US aid workers around the world scrambled to pack up households or take children out of school under a sudden Trump administration order that pulled almost all of them off the job.
The order all but shut down the six-decade mission of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the government’s primary agency for delivering humanitarian aid to other countries.
In Washington, Democratic legislators and several hundred supporters of the agency rallied outside the Capitol to protest the dismantling of the independent government organisation that seeks to help people affected by wars, disasters, disease and poverty.
“We are witnessing in real time the most corrupt bargain in American history,” Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen shouted to supporters at the rally, referring to billionaire Elon Musk, his support for President Donald Trump and his role in challenging USAID and other targeted agencies.
“Lock him up!” members of the crowd chanted.
They expressed frustration as well at Democratic legislators, who promised court battles and other efforts to stop the attacks on agencies and programmes.
USAID has been one of the agencies hardest hit as the new administration and Mr Musk’s budget-cutting team target programmes they say are wasteful or not aligned with a conservative agenda.
US embassies in many of the more than 100 countries where USAID operates convened emergency town halls for the thousands of agency staffers and contractors looking for answers.
Embassy officials said they had been given no guidance on what to tell staffers, particularly local hires, about their employment status.
A USAID contractor posted in an often violent region of the Middle East said the shutdown had placed the contractor and the contractor’s family in danger because they were unable to reach the US government for help if needed.
The contractor woke up one morning earlier this week blocked from access to government email and other systems, and an emergency “panic button” app was wiped off the contractor’s smartphone.
“You really do feel cut off from a lifeline,” the contract staffer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a Trump administration ban forbidding USAID workers to speak to people outside their agency.
Despite the administration’s assurances that the US government would bring the agency’s workers safely home as ordered within 30 days, many feared being stranded in the field and left to make their own way home.
Their colleagues in Washington described reactivating employee networks that had helped in the past to bring local staffers out of danger zones.
The late-night order on Tuesday to abandon USAID posts worldwide comes as many of the aid workers abroad are locked out of email and emergency communications with their own government.
Most agency spending has been ordered frozen, and most workers at the Washington headquarters have been taken off the job, making it unclear how the administration will manage and pay for the abrupt relocation of thousands of staffers and their families.
The mass removal of thousands of staffers would doom billions of dollars in projects in some 120 countries, including security assistance for Ukraine and other countries, as well as development work for clean water, job training and education, including for schoolgirls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
The online notification to USAID workers and contractors said they would be off the job, effective just before midnight Friday, unless deemed essential.
Direct hires of the agency overseas got 30 days to return home, while contractors would be fired, the notice said.
Thousands already had been laid off and programmes worldwide shut down after Mr Trump, a Republican, imposed a sweeping freeze on foreign assistance.
Despite outcry from Democratic legislators, the aid agency has been a special target as the administration and Mr Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency look to shrink the government.
They have ordered a spending stop that has paralysed US-funded aid and development work, gutted the agency’s senior leadership and workforce with furloughs and firings, and closed the Washington headquarters to staff on Monday.
“Spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Mr Musk boasted on X, formerly Twitter.
The US is the world’s largest humanitarian donor by far. It spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign assistance, a smaller share of its budget than some countries.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of food and medication already delivered by US companies are sitting in ports because of the shutdown.
Health programmes like those credited with helping end polio and smallpox epidemics and an acclaimed HIV/AIDS program that saved more than 20 million lives in Africa have stopped.
So have programmes for monitoring and deploying rapid-response teams for contagious diseases such as an Ebola outbreak in Uganda.
The announcement came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on a five-nation tour of Central America and met this week with embassy and USAID staff at two of the region’s largest USAID missions: El Salvador and Guatemala.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Mr Rubio said he has “long supported foreign aid. I continue to support foreign aid. But foreign aid is not charity”.
He noted that every dollar the US spends must advance its national interests.
The online notice says those who will be exempted from leave include staffers responsible for “mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programmes” and would be informed by Thursday afternoon.
“Thank you for your service,” the notice concluded.
