Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs The Trump administration plans to reduce the number of workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development from more than 10,000 to about 290 positions, three people with knowledge of the plans said on Thursday.The small remaining staff includes employees who specialize in health and humanitarian assistance, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to publicly discuss the cuts.A spokeswoman for the State Department, whose umbrella the remnants of the agency have moved under, did not immediately return a request for comment.Officials at U.S.A.I.D. are pushing for less severe cuts, and they submitted significantly longer lists to the State Department of personnel they deemed essential to carry out lifesaving and other critical programs, according to two people with knowledge of their efforts.U.S.A.I.D. officials were also told on Thursday that about 800 awards and contracts administered through the agency were being canceled, the three people said.The moves also came just one day before almost all of the agency’s direct hires, including its roster of Foreign Service officers, will be put on indefinite administrative leave. In addition, almost all contractors will see their work orders terminated. Foreign Service officers will have 30 days to return to the United States.Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who took control of U.S.A.I.D. as acting administrator on Monday, insisted during a Fox News interview this week that the takeover was “not about getting rid of foreign aid.”“But now we have rank insubordination,” he said, adding that U.S.A.I.D. employees had been “completely uncooperative, so we had no choice but to take dramatic steps to bring this thing under control.”On Thursday, he reiterated the promise that some workers would be offered exemptions to minimize the hardship of the sudden recall. The pledge was made first in a notice put on the U.S.A.I.D. website Tuesday night that announced that employees around the globe would be put on administrative leave or let go by Friday.“We’re not trying to be disruptive to people’s personal lives,” Mr. Rubio told reporters while traveling in the Dominican Republic. “We’re not being punitive here. But this is the only way we’ve been able to get cooperation from U.S.A.I.D.”Two unions representing U.S.A.I.D. employees on Thursday filed a lawsuit over the cuts against President Trump, Mr. Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, along with the agency, the State Department and the Treasury Department. The suit argues that the reduction in personnel and the cancellation of global aid contracts is unconstitutional and violates the separation of powers.“What we’re seeing is an unlawful seizure of this agency by the Trump administration in a plain violation of basic constitutional principles,” said Robin Thurston, the legal director for Democracy Forward, one of two advocacy organizations that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees, adding that the administration had “generated a global humanitarian crisis.”The suit seeks an injunction to stop the firing and furloughing of employees and dismantling of the agency. It argues that U.S.A.I.D. cannot be unwound without the prior approval of Congress, which passed legislation backing the agency and continues to fund it as a unique entity.U.S.A.I.D. officials have been bracing for a drastic reduction to their ranks since contractors started being let go last week, just days after the Trump administration announced a sweeping stop-work order for foreign aid.The order was later amended to say that the agency’s lifesaving activities could continue. But several U.S.A.I.D. officials and contractors have reported that they cannot gain access to the funding for projects that received a waiver.Employees’ fears were heightened on Monday, after Mr. Rubio announced that he had become the agency’s acting administrator, delegating its day-to-day governance to Pete Marocco, the department’s director of foreign assistance. That day, Erica Y. Carr, the acting executive secretary, also told bureau heads in an email to come up with the “leanest essential personnel numbers” they would need “to provide essential services only,” according to a copy viewed by The New York Times.In the days since, nearly all other U.S.A.I.D. employees in the United States were either terminated or put on administrative leave, while the agency’s global work force was told to expect to be put on a similar status by the end of the day Friday.The loss of nearly the entire U.S.A.I.D. work force threatened to have dire consequences for an enormous swath of programs run by the agency, which has for years led the government’s humanitarian aid and global development efforts, as well as the greater global aid industry that relies on U.S.A.I.D. funding.While the exact size of the U.S.A.I.D. work force could not be precisely determined, estimates range as high as 14,000, a number that includes all contractors and foreign nationals who work with agency missions. “Rubio claims that @USAID lifesaving assistance for health and humanitarian needs will continue,” Atul Gawande, who served as assistant administrator of the bureau of global health during the Biden administration, said in a social media post on Thursday. “But his team just communicated that the entire agency will be imminently reduced from 14,000 to just 294 people. Just 12 in Africa.”Mr. Gawande’s post included a screenshot of an email from Joel Borkert, the acting chief of staff, breaking down the projected staffing per bureau after the cuts. The email showed that the administration planned to retain 12 people focused on Africa, eight focused on Latin America and the Caribbean, 21 on the Middle East and eight on Asia.According to that chart, 78 people from the bureau of humanitarian affairs and 77 from the bureau of global health would also be retained.The moves have affected the State Department as well. On Monday, the department issued a stop-work order to companies employing about 60 contractors in Washington who work on democracy and human rights issues and focus on authoritarian states.Michael Crowley contributed reporting from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Stephanie Nolen from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Edward Wong from Bangkok.
