The Trump administration told the remaining senior officials of the US Agency for International Development on Thursday that all but 290 of its more than 10,000 positions will be cut. The employees who are left would administer the few life-saving programs that the administration said will remain in place for the time being. Several agency officials and contractors said they no longer have access to the funding for the exempted projects anyway, the New York Times reports.
Top agency officials had provided a list to the State Department of about 600 staff members whose work they considered essential and should be left alone, per NPR. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who announced this week he's in charge of USAID, approved sparing fewer than half from being placed on administrative leave with the rest of the workforce at midnight Friday. "Might as well shut it all down. 290 people won't be able to do anything," said a USAID official who declined to be identified. The Africa bureau, for instance, will be down to 12 staff members before the week is out: four in Washington and eight in regional hubs.
Rubio said the takeover of the agency is necessary because "we have rank insubordination." Agency employees, he said, are being "completely uncooperative, so we had no choice but to take dramatic steps to bring this thing under control." Rubio told reporters that the idea isn't to eliminate foreign aid, per the AP. "But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest," he said.
- Shutting down USAID could bring a total or partial end to the billions of dollars the agency spends on US businesses and organizations, the Washington Post reports. In 2020, for instance, the federal government paid $2.1 billion to American farmers for food aid.
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