Trump administration to cut all USAID overseas roles in dramatic restructuring

Yahoo

2 days ago

The Trump administration will eliminate all USAID (United States Agency for International Development) overseas positions worldwide by 30 September in a dramatic restructuring of remaining US foreign aid operations.
In a Tuesday state department cable obtained by the Guardian, secretary of state Marco Rubio ordered the abolishment of the agency's entire international workforce, transferring control of foreign assistance programs directly to the state department.
The directive affects hundreds of USAID staff globally, including foreign service officers, contractors and locally employed personnel across more than 100 countries. Chiefs of mission at US embassies have been told to prepare for the sweeping changes to occur within four months.
'The Department of State is streamlining procedures under National Security Decision Directive 38 to abolish all USAID overseas positions,' the cable reads, adding that the department 'will assume responsibility for foreign assistance programming previously undertaken by USAID' from 15 June.
Among those who cleared the cable was Howard Van Vranken, a former ambassador to Botswana.
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Tammy Bruce, the state department spokesperson, confirmed the cable during a press briefing Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters that the incoming actions are just following through on Trump administration promises to destroy the agency.
'So this was a cable, telling our posts exactly what they were expecting to be told, which is that those positions were being eliminated. So it wasn't a surprise. It's nothing new,' Bruce said. 'And, it is exactly what we previewed, in February and March of this year.'
The decision to close the agency comes after the Trump administration – under the so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) – eliminated 83% of USAID's programs in a six-week purge after Donald Trump took office.
A federal judge had temporarily blocked an executive order by Trump for mass firings at multiple federal agencies, including the state department, and plaintiffs say Rubio's reorganization plan appears to violate that court injunction. The Trump administration says the plan was already underway when the president issued the order, so there's no possible violation.
Rubio announced in March that 5,200 of the agency's 6,200 programs worldwide had been terminated, with the surviving initiatives being absorbed into the state department.
The closures followed an executive order from Trump on his first day back in the White House on 20 January freezing foreign assistance pending a review.
While a waiver was subsequently announced for humanitarian assistance, questions were raised about USAID's future after its website disappeared on 1 February. Two days later, staff received an email telling them not to come to work following a weekend during which its servers were removed and leadership and senior staff fired or put on disciplinary leave.
Rubio declared himself that agency's acting administrator after staff were locked out of its Washington headquarters.
Amid the cuts, Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur and then de facto leader of Doge, gleefully boasted of feeding USAID 'into the woodchopper', while disseminating false claims about its programs – including one assertion that the agency carried out a $50m project to provide condoms in Gaza, a claim that was subsequently proved to be untrue.
According to internal documents, senior officials at the agency warned Rubio of the devastating impact that would be caused by the cuts, including 1 million children untreated for malnutrition, up to 160,000 deaths from malaria and 200,000 more children paralyzed from polio over the next decade if they were implemented.
Remaining officials at the agency were ordered to destroy classified documents – using shredders and 'burn bags' – in March in an email from USAID's acting secretary, Erica Y Carr.
'Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,' Carr wrote to staff.
The state department declined to comment on the cable, but told the Guardian on the destruction of documents that 'all staff who have managed this process have the appropriate level clearances and have received previous records management training'.
This article was amended on 10 June 2025. A previous version inaccurately stated that thousands, not hundreds, of USAID staff globally would be affected by the cuts.
This article was updated on 11 June 2025 to include comments from the state department.