USAID to be reduced to about 290 foreign service officers and civil servants
Most of the approximately 3,000 institutional support contractors have already been fired or furloughed. The status of the approximately 5,000 foreign service nationals serving around the world is not yet clear.
The bureaus of Humanitarian Assistance, Global Health and Management are expected to retain the most staff members, but under the expected plan, only 12 people would be dedicated to the entire continent of Africa and eight people for all of Asia.
Europe, which had about 600 dedicated employees between both the field and the Washington, D.C., offices last year, will now be served by just 10 people.
Thousands of USAID employees learned they would be placed on administrative leave starting at 11:59 p.m. Friday through a message posted on USAID.gov this week. USAID personnel overseas were given 30 days to return to the United States.
Asked about additional guidance for USAID employees facing uncertainty, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the actions were not meant to be "disruptive."
'We're not trying to be disruptive to people's personal lives,' Rubio told reporters in Santo Domingo on Thursday during a joint media availability with Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader. 'We're not trying to — we're not being punitive here, but this is the only way we've been able to get cooperation from USAID."
He said exceptions would be made for employees with extraordinary circumstances, saying, 'We didn't list them all, but we're willing to listen to those.'
The American Foreign Service Association, a union representing 1,800 foreign service officers working for USAID, and the American Federation of Government Employees sued the Trump administration Thursday, alleging efforts to dissolve the agency "have generated a global humanitarian crisis by abruptly halting the crucial work of USAID employees, grantees, and contractors.""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," the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit asks a federal court in Washington to issue a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction directing the administration to halt the shutdown.
The American Foreign Service Association had criticized the Trump administration in a statement Wednesday for "punishing dedicated public servants and hurting their families for simply doing their jobs" when it recalled foreign service personnel from overseas.
'Beyond the damage to U.S. interests abroad, this decision will impose an enormous financial and logistical burden—costing American taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and overwhelming the personnel system responsible for managing the evacuation," the group said.
The action at USAID is one of a series of efforts by the Trump administration to dramatically whittle the federal workforce.
The administration said last week it would offer buyouts to roughly 2 million federal workers as Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency, try to remake the federal government and abolish some of its agencies.
A federal judge in Boston on Thursday temporarily blocked the buyout offer pending a hearing Monday.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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Yahoo
20 minutes ago
- Yahoo
News Analysis: Trump's 'force of personality' hasn't delivered on key foreign policy goals
When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time. He said he would halt Russia's war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel's war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he'd persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days. 'The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things," his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview. Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached. Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, but it's not clear whether they ended the country's atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven't surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets. It turned out that force of personality couldn't solve every problem. 'He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,' said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 'He often acts as if we're the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We're not.' Read more: Inside Trump's ICE expansion: Can he really hire 10,000 new agents? The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran's nuclear project back for years, even if it didn't end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself — much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. 'I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for this,' he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed. The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration. For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow. 'I believe he wants peace,' Trump said of Putin in February. 'I trust him on this subject.' But to Trump's surprise, Putin wasn't satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media ('Vladimir, STOP!'). Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: "Nobody's playing me." But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin's good faith. 'It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along," he said. 'I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call,' and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,' Trump complained last week. 'After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything." The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022. So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had. Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose 'secondary tariffs' on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply. He said he still hopes Putin will come around. 'I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him,' he said in a BBC interview. It still isn't clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. 'I have no doubt that we will cope,' he said. Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia's two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both. Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran — the goals he began with six months ago. Despite his mercurial style, Trump's approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said. 'There is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,' Schake said. 'Alliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.' Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: 'He favors autocrats over democrats.' Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China's Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted. Read more: Trump threatens Russia with tariffs and boosts U.S. weapons for Ukraine The problem, Schake said, is that those principles 'impede Trump's ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn't seem to realize it. 'The international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,' she said. 'Trump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.' Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump's frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs. 'Tariffs are a form of economic warfare,' he said. 'Trump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. ... I don't think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.' Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don't agree. 'It cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. 'With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.' That claim will take years to test. Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond, in your inbox twice per week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Chicago Tribune
