USAID could see workforce cut to 600 as stop-work looms

The Trump administration intends to keep only 611 essential workers in position at America's foreign aid agency USAID, according to a notice sent to employees that has been shared with Reuters.

The report suggests that USAID could have seen its 10,000-strong workforce reduced to just 300, with the new figure emerging as a deadline for all other employees to stop work and start administrative leave approaches at midnight tonight Eastern Standard Time.

That has been challenged in a lawsuit filed by unions representing federal employees in the US and overseas in a Columbia district court, which claims the actions taken by the Trump administration and championed by cost-cutting chief Elon Musk are "unconstitutional and illegal" and have created "a global humanitarian crisis by abruptly halting the crucial work of USAID employees, grantees, and contractors."

There are already countless reports of disruptions to healthcare programmes supported by USAID, including suspended studies of new malaria treatments, contraceptives, and HIV drugs and vaccines, for example, leaving patients exposed to drugs and devices with potentially no follow-up by researchers.

The lawsuit filed by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) asserts that more than a thousand USAID institutional support contractors, and thousands more people working for those contractors, have been laid off or furloughed since Trump signed an executive order on foreign aid on 20th January.

"The humanitarian consequences of defendants' actions have already been catastrophic," according to the complaint.

"USAID provides life-saving food, medicine, and support to hundreds of thousands of people across the world," it continues. "Without agency partners to implement this mission, US-led medical clinics, soup kitchens, refugee assistance programmes, and countless other programmes shuddered to an immediate halt."

That, in turn, has cost American jobs and imperilled US national security interests, according to union lawyers. USAID provided around 42% of all aid tracked by the United Nations last year.

"Not a single one of defendants' actions to dismantle USAID were taken pursuant to congressional authorisation," says the lawsuit. Senior Democrats in the Senate have already written an open letter asserting that folding USAID into the State Department – which now oversees the agency – "should be, and by law must be, previewed, discussed, and approved by Congress."

The USAID website has had all its content removed other than a notice of the stop-work order. It went offline altogether last week, shortly after a standoff between USAID and Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) over access to restricted areas and personnel data.

On his X account, Musk described USAID as a "criminal organisation" plagued by "corruption and waste" and added it is "time for it to die."