Security questions swirl after Musk's team views Treasury data

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An emailed notification from U.S.A.I.D. that the agency’s workers would be reinstated by the end of February 14

At the aid agency, where he had worked, Cooper had worked in Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition, and was about to get a job in the office of HIV/AIDS. She went from being excited about a career milestone to trying to make ends meet within a few days.

But as stop-work orders and reports of massive cuts at the agency rippled across the global aid industry, and scores of nongovernmental organizations and consulting firms that relied on the agency’s funding laid off staff, the agency’s workers braced for its potential end.

Some thought the number of people retained might go up, as the bureau and regional leaders fought to keep as many jobs as possible.

A panic around the world was set off this week by a Trump administration announcement that it would be dismissing almost all of its contractors and putting most of its Foreign Service officers and other direct hires on administrative leave.

“This is your formal notification that you are expected to keep working, effective immediately, and until notified otherwise,” the emailed notification said, according to a copy reviewed by The New York Times.

The aid industry relies on the agency’s funding, and the work force is still in limbo. On Saturday, U.S.A.I.D. informed employees affected by the order that employees already on administrative leave would be reinstated until the end Friday, Feb. 14, and that no one else would be suspended with pay during that period, according to a copy of the notice viewed by The New York Times. Employees could wait weeks, months or even years for a verdict. The case will go to the Supreme Court and it is not certain if jobs will ever be created again.

He, like many others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, as those still on the agency’s payroll have been instructed not to publicly discuss the changes underway. Employees fear that flouting the order could jeopardize whatever benefits they might still be eligible for, such as pensions and severance pay — though it was unclear if the Trump administration would honor such obligations.

Two weeks ago, we had two full time employees with assignments, but now we have seen the entire industry decimated and we are going back to the US without a job.

Mr. Rubio, who has assumed overall authority of U.S.A.I.D., tried to tamp down the fears, encouraging people to apply for waivers to delay travel and arguing that the Trump administration was “not trying to be disruptive to people’s personal lives.”

The employees had to decide whether or not to let families stay until the end of the school year or pull their children out of school immediately. Some with medical conditions, including late-stage and high-risk pregnancies, worried about the dangers of traveling and the status of their health care. Several agonized over what to do about pets, because it was not possible to procure the paperwork necessary to enter the United States in just a few weeks.

If Foreign Service officers wanted the U.S. government to pay for their relocation, they had just 30 days to leave their posts and come back to the US.

A temporary reprieve to approximately 2,700 direct hires of the US Agency for International Development who were due to be placed on leave by midnight Friday had been granted. For the past two weeks they and the contractors who work for the agency had been in a state of deep fear as the Trump administration began to lay off staff.

Thousands of people who work for the U.S. government have been on the front line trying to fight famine, contain infectious diseases and rebuild infrastructure in war torn countries.

Source: Live Updates: Security Questions Swirl After Musk Team Views Treasury Data

Getting Food, What Other Skills Do I Have? A Foreign Service Officer’s Thought on a Possible Solution to a Family Member’s Depression

She said that food stamps got her groceries and that she wasn’t having to file for unemployment. Her medical coverage ran out on Friday last week.

People who have lost their benefits and are going through I.V.F., as well as people going through cancer treatments and parents on Hospice, are the ones who are the most depressed, she said. I feel privileged to say this is the only issue I am struggling with. I know there are so many others having to deal with that, and it is literally going to break them.”

One Foreign Service officer in Asia was worried that the U.S.A.I.D.’s dissolution would lead to funding shortfalls, and that is how he learned that an immediate family member needed to be evacuated for a life-threatening health condition. Their only option, the officer was told, would be to immediately return to the United States, where they have nowhere to live, and leave their belongings and pets behind.

She also worried that she and her spouse, who also works in development, would have to live off the savings they had hoped to put toward a house if they both soon found themselves out of work.

“It just feels like the entire sector is sinking, and so how am I going to find a job?” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others, for fear of retaliation. “All I know is development, all I know is public health, so I dedicated my life to this.” What other skills do I have?”

Source: Live Updates: Security Questions Swirl After Musk Team Views Treasury Data

U.S.A.I.D. is a criminal organization: Resonance has been shut down from funding through its accounting system

Employees of nongovernmental organizations that rely on U.S.A.I.D funding say they have been blocked from access to funding through the agencys accounting system, with no guarantee that the federal government will reimburse them.

A small company is taking a big hit if it is Resonance, a development consulting firm that has 150 people around the world. Most of its business was with U.S. A.I.D. before it got hurt. It has bills going back to November that the agency has yet to cover, Steve Schmida, its co-founder, said in an interview.

“We’re being forced to carry a huge amount of cost with no clarity if and when we will get paid or reimbursed,” Mr. Schmida said, adding that he had to lay off almost 90 percent of his U.S.-based staff. He is going without pay for three months to help free up funds to keep his business afloat, he said.

The United States spends less than 1 percent of its federal budget on foreign aid, but that still makes the country the largest aid donor in the world by far. USAID distributes between $40 billion and $60 billion per year—almost a quarter of all global humanitarian aid. In the last few years, the agency has given more aid to Afghanistan, Israel, and Ukrainians than to Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia.

“This is taking a torch to development programs that the American people have paid for, and I believe it to be a positive thing,” said Caldwell, who worked for Biden as a climate officer. Many of the Paris Agreement commitments are funding-constrained, and they are in danger.

“USAID is a criminal organization,” Musk posted on X on Sunday. It’s time for it to die. (The agency is codified in federal law, and court challenges are likely to argue that Musk’s actions are themselves illegal.)

Since then, the new Department of Government Efficiency has closed its Washington office, locked employees out of email accounts, and shut down the agency’s website.

As part of a broad effort to bypass Congress and unilaterally cut government spending, Donald Trump’s administration has all but shut down operations at the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, the independent federal body that delivers humanitarian aid and economic development funding around the world. On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order pausing all USAID funding, and the agency subsequently issued a stop-work order to nearly all funding recipients, from soup kitchens in Sudan to the global humanitarian group Mercy Corps.