21 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago-area children get deportation letters: Leave or ‘the federal government will find you'
Thirteen-year-old Xally Morales stared blankly at a letter she received from the Department of Homeland Security last month. She could not read the dozens of lines in English addressed to her. She arrived in the country from Mexico a little over seven months ago, crossing the southern border in search of safety. Xally knows very little English. 'They say I have to leave the country immediately,' the young teen whispered in Spanish, barely meeting anyone's eyes at a Chicago law firm on a recent Friday afternoon. No explanation. No hearing. And no time. The night she received the letter, she said, the family went into hiding after her older sister translated the letter for her. 'Trump wants me to go back to Mexico. But how can I do that alone?' Xally told the Tribune. 'I'm scared ICE will come for me.' Xally is one of at least 12 children in the Waukegan area — all unaccompanied minors from Mexico — who received sudden deportation letters from DHS last month, according to advocates. All of the girls legally entered the country within the past year under humanitarian parole as unaccompanied minors and were later reunited with undocumented parents or other family already living in the U.S. But despite that reunification, the girls are unable to be legally represented by their parents in immigration court due to the way they entered the country. Immigration advocates warn that these cases are becoming more common, with a growing number of children now receiving letters from DHS ending their humanitarian parole. They say this could signal a troubling shift under the Trump administration: a move to strip asylum protections from children, even those with pending claims, and accelerate the deportation of minors without due process. 'Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States — the Federal Government will find you,' the June 20 letter reads. Unless their families can find and afford scarce legal representation, the children could be at risk of getting detained or could be forced to face a judge alone, advocates and attorneys said. But an assistant secretary of DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, in an emailed statement to the Tribune said that 'accusations that ICE is 'targeting' children are FALSE and an attempt to demonize law enforcement.' McLaughlin added that Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'does not 'target' children nor does it deport children.' The agency also does not separate families, she said in the statement. Instead, 'ICE asks mothers if they want to be removed with their children or if the child should be placed with someone safe whom the parent designates.' But questions regarding why letters are being sent to unaccompanied minors, like Xally, and what the protocol is to deport them, as stated in the letter, were left unanswered. Sitting next to her mother in the law office that afternoon, she held her hand tight. Since receiving the letter, the two had been staying at a Waukegan church because they were afraid that ICE agents would suddenly show up to their home and take Xally. Her mother, Francisca Petra Guzman, 48, arrived in the country in January, also as an asylum-seeker. The two, she said, ran away from domestic abuse and death threats. But churches are no longer a safe refuge. Instead, the pastor of the church, longtime activist Julie Contreras, escorted the mother and daughter to meet with a group of attorneys who could help them understand their options: return to the country they fled, possibly together to avoid detention, or remain in the U.S. for safety. 'As much as I tried, I couldn't provide for Xally in Mexico. I couldn't keep her safe,' Guzman said. 'Then my health started to decline. We had no other option than to come here.' Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, DHS began widely sending these letters. While the agency has always had the discretion to revoke any type of parole, the practice has expanded significantly under his administration, according to the legal and immigration experts. Minors, however, had not been targeted until now. Still, the letter may not mean that ICE will in fact show up to the family's home or their school to deport the children, said immigration attorney John Antia. Many of these children may qualify for other forms of legal protection, Antia said. The first step is meeting with an experienced immigration lawyer. That's something, however, that's often out of reach for families due to financial hardship or lack of understanding about their rights. 'Whether ICE can lawfully detain these children largely depends on each child's immigration status and individual circumstances,' Antia said. When he learned that Xally and other children were taking sanctuary at a Waukegan church after getting the letters, he offered to meet with them, attempting to ease their anxiety and fear. 'The reality is that under this administration, no one is safe anywhere. They (immigration authorities) are unpredictable and desperate to meet a quota even if it means detaining a child,' Antia said. 'This administration doesn't care whether you are in the hospital, whether you are in the courthouse, whether you are in your home, definitely not at church.' While Xally and her mother didn't leave the law office with clear answers about their future, they said they felt a small sense of hope. The attorneys said they would explore legal options to help Xally stay in the country, or at the very least, protect her from detention. They returned to the church, packed their bags and went home. The fear, however, lingers more than ever. Every morning, Xally wakes up wondering if agents will show up at her door the way they have been showing up to other homes in Waukegan and other cities near Chicago. The girl and her mother avoid going out altogether, spending most days watching TV, doing her nails, writing or reading. 'When I begin to feel anxious, I pray,' Xally said as she scrolled though a photo of her late father on her cellphone background. Her nails are painted in bright pink polish and glitter. She painted them while she was staying at the church with other children who received similar letters from DHS. She said she is used to living in fear since she lived in Mexico. Only briefly after arriving did she think her life would take a turn for the best. Xally still remembers the day she first saw Lake Michigan after arriving in the Chicago area. It was Sept. 19 of last year. Before that, she had spent nearly a month in a Texas federal facility run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, surrounded by other children who, like her, had crossed the southern border seeking asylum. 