By Daphne Psaledakis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A purge of senior staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development appeared designed to silence any dissent over President Donald Trump’s plans to dramatically reshape U.S. foreign aid, current and former USAID officials told Reuters.
Trump, who ordered a 90-day pause in most foreign aid and said his officials will review the spending, has pledged to remake the federal workforce and dismantle what he and his allies call the “deep state.”
The Trump administration on Monday put on leave about 60 senior career officials at USAID, in what one former official called a “Monday afternoon massacre.”
An internal memo said the new leadership had identified several actions in the agency that “appeared to be designed to circumvent the President’s Executive Orders and the mandate from the American people.”
The message appeared to relate to officials’ efforts to secure waivers to Trump’s aid pause for crucial programs, some current and former officials said, with one saying the Trump administration’s actions were already having a “massive chilling effect” on staff at the agency.
“That short email that went out to all staff afterwards … is clearly designed to instill fear,” said a career senior executive service official who was put on administrative leave on Monday.
The official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, warned that the move created a “complete vacuum of non-partisan leadership in USAID (in) Washington,” adding that it left most of the operating units at the agency in Washington without leaders.
The official warned that similar personnel moves in other agencies, such as those involved in law enforcement and surveillance, would raise even more concerns about unfettered power.
“People should be really scared about how this dismantling is happening at agencies they don’t give a second thought about on a day-to-day basis,” the official said.
USAID did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s supporters say he has a mandate to rid the U.S. government of bureaucrats who he thinks will try to block his political agenda, after he pledged to do so frequently on the campaign trail.
Aid programs are set to be reviewed against what the Trump administration deems U.S. interests. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told Fox News on Monday that the review of aid was about “taking note of what we’ve been doing.”
A second senior official, also put on leave on Monday, said that removing USAID’s lawyers takes away those who determine what actions are legal and allowable by the agency.
“You want to be able to do whatever you want without any guardrails? You get rid of the lawyers,” the official said.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; additional reporting by Simon Lewis and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Rod Nickel)
