Current and former officials at the State Department and the US Agency for International Development say staffers were invited to submit requests to exempt certain programs from the foreign aid freeze, which President Donald Trump imposed Jan. Three days later, at least 56 senior career USAID staffers were abruptly placed on administrative leave. Three officials said many of those put on leave were lawyers involved in determining what programs might qualify for waivers, helping write proposals and submitting those waiver requests as they believed they had been invited to do.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. A Trump administration directive that aid organizations interpret as a gag order has left them unwilling to speak publicly for fear of permanently losing US funding.
Others were identified as having been involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programming, which the administration has banned. On Thursday, a USAID human resources official who tried to reverse the action, saying there was no justification for it, was himself placed on leave, according to two of the officials who had viewed internal emails and verified them as authentic.
Reporters from ProPublica and Vox first reported the emails on X. The targeted institutional service contractors do everything from administrative and travel support to grant processing and data analytics. The guidelines initially exempted only military aid to Israel and Egypt and emergency food programs but also said program administrators and implementors could apply for waivers for programs that they believe would meet administration standards. Hundreds of thousands of people globally are going without access to medicine and humanitarian supplies and clinics are not getting medicine in time because of the funding freeze, aid organizations warn.
Evacuation orders were lifted earlier, with the fires not posing a serious threat for days. Both blazes started on January 7 and their exact cause remains under investigation. But human-driven climate change set the stage for the infernos by reducing rainfall, parching vegetation, and extending the dangerous overlap between flammable drought conditions and powerful Santa Ana winds, according to an analysis published this week.