'More than scared, I was nervous and excited,' Xally said. She was eager to leave behind a life marked by pain and instability after her father died from COVID over five years ago. When her mother remarried, they found themselves trapped in an abusive household, her mother recalled. As the threats heightened, her mother desperately searched for a way to protect her youngest daughter. At first, she left Xally with her elderly grandmother in their impoverished Mexican hometown. But soon, Guzman realized her best option was to send Xally to the United States, where her older sisters — both U.S.-born — lived. Guzman herself had lived in the U.S. unauthorized as a teenager. It was where she met Xally's father. The couple decided to return to Mexico when Xally's grandfather was on his deathbed and they wanted to see one last time. Shortly after, Xally was born. With the help of Contreras, founder of United Giving Hope, an organization supporting immigrant families in suburban Illinois, Xally was granted humanitarian parole as an unaccompanied minor and successfully reunited with her older sisters in Waukegan. 'It was a new start for a young girl with big dreams,' Contreras said. 'She arrived at a place of safety every child deserves.' Over the past decade, Contreras has helped hundreds of children and mothers legally cross the southern border seeking asylum, assisting with paperwork and connecting them to attorneys to support their cases. But now, about a dozen of those children, including Xally, have received letters from DHS ordering them to leave the country. 'This is deeply concerning and alarming,' Contreras said. 'These children are not the criminals Trump claimed ICE would target. They are victims of human rights violations and are being terrorized. Even if ICE doesn't come for them immediately, the threat alone causes severe psychological trauma.' While Xally and her mother choose to endure the uncertainty, others cannot bear it and have opted to return to their native towns. Even when it means facing danger, Contreras said. Sixteen-year-old Daneli Mendez, who arrived in the Chicago area last October, decided to go back to her native Veracruz, Mexico. After staying at the church with Contreras for nearly a week, terrified that ICE would arrive and arrest her, Daneli told her family she would rather return voluntarily than risk detention. The girl has heard of others being detained in detention centers in poor conditions for undetermined amounts of time. Most recently, a 15-year-old Mexican boy was reportedly arrested by federal authorities and taken to Alligator Alcatraz, a notorious detention facility in Florida. On July 5, just a day after Independence Day, Contreras escorted Daneli to O'Hare International Airport and watched as the young girl boarded a flight back to the country she once fled. 'It's heartbreaking to see their dreams shattered. But this is about more than dreams, it's about their safety,' Contreras said. Daneli returned with nothing but a small backpack, a few English words she had learned, and a broken heart, leaving her family behind once again. 'She would much rather do that than be detained and deported,' Contreras said. Under U.S. immigration law, unaccompanied minors, children under 18 who arrive at the border without a parent or legal guardian, are supposed to receive special protections. They are typically placed under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and granted humanitarian parole while their cases are processed. But in recent months, immigration advocates and attorneys say the system is being quietly dismantled. 'We're seeing more and more unaccompanied minors having their parole revoked and being thrown into immigration proceedings where they're completely unequipped to defend themselves,' said Davina Casa, pastor and leader of the Monarchy Organization. The group provides legal guidance and other services for immigrants in Illinois. Its main goal is to reunify families. Casas and Contreras have worked closely together to help Xally and other children arrive safely in the United States. What's more concerning, she said, is that in March, the Trump administration cut federal funding for legal representation for unaccompanied minors. Only after 11 immigrant groups sued, saying that 26,000 children were at risk of losing their attorneys, did a court order temporarily restore the funding, but the case is still ongoing. Those groups argued that the government has an obligation under a 2008 anti-trafficking law to provide vulnerable children with legal counsel. That same law requires safe repatriation of the children. But Casas is skeptical of that. Even if the funding has been restored, the demand can't keep up. In April, more than 8,300 children ages 11 and under were ordered deported by immigration courts. That is the highest number for that age group in any month since tracking began over 35 years ago, according to court data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, as first reported by The Independent. Since Trump took office in January, judges have ordered the removal of over 53,000 immigrant children, according to the data collected. Most of those children are elementary school age or younger. Approximately 15,000 were under the age of 4, and another 20,000 were between 4 and 11 years old. Teenagers have also been affected, with 17,000 ordered deported, though that number is still below the peak seen in 2020, during Trump's first term. Some of the children are unaccompanied minors, like Xally and Daneli, but it's unclear how many, since immigration authorities stopped tracking that data years ago. In the Chicago area, it's hard to know how many children are currently being detained or deported, due to gaps in the available data. But according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Tribune, at least 16 minors were deported or left the U.S. after being booked in Chicago-area ICE detention centers during Trump's first 150 days back in office. Another seven cases are still pending. If all seven of those cases result in deportation, that would bring the total to 23 minors — about the same number as were deported in the final 150 days of the Biden administration. But the latest available ICE data doesn't capture any efforts since late June. When Xally learned that Daneli had returned home, she panicked. The two girls had spent a few nights at the church, confiding in each other the fear that few other young girls would understand. 'Would I have to do that too?' she asked herself. 'I don't want to. I like school here, I want to go back after summer break.' Xally is enrolled at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, where she would enter eighth grade if she stays in the country. Meanwhile, her summer has been shadowed by fear and uncertainty. Just days after receiving the letter, her family quietly marked her 13th birthday — no guests, no music, no gifts. She can't even go anymore to the beach, a place that once felt like the freedom and safety she and her mother had desperately sought after being released from federal custody.
