‘Shock, disbelief and fear’: Inside USAID as Elon Musk works to dismantle humanitarian agency
‘Shock, disbelief and fear’: Inside USAID as Elon Musk works to dismantle humanitarian agency
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Elon Musk is leading an attack on the 63-year-old humanitarian agency, causing chaos for lifesaving programs abroad and staff at home. Jason Gray, an acting administrator installed by Donald Trump atop the U.S. Agency for International Development, delivered a flurry of orders to staff in late January aimed at radically overhauling the agency in the president’s image. “We were inundated with a barrage of hostile, threatening messages,” one staffer told The Independent. “I think they were designed to instill fear.”.
One called for employees to report colleagues who had worked to conceal any diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Another email seen by The Independent threatened disciplinary action if they impeded Trump’s “America first” agenda. Then the firing started. Dozens of senior staff were placed on leave, hundreds of contractors were let go and the remaining staff were barred from accessing the agency’s headquarters.
“It’s been a feeling of shock, disbelief, and fear since the inauguration,” the staffer, who spoke to The Independent on the condition of anonymity, said. “I think it's become clear as the days have progressed that the goal is ultimately to dismantle the agency,” they added. The 63-year-old U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds and supports health services, disaster relief and anti-poverty efforts around the world, has been thrown into chaos by a full-frontal attack by the Trump administration.
A 90-day pause on all foreign aid ordered by President Trump, followed by rapid changes and firings, have brought the agency’s work to a halt. USAID was a tool of soft diplomacy. One of the problems is that Trump and his ilk don't understand soft anything. He's a hard-power person. The effort is being fueled by billionaire Elon Musk, who is working in an official role atop a vague advisory commission named the Department of Government Efficiency and has been tasked by Trump with cutting costs across government.
Musk has called USAID a “criminal organization” and a “radical-left political psy op.”. The agency, which was created by an act of Congress under President John F. Kennedy’s administration in 1961, has more than 10,000 people in its workforce. It managed some $40 billion in appropriations authorized by Congress in 2023, and it officially reports to the secretary of state. Life-saving programs funded by USAID have been halted immediately. One that provided mosquito nets to pregnant women and children in Mali has been frozen; so too has the delivery of medical supplies to treat life-threatening diarrhea in toddlers in Zambia. Laboratories across Africa and Asia that USAID funded to identify polio cases will now be threatened with closure, and some 150 local organizations that work on HIV prevention will also lose their funding.
Stefanie Plant, a Brooklyn-based USAID contractor who worked as a senior adviser with the Global Health Bureau, was abruptly fired along with hundreds of others at the end of January. Since then, she and her former colleagues have been scrambling to figure out how to pay the bills, while trying to assess the damage to the programs they worked on. “It's been a system shock, both to individual people's constitutions and also for the whole international aid sector,” she told The Independent.
“A lot of people were either actively on maternity leave, have children and elderly dependents, and they're panicking within their families about how to meet their financial obligations,” she added. The stop-work orders also forced many USAID contractors working abroad, some in dangerous environments, home immediately, while local staff were cut off from their points of contact at the agency and had no guidance about what to do next.
“People were essentially forced back as soon as possible, trying to rearrange flights, unclear even how that would be paid for,” Plant said. USAID staffers and contractors have been baffled by the attacks on the agency. Trump said on Sunday that the agency had been “run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.”. Musk says that it is Trump’s wish that the agency be completely shut down — something that would require an act of Congress.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has notified Congress that he may seek to reorganize the agency or merge it with the State Department. “Most of us were in it to address problems across the world, to help people who didn't have the means to help themselves in countries that needed a leg up, but it's very clear that USAID is a tool of soft diplomacy,” Plant said. “And I think one of the problems is that Trump and his ilk don't understand soft anything. He's a hard-power person.”.
