Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff

Washington: Staff at the US Agency for International Development were told on Friday that all positions not required by law would be eliminated, after the State Department notified Congress it would discontinue USAID functions that do not align with Trump administration priorities.

The move will mean that nearly all remaining USAID employees will lose their jobs in July and September, which are the separation dates set out in an internal memo sent to staff by Jeremy Lewin, a member of billionaire Elon Musk’s job-cutting Department of Government Efficiency.

The job cuts notice came on the same day that a powerful earthquake hit Myanmar, toppling buildings across a wide area. USAID has historically played a major role in coordinating disaster relief efforts.

USAID employees learned about the latest cuts to agency staff from Lewin's memo, which was reviewed by Reuters.

In the memo, Lewin, who is acting as a deputy administrator at the agency, said all USAID positions not set in law “will be eliminated” and that all agency personnel around the world would shortly receive emails notifying them of the decision. Staff would be given the choice of termination on July 1 or September 2, the memo said.

Over the next three months, the State Department would assume USAID’s remaining "life-saving and strategic aid programming," the memo said.

USAID personnel will not automatically be transferred to the State Department, which would assess its needs and conduct "a separate and independent hiring process."

President Donald Trump, a Republican, on his first day back in the White House ordered a 90-day freeze of all U.S. foreign aid and a review of whether aid programs were aligned with his administration's policy.

Soon after that, Musk and DOGE gained access to USAID's payment and email systems, froze many of its payments and told much of its staff they were being placed on leave. On February 3, Musk wrote on X that he had "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper."

A statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department had notified the U.S. Congress on Friday of its intent to reorganize USAID, saying the agency had "strayed from its original mission long ago. As a result, the gains were too few and the costs were too high."

"Thanks to President Trump, this misguided and fiscally irresponsible era is now over. We are reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens," Rubio said.

The statement said the State Department and USAID had notified Congress of their intent to undertake a reorganization "that would involve realigning certain USAID functions to the Department by July 1... and discontinuing the remaining USAID functions that do not align with Administration priorities."

After Trump began his second term on January 20, Musk's DOGE launched a drive to shrink USAID and merge its remnants into the State Department.

The administration has since fired hundreds of staff and contractors and terminated billions of dollars in services on which tens of millions of people around the world depended.

Rubio said earlier this month that more than 80% of all USAID programs had been canceled.