Chicago Tribune
21 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Robert A. Pape: To prevent nuclear war in the Middle East, America needs to change its nuclear doctrine
The world is moving closer to the brink of nuclear war in alarming ways that are more dangerous and harder to anticipate than during the Cold War. The famous 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a harrowing near miss, but today's nuclear dangers are more complex. This is due to a variety of factors, particularly coming together in the Middle East: increasing tensions across the region, growing risks of nuclear proliferation, and now perils of surprise military attack during crises involving states with nuclear weapons or on the cusp of nuclear weapons. Israel's recent 12-day war against Iran is a harbinger of potentially growing nuclear dangers to come. For the first time in history, two nuclear armed states — Israel and the United States — bombed a state, Iran, with a major nuclear program that many believe is on the threshold of acquiring all the physical and technical capacities necessary to produce nuclear weapons within a matter of months. For sure, the 12-day war involved a series of attacks and counterattacks that were terrifying to live through, and there was great relief when they came to an end. However, the future is even more concerning. First, Israeli and American bombing did not obliterate Iran's nuclear program, as President Donald Trump astonishingly declared before he received bomb damage assessments. As is now widely agreed among U.S. defense intelligence, Israeli intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan did not eliminate Iran's stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. Although uncertainly remains about Iran's next steps, there is little doubt that Iran could attempt to produce a 'crude' bomb in a matter of months. And it is important to understand, a 'crude' bomb means a Hiroshima-style weapon that could lead to the deaths of 80,000 people from the immediate effects of the blast. Second, future information about Iran's nuclear program is fraught with high degrees of uncertainty. From the beginning, Iran has allowed IAEA inspectors to have tremendous access to monitor its nuclear enrichment program. True, these inspections have fluctuated over time and have never been as fully comprehensive as many would have liked. However, for decades, the quarterly IAEA reports have been crucial for high confidence assessments about the scale of Iran's enrichment program and whether vast amounts of enriched uranium have not been siphoned off to develop nuclear weapons. Now, Iran has reportedly banned IAEA inspectors from its nuclear facilities, and the fear and suspicion about a surprise nuclear breakout will grow over time. Third, and most important, the 12-day war shows that the fear of surprise attack is now fully justified. It is important to recall that the war started June 13 with a stunning, Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack by Israel on Iran's nuclear sites. Israel's bolt-from-the-blue strike occurred without warning and while Iranian negotiators were preparing to meet with their American counterparts just days later. Given these events, Israel, the United States and Iran now face the specter of one of the most terrifying scenarios for nuclear war: the 'reciprocal fear of surprise attack.' That's a situation in which both sides of a potential conflict fear being attacked first, leading them to consider — and possibly launch — a preemptive strike to avoid being caught off guard. The most worrisome aspect is that striking first in these circumstances has an element of rationality. If one side thinks the other is preparing for a surprise attack, then attacking first, even if it carries risks, may be the best way to reduce one's own losses. Of course, nuclear war is so horrible that the reciprocal fear of surprise attack may never lead to an actual outbreak of war. If so, then the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons would not be a problem in the first place. Alas, we need to take this danger seriously. What can be done? Although there are no perfect solutions to the reciprocal fear of surprise attack, there is one step that would significantly matter: For the United States, Iran and Israel to declare that they would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a crisis involving Iran. The general idea of 'no first use' pledges, as they are called, arose during the Cold War, but the United States has never been willing to make such a promise. At the time, this was thought of in the context of the U.S., Europe and Soviet contest in which America needed the implicit threat of the first use of nuclear weapons to offset the Soviet conventional military threat to U.S. nonnuclear European allies. The Middle East is clearly different. America's main ally, Israel, is a powerful nuclear weapons state and so does not rely on U.S. nuclear weapons to deter attacks on its homeland. For the United States, Israel and Iran to agree a limited no-first-use policy would not end the tensions over Iran's nuclear program. However, it would energize negotiations and avoid some of the worst ways that a nuclear war could inadvertently occur. The Nobel Laureate Assembly to Prevent Nuclear War taking place at the University of Chicago recently was a perfect place to begin a national conversation about the value of adapting U.S. nuclear doctrine to today's realities in the Middle East. If this assembly of the most brilliant minds on the planet could recommend this historic step in which the U.S., Iran and Israel each pledge they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the dispute involving Iran's nuclear program, this would be a meaningful step toward preventing nuclear war in one of the most dangerous regions in the world.
