The Trump administration has placed dozens of USAID workers on administrative leave for allegedly scheming to thwart President Trump’s executive orders requiring an immediate pause of federal aid funds to overseas programs and an end to all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs within the agency.
Acting USAID administrator Jason Gray placed more than 50 career civil servants and foreign service officers on paid administrative leave while he conducts an investigation into the matter, according to an agency-wide email Gray sent Monday afternoon, first obtained by RealClearPolitics.
“We’ve identified several actions within USAID that appear to be designed to circumvent the President’s Executive Orders and the mandate from the American people,” Gray, wrote. “As a result, we have decided to put a number of USAID employees on administrative leave with full pay and benefits until further notice while we complete our analysis of these actions.”
Senior leaders in bureaus across the agency were removed, as well as several senior attorneys, sources told RCP. Several hundred contractors based in Washington and elsewhere also were laid off, according to the Associated Press.
The actions follow Trump’s executive order last week that directed a 90-day pause on most U.S. foreign assistance disbursed through the State Department. During his first week in office, Trump also signed an executive order directing all departments and agencies to end all discriminatory preferences, including DEI programs.
USAID provides foreign aid, disaster relief, and humanitarian development to improve lives and “advance a free, peaceful and prosperous world,” according to its website.
As the lead agency for international development and humanitarian efforts in the U.S. government, USAID works under the guidance of the Secretary of State.
According to RCP, career USAID officials frequently clashed with presidential appointees during Trump’s first term over worthy initiatives such as “allowing faith-based groups to receive grants,” efforts to rebuild Christian and Yazidi areas in Iraq that were devastated by ISIS, and efforts to eliminate waste and abuse.
USAID officials tried to sabotage these initiatives and worked to undermine and harass Trump’s appointees, RCP reported.
Several Trump appointees at the agency complained of aggressive retaliation for efforts to carry out Trump directives or report waste and abuse. Mark Moyar, a historian and conservative national security think tank official, went to work at USAID and quickly reported multiple allegations of rampant government waste, fraud, and abuse. In response, USAID officials suspended (and threatened to revoke) his security clearance and forced him to resign, according to Moyar’s book about his experience, “Masters of Corruption: How the Federal Bureaucracy Sabotaged the Trump Presidency.”
When Biden entered office in 2021, he immediately abandoned Trump’s efforts to promote religious freedom around the world and implemented a DEI mandate.
Those initiatives included a focus on immigrants and refugees, victims of human trafficking, LGBQ+ initiatives, and women’s access to birth control and other reproductive options.
Those moves came after then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a shift away from religious freedom to far broader goals. In making that shift, Blinken faulted the Trump administration for what he characterized as an “unbalanced” emphasis on religious liberty over other concerns.
“Human rights are also co-equal. There is no hierarchy that makes some rights more important than others,” Blinken declared in early 2021, during remarks at the State Department’s release of its 45th annual report on the status of human rights around the world. “At my confirmation hearing, I promised that the Biden-Harris administration would repudiate those unbalanced views. We do so decisively today,” he said.
On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order directing a 90-day pause on most U.S. foreign assistance disbursed through the State Department to allow an “assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”
“It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States,” the E/O states.
On his first day, Trump also signed an executive order directing all departments and agencies to end Biden’s “radical and wasteful” DEI programs.
During her first press briefing on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt provided an appalling example of the type of foreign aid the Biden regime favored.
“DOGE and OMB found that there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza!” Leavitt exclaimed. “That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money!”
The Press Secretary told reporters that the administration’s pause on U.S. foreign assistance programs is focused on “being good stewards of tax dollars.”
“[The American peoples’] tax dollars actually matter to this president!” she declared.
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