Trump administration slashing USAID workforce to fewer than 300 employees: Reports

The government's foremost foreign aid agency is being gutted.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) workforce is being slashed from more than 10,000 employees to fewer than 300, according to reports published in Wired, Reuters, The New York Times and NPR.

The State Department declined to comment. Neither USAID nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment from The Hill.

Essential personnel was to be notified by 3 p.m. EST Thursday, per a message posted on the USAID website, which has been otherwise dark since last weekend when Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) started shutting thousands of employees out of internal systems, causing chaos and concern about the future of the more than 60-year-old agency.

Democratic members of Congress have called the takeover illegal, unconstitutional, and a coup and vowed to hold up President Trump's State Department picks until the president backs off his threats to restructure the independent agency. 

But the onslaught has been swift.

Over the past week, staffers were locked out of their accounts one by one, relying on elaborate Signal networks for intel — and support.

"USAID is a very collaborative organization. People look out for each other," one USAID employee said Thursday. "They put the organization and the people we serve above themselves, which is what I love about working there."

The agency, in recent days, has been the subject of numerous attacks from the Trump administration and Musk, who called it a "ball of worms."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted some of USAID's "insane programs" this week, including $47,000 for a "transgender opera in Colombia," which the nonprofit newsroom NOTUS debunked Wednesday. 

Politico also had to publish a note "to set the record straight" after outcry over the millions of dollars that agencies including USAID have paid to access the outlet's "Pro" platform.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was appointed this week as acting administrator of USAID, told reporters while traveling in the Dominican Republic Thursday that the government is "not trying to be disruptive to people's personal lives."

"We're not being punitive here. But this is the only way we've been able to get cooperation from USAID," he said.

Thousands of workers have been kept in the dark as this drama has unfolded, however, and have expressed fear for their futures and those they supported.

And USAID employees abroad, which the Congressional Research Service says make up two-thirds of the workforce, face a logistical nightmare.

"We are now finding ourselves stranded," one USAID employee told The Hill Wednesday, adding they have "no clear way of getting home."

USAID has said it will arrange and pay for return travel to the U.S. within 30 days. But returning thousands of families may prove an enormous challenge, particularly as many packed up their lives to take on these jobs and don't have a "home" to return to.

The employee called the uncertainty "crippling."

"It's an understatement to say this is devastating," they said.