The Trump administration on Friday detailed its plans to put the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government’s main agency for distributing foreign aid, fully under the State Department and reduce its staff to some 15 positions.
An email to U.S.A.I.D. employees informing them of the impending layoffs, titled “U.S.A.I.D.’s Final Mission” and sent just after noon, detailed an elimination in all but name that the administration had long signaled was coming. It arrived over protests from lawmakers who argued that efforts to downsize the agency were illegal, and from staff members and unions who sued to stop them.
The agency employed about 10,000 people before the Trump administration began reviewing and canceling foreign aid contracts within days of President Trump’s return to the White House. By Sept. 2, the email said, “the agency’s operations will have been substantially transferred to State or otherwise wound down.”