How Much More F*cked Can Trump's War On USAID Get? Let Us Lose Count Of The Ways!
Oh, it's a lot.
Now that the lawsuits and restraining orders against Donald Trump’s executive orders are flying, it’s also time for some injunctive relief to protect the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was targeted by Elon Musk and his Incel Clown Posse last weekend. Yesterday, unions representing federal employees at USAID and members of the foreign service sued to stop Trump from dismantling the agency and freezing foreign aid. The complaint argues, with 100 percent accuracy, that a president can’t eliminate a federal agency that was created by Congress, so knock off that unconstitutional shit toot sweet, OK?
The lawsuit demands an immediate halt to efforts to shut down the agency’s operations and to put nearly all staff and contractors on leave, to restore the funding that Congress authorized, and calls for USAID’s offices to be reopened. The suit also includes as defendants the State and Treasury Departments, USAID, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Notably, Elon Musk isn’t a defendant, possibly because he doesn’t deserve recognition as any official part of the federal government (the complaint refers to the “so-called ‘Department of
Government Efficiency’” because that too is a fake entity.)
Not a single one of defendants’ actions to dismantle USAID were taken
pursuant to congressional authorization. And pursuant to federal statute,
Congress is the only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency.
Honestly, that’s plenty, although the complaint goes into detail on why exactly USAID can’t be dismantled by the executive branch, as well as the many harms the agency’s shuttering will cause, both to the plaintiffs, those receiving congressionally authorized aid, and to the Rule Of Goddamned Law In These United States.
Your Tax Dollars Not At Work
The complaint emphasizes that the attempt to eradicate USAID is already having “life-threatening consequences” (we’ve removed footnote numbers in the quote below; see complaint for links):
Clinics stopped distributing HIV medication. Staff who operate humanitarian operations at refugee camps in Syria were told to stop work, leaving thousands of people vulnerable to instability and violence at the hands of ISIS. Soup kitchens that feed nearly a million people in famine-stricken Khartoum were shut down. Toddlers in Zambia were deprived of rehydration salts to treat life-threatening diarrhea. Doctors at U.S.-funded medical facilities in Sudan that treat severely malnourished children were forced to choose whether to obey Defendants’ orders and “immediately stop their operations or to let up to 100 babies and toddlers die.”
Temporarily happy ending: In that final example, the workers continued caring for the babies, and hope they won’t face reprisals. They only had a few days of supplies left as of last Friday, however, and we know how things have deteriorated since then.
Even the State Department’s alleged “waivers” to the funding freeze, which on paper were supposed to allow “life-saving humanitarian assistance” and the continuation of HIV care and treatment, did no good. As ProPublica reports, the waivers didn’t actually restore funding and the overseas partner organizations had no way to apply for it. All the USAID workers who could have processed the requests were laid off.
Aid Workers Ordered To Stop Saving Lives So They Can Come Home And Be Fired
Also this week, virtually all of USAID’s employees abroad were ordered to drop their work, pack up their families, and move back to the USA by midnight tonight so they can officially be shitcanned, thank you for your service. Overseas contractors were fired without warning and locked out of computer systems, leaving some who work in violent regions unable to ask for help getting the hell out. Just as well, though, since nobody was left at USAID offices in Washington to take their calls.
One contracted staffer in a dicey situation somewhere in the Middle East told the AP that even the emergency “panic button” app was wiped off their smartphone. We’re sure the Trump team will come looking for the contractor and their family eventually, if only to prosecute the staffer for violating a ban on speaking to the media.
Some 6,000 of the agency’s 10,000 employees (before today’s decapitations — metaphorically, one hopes — of the workforce) are stationed overseas, so it is of course turning into a logistical clusterfuck. Some staff will have up to 90 days to GTFO, but others had just days to return to the US. Several US embassies have held town-hall style meetings to pass on any information they have, where, as one employee said, “Everyone was in tears, from leadership all the way down to janitors of our building. […] The community is gutted.”
Why yes, they had it coming, because Elon Musk really really hates USAID for investigating his Starlink satellite company, and maybe also for helping to dismantle apartheid, but most of all for helping people who insist on being poor, brown, and of no use at all in making Musk money. Musk tweeted in delight Monday that he a “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” and his fans only wished they could have thrown some aid workers, vipers, and globalists into a literal wood chipper too.
