There’s so much happening at once, it’s easy to lose sight of the human and up-close details (and tragedy) of it all.
Trump, Musk and their henchmen want the real stories to get lost amid “shock and awe” and disinformation. We can’t let that happen. So I’m working to find and share whatever I can from the ground level.
In that vein, I had a long and deeply disturbing conversation with someone with intimate knowledge of what’s happening with U.S. AID in recent weeks. Here is some of what we discussed:
The Overall Assault on U.S. AID
“This really exploded about two weeks ago.”
“Nobody was prepared for how soon this hit, how fast it hit, how intensely it hit, and how nobody in the government stepped in or seemed able to step in and push back.”
“A US federal government agency is being stripped down for parts…by our own government.”
A Climate of Intimidation
“We are facing unprecedented intimidation from DOGE…Since U.S. AID is being made to be the tip of the spear, where DOGE is really testing everything, to then go after the higher hanging fruit—EPA, Department of Education—they are using incredibly intimidating tactics.”
“It’s felt like psychological warfare….The scale and the speed with which they moved. We were all caught off guard. Feel like this has been going on for two months. It’s only been two weeks.”
The intimidation is likely driven by the hope that U.S. AID workers, like other federal workers, will accept the “deferred resignation” agreement the administration has been pushing:
“They are trying go get as many people to resign as possible. I assume it’s because they have some sense of how difficult it would be to fire people….Trying to intimidate for the purpose of getting people to reply, “Resign.”
“The ‘thirty day’ email was planned [sent shortly before the resignation deadline] as a way to rattle the tree one last time.”
The treatment of U.S. AID reminds people of Trump’s words during Ukraine-gate—when he said that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was going to “go through some things.”
“Well, we’re going through some things.”
Then came the images of the U.S. AID name being removed from outside of its headquarters—and photos of its work being removed from headquarters hallways, with only empty white frames remaining.
To this person—all “meant to instill fear and intimidation.”
Last Week: “This shit can’t happen in real life.”
“If you saw what it looked like…last week…you would have absolutely felt like you were in many movies you’ve watched over the years, and in many books you’ve read. You would think: ‘this is entertaining but this shit can’t happen in real life.’
“All the foreign service officers posted abroad were supposed to go an administrative leave Friday afternoon. That was always very confusing and vague because all we knew was that they were going to cut off access to our work computers….”
“It was essentially a stop work order. All of our projects had to come to a complete stop. We could not interact with our implementing partners.…
We also believed that we would lose access to our work computers. No more work email. No more calendar. [We could not] carry out our activities.”
Ironically, the employees less impacted were foreign service nationals: “They were permitted to stay on while we were going to go on administrative leave. We were hustling to hand over all operations to foreign service nationals….They don’t generally have leadership roles.”
By week’s end, folks were “hustling to shut down everything—mothball everything….Bawling. Rushing. Each day felt like an eight hour funeral. Each hour. How do we proceed with this? Nobody had answers. Constantly trying to play out different scenarios.”
“It felt very final—‘this is it, we’re not coming back.’”
Folks tried “to put everything away in the most tidy way, tried to say goodbye to one another, then we left, simply waiting in country to be told when to leave.”
Going Back in on Monday (Today)
Then late Friday (early Saturday across the world), a federal court ordered the shutdown to stop for one week. Which means after closing everything down, U.S. AID workers will return to work on Monday (today) all across the world. Many of their days will be completed by the time I send this email:
“We all said goodbye…then we’re all going to get in [Monday]. But I don’t know what we’re going to do, because we have no clarity. Everything has been on ice for two weeks now, and a lot of our [] partners have laid off most of their staff.”
“I don’t what that work is. I don’t what we’re going to be able to do, especially if we only have five days to do it.
It’s going to be a very weird day in a very different way.
If last week felt like a funeral, this week is going to feel like people coming back from the dead.
In DC, they’ve already been out of the headquarters for weeks.”
“Criminals”?
The framing of U.S. AID as a “criminal organization” has added an extra layer of fear about what happens if/when these workers return to the United States:
“Personally, since we’ve been referred to as a criminal organization, which makes a criminal out of me, it’s been feeling more like an extradition.
More fearful about what we will find if and when we return to the US.
There’s no guidance about what will happen to us when we return to the US.”
