul, a director at the humanitarian nonprofit group Oxfam American, told the Associated Press that the damage already done meant that key parts of the global aid and development system would have to be rebuilt “from scratch.”
Jennifer Kates, senior vice president and director of the global health and HIV policy program at KFF, cited one large organization alone that expects to close up to 1,226 maternal and child-care clinics serving more than 630,000 women.
“The healthcare system is not one that you just press on and off. … It includes people that deliver services and clinics that poor people go to,” Kates said. Once the U.S. shutdown lays off staffers and closes those clinics, “you can’t just say, ‘All right, we’re ready to start again. Let’s go.’”
USAID has been one of the agencies hardest hit as the new administration and Musk’s budget-cutting team target federal programs they say are wasteful or not aligned with a conservative agenda.
U.S. embassies in many of the more than 100 countries where USAID operates convened emergency town hall meetings for the thousands of agency staffers and contractors looking for answers. Embassy officials said they had been given no guidance on what to tell staffers, particularly local hires, about their employment status.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele offered to let Trump move immigrants who are imprisoned in the U.S. to his notorious detention centers in El Salvador.
A USAID contractor posted in an often violent region of the Middle East said the shutdown had placed the contractor and the contractor’s family in danger because they were unable to reach the U.S. government for help if needed.
The contractor woke up one morning this week blocked from access to government email and other systems, and an emergency “panic button” app was wiped off the contractor’s smartphone.
“You really do feel cut off from a lifeline,” the contract staffer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a Trump administration ban forbidding USAID workers from speaking to people outside their agency.
Despite the administration’s assurances that the U.S. government would bring the agency’s workers safely home as ordered within 30 days, some feared being stranded in the field and left to make their own way back. Their colleagues in Washington described reactivating employee networks that had helped in the past to bring staffers out of danger zones.
Trump reimagines Gaza as a ‘Riviera’ without Palestinians. Israel’s Arab neighbors say no to that.
Most agency spending has been ordered frozen, and most workers at the Washington headquarters have been taken off the job, making it unclear how the administration will manage and pay for the sudden relocation of thousands of staffers and their families.
The mass removal of thousands of staffers would doom billions of dollars in projects in some 120 countries, including security assistance for Ukraine and other countries, as well as development work for clean water, job training and education, including for schoolgirls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
The online notification to USAID workers and contractors said they would be off the job, effective just before midnight Friday, unless deemed essential. Direct hires of the agency overseas got 30 days to return home, the notice said.
The United States is the world’s largest humanitarian donor by far. It spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign assistance, a smaller share of its budget than some countries.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of food and medication already delivered by U.S. companies are sitting in ports because of the shutdown.
Health programs like those credited with helping end polio and smallpox epidemics and an acclaimed HIV/AIDS program credited with saving more than 20 million lives in Africa have stopped. So have programs for monitoring and deploying rapid-response teams for contagious diseases such as an Ebola outbreak in Uganda.
South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told Parliament on Wednesday that officials scrambled to meet with U.S. Embassy staff for information after receiving no warning the Trump administration would freeze crucial funding for the world’s biggest national HIV/AIDS program.
South Africa has the world’s highest number of people living with HIV, about 8 million, and the United States funds around 17% of its $2.3-billion-a-year program through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The health minister did not say whether U.S. exemptions for lifesaving care affect that work.
Democrats and others say USAID is enshrined in legislation as an independent agency and cannot be shut down without congressional approval. Supporters of USAID from both political parties say its work overseas is essential to countering the influence of Russia, China and other adversaries and rivals abroad, and to cementing alliances and partnerships.
In Istanbul on Wednesday, Hakan Bilgin sat in the downsized office of his medical care nonprofit, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and worried colleagues. Days ago, Doctors of the World Turkey received an unexpected stop-work order from USAID, forcing it to close 12 field hospitals and lay off more than 300 staff members in northern Syria.
“As a medical organization providing lifesaving services, you’re basically saying, ’Close all the clinics, stop all your doctors, and you’re not providing services to women, children and the elderly,”’ Bilgin said.
Associated Press writers Knickmeyer and Amiri reported from Washington, Lee from Guatemala City.
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