Some Caught A Freight, Some Caught A Plane
The AP reports on the chaos resulting from the recall order, which of course will cost the government tens of millions of dollars in travel costs, and is probably illegal to boot, hence the lawsuit from the foreign service and federal employee unions.
Locally employed USAID staff, however, do not have much recourse and were excluded from the federal government’s voluntary buyout offer.
USAID staffers and families faced wrenching decisions as the rumored order loomed, including whether to pull children out of school midyear. Some gave away pet cats and dogs, fearing the administration would not give workers time to complete the paperwork to bring the animals with them.
That could make for an exciting scene in a movie in a few years, like the embassy evacuation in The Killing Fields, as the embassy staff and journalists tried to forge a fake US passport for Cambodian journalist Dith Pran while the Khmer Rouge ran firing AK-47s through the streets of Phnom Penh. You could win an Oscar, even.
But when it’s happening, it’s not art yet, it’s just horror, especially for the people who can’t get on the helicopters and are told to go home without AIDS treatment or left to wonder if they’ll have anything to feed their kids. (Sigh. We wish Spalding Gray were still alive, too.)
10,000 Workers Into The Wood Chipper
According to insiders at the agency and internal emails obtained by Wired, Musk and his young racist Skibidi Totalitarians have inflicted some real American Carnage at USAID, already “taking a team of over 10,000 down to just under 300.”
The move leaves only 12 people in the agency’s Africa bureau and eight people in its Asia bureau, with around 290 overall. There will be some additional foreign workers retained, two USAID employees tell WIRED, but it is unclear how many.
“There are more impoverished people in Asia than anywhere else, and our presence has always helped counter the influence of China,” says one USAID employee, who was granted anonymity due to fears of retaliation and because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the agency.
Some US workers still overseas haven’t yet even gotten any official word of what’s going on from the agency. One told Wired, “The only official communication I’ve received is from the local embassy State Department facilities people, asking if or when we were moving out so they could renovate our houses.” Hey buddy, don’t forget to dispose of your pets, too.
Oh Yeah, The American Farmers. Can’t Forget About the American Farmers.
On top of leaving people in poor countries hungry, dying, and without resources to survive the effects of climate change (another gift “From The American People,” as the aid shipments are always marked), the sudden disruption of foreign assistance is taking a toll on American farmers who sell crops to USAID (Washington Post gift link) to distribute around the world. The losses could total in the billions of dollars, depending on when — or whether — aid is resumed.
American farms supply about 41 percent of the agency’s food aid, to the tune of $2.1 billion in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service. The current chaos has frozen more than $340 million in aid shipments of rice, wheat, soybeans, and other commodities.
That has left hundreds of tons of American-grown wheat stranded in Houston alone, Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said Tuesday.
In addition, researchers funded by USAID have already been furloughed, but that’s OK because MAGA Chuds think science is pointless and wasteful anyway, and if people in poor countries want better crop yields they should fund their own labs. To prove that USAID is worthless, the White House pointed and shrieked at USAID grants it said funded gender-affirming care and DEI in other countries, so shut up, nothing good for the American People comes from all that wokeness, and President Trump has a huge mandate, don’t forget that lie, too.
In addition to the farm harm and the thousands of USAID staff being fired (illegally, remember that lawsuit), thousands more jobs in the private and nonprofit sectors are also at risk as contracts are cancelled and corporate partners see projects go away. Again, this will have no effect on anyone that matters because you seem to keep forgetting that USAID is full of Marxists who hate America, making all the other businesses working with the agency Marxists too, the end.
Aren’t we all happy and free now? If you aren’t happy and free, you hate America.
That court order blocking this shit can’t get here soon enough.
Update: And Lo, a court order has arrived, putting at least some of the fuckery on hold.
[NPR / American Foreign Service Assn v. Trump complaint / ProPublica / Wired / WaPo (gift link) / WaPo (gift link) / Update: NPR]
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Updated with a more optimistic closing: "That court order blocking all this shit can't get here soon enough."
See? Cheery!
OK, court order blocking at least some of it has been handed down.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/07/g-s1-47224/usaid-freeze-judge-trump