The news report that military planes would be sent to pick up U.S. AID workers from overseas locations only made it worse, “like the criminals we were being portrayed to be.”
“This all reeks of McCarthyism. So instead of saying I have a list of communists, it’s, ‘I have a list of left wing liberals who have infiltrated this agency and it must be destroyed.’ Instead of calling us communists, they’re calling us criminals.”
Chaos, Clueless and Costly: “Just enough to know we are incredibly threatened, and knowing there’s more to come.“
“It’s basically been four or five emails with no information. Just enough to know we are incredibly threatened, and knowing there’s more to come. We were told that within thirty days we would be repatriated back to the United States.”
But what DOGE is trying to pull off is far more complex than most Americans would appreciate. And it’s becoming clear that DOGE doesn’t know how government works:
“DOGE is getting ideas, likely rooted in private sector experiences, and being quickly applied to us in the public sphere. We believe that they are learning that they don’t know how things work in government.
So now they’re turning to civil servants, asking: “how do you do this, and make this happen?”
And likely hearing that what they’re proposing is impossible in general, or in the timeframe they’re suggesting.”
“It’s such a complex bureaucratic exercise to move one US diplomat from one country to another, and they’ve proposed moving close to 1,000 from over 100 countries back to Washington DC, and within 30 days.
When I say us, I’m also referring to family members, for those of us that have them.”
“All of the missions around the world have been forced to float independent of one another.”
The cost of all they’re pushing will be exorbitant:
“This is all being presented under the explanation of cost cutting measures. In reality, to repatriate all of us, I can’t even imagine how many…tens of millions it would cost to do this.”
Lists of Banned Words: “It’s the D word, you gotta delete it.”
“We’ve received lists of words we can no longer use anywhere. From DEI, to the words diversity, equity and inclusion, independent of one another, to environmental justice.
We’re told to scrub those words out of everything.
So we are looking everywhere and finding these words: “It’s the D word, you gotta delete it.”
Impact back on US
“US agriculture is freaking [the F] out. US food aid has long been of the largest subsidies to American agriculture.”
“Starting to see a lot of US Ag spaces…coming out and talking about the importance of US AID.”
International Impact: “completely unrecognizable from the humanitarian assistance we’ve known since the Marshall Plan.”
The impact of the attack on U.S. AID goes far beyond the agency itself. It also wipes out support that goes to NGOs doing development work all over the world:
“If US AID goes away….it’s gong to create a black hole that’s going to be bigger than anyone can imagine.
[It will be] getting rid of a whole professional and academic landscape of international development. The whole field is going to go away.
It will be completely unrecognizable from the humanitarian assistance we’ve known since the Marshall Plan.”
Competing with China: “we’re going to abandon the seat at the table and leave the room.”
Much of what U.S. AID does “pertains to countering [China] influence….There seems to be a complete disregard of the threat [China] poses.”
“President Kennedy created U.S. AID as a tool to help counter Soviet influence and encroachment around the world. Today, the PRC has filled that space….
There are some places where we simply can’t compete with China’s Belt and Road initiative….but it’s critical that we at least maintain a seat at the table. The current posture appears to be we’re going to abandon the seat at the table and leave the room.”
On the Disinformation about U.S. AID
“Its preposterous. Because we’re overseas and we don’t have a constituency in the US, they can say whatever they want. And it’s sticking.
With the way media is today, it can spread within seconds. And that’s it.”
Join Call Tonight to Learn More and Help:
If it’s not already clear enough, these folks need our help.
JOIN A CALL tonight at 7 pm ET to learn about how you can Stand with USAID. Please use the link below to register. Feel free to share with like-minded friends (be careful of sharing broadly on platforms like Meta, and share only with like-minded people.)
Sign up for the call next Monday by linking HERE.
Day 70 — February 9, 2025
The sitting Vice President of the United States sent out a tweet suggesting that a federal judge acted improperly by exercising judicial review, and, specifically, ascertaining the lawfulness of Trump administration activity. Judges “aren’t allowed to” do that, Vance wrote.
Of course, going back to Marbury v. Madison (which I know we were taught at Yale Law School, pretty early on), judicial review is the law of the land. And of course, our legal system allows the Administration to make its case in court, and appeal if it loses at the district court level.
But the tone of the tweet worried observers that this signaled that the Administration planned to not follow the order at all. I share that worry.
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