Remaining USAID staff fired, Trump says Myanmar will still get earthquake aid

Summary:

• USAID staff cuts alarm humanitarian aid groups
• State Department to assume USAID's functions
• Cuts may benefit US rivals like China, Russia
• Trump claims USAID fraud without evidence

President Donald Trump's administration told Congress on Friday it would cut nearly all remaining jobs at the US Agency for International Development and shut the agency, even as Trump promised that the US would provide assistance to Myanmar following a devastating earthquake.

Humanitarian aid experts expressed alarm at the new cuts to an agency whose humanitarian aid has gained Washington influence and saved lives across the globe for more than 60 years. USAID plays a major role in coordinating earthquake assistance.

Thousands of USAID staff and Foreign Service officers assigned to the agency learned in an internal memo that all positions not required by law would be eliminated in July and September.

The memo reviewed by Reuters was sent to staff by Jeremy Lewin, the agency's acting deputy administrator and a member of billionaire Elon Musk's job-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE oversaw a first round of cuts to USAID last month.

The State Department notification to Congress of the job cuts, also seen by Reuters, said USAID missions worldwide would be closed and the agency's remaining functions would be folded into State.

Cuts at the agency have thrown humanitarian efforts around the world into turmoil. The latest notice came on the day that a powerful earthquake hit Thailand and Myanmar, toppling buildings and killing scores of people. USAID has historically played a major role in coordinating disaster relief efforts.

A US appeals court on Friday ruled that Musk and DOGE can keep making cuts to USAID while they appeal a lower court order that had barred them from doing so.

US Representative Gregory Meeks, top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement that closing USAID was illegal and aimed at withdrawing the US "from its global leadership role with as much cruelty and disruption as possible."

FIRINGS INCLUDE FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICERS

The exact number of personnel being fired was not immediately available. As of March 21, there were 869 US direct hire personnel on active duty and working, while 3,848 others were on paid administrative leave, according to Stand Up for Aid, a grassroots advocacy group.

The terminations also included thousands of Foreign Service officers on assignment to USAID around the globe, according to a source familiar with the matter.

In his memo, Lewin said agency personnel worldwide would shortly receive emailed termination notices giving them the choice of being fired on July 1 or September 2.

Over the next three months, the State Department would assume USAID's remaining "life-saving and strategic aid programming," he said, adding that USAID personnel will not automatically be transferred to the department, which would conduct "a separate and independent hiring process."

Trump in January ordered a 90-day freeze of all US foreign aid and a review of whether aid programs were aligned with his policy. He claimed without evidence that Musk had found fraud at the agency, which he said was run by "radical left lunatics."

Musk and DOGE gained access to USAID's payment and email systems, froze many 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."

On Friday, a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department had notified the US Congress of its intent to reorganize USAID, saying the agency had "strayed from its original mission long ago."

"We are reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens," Rubio said.

'A TOTAL ABDICATION'

The decision to cut the remaining USAID jobs sparked concern among humanitarian aid experts, who said the firings and funding cuts would prevent a concerted US response to the earthquake that hit Myanmar and Thailand.

In a post on X, Jeremy Konyndyk, a former USAID official who is president of Refugees International, called the move "a total abdication of decades of US leadership in the world."

He said the firings will cut "the last remnants of the team that would have mobilized a USAID disaster response" to the earthquake.

Trump on Friday said he had spoken with officials in Myanmar about the earthquake and that the US would provide assistance.

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the changes at USAID would not affect the administration's ability to deploy a Disaster Assistance Response Team, or DART, adding she could not give a timeline.

The former USAID disaster response chief told Reuters the Trump administration's massive personnel and funding cuts have "kneecapped" the agency's ability to send disaster response teams to Thailand and Myanmar, opening the way to China and other US rival countries.

"I suspect we will see very shortly Chinese teams showing up, if they haven't already, possibly Turkish, Russian, Indian teams really making their presence known in support of people that are really suffering right now in Thailand and Burma, and the US won't be there," said Sarah Charles, who served as assistant USAID administrator for humanitarian affairs until February 2024, using the former name of Myanmar.

Charles said contracts with urban search and rescue teams from Los Angeles and Virginia had been "turned back on" after being cut.

But, she said commercial contracts for transporting those teams remained cut and non-governmental aid groups that normally would provide emergency water, sanitation and medical help had laid off staff or run out of funds due to Trump's foreign aid freeze.

"It's really devastating to watch in real time," she said.