Anonymous USAID Worker
Appearances
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
A lot of the work that I did was focused on improving diagnosis and treatment services for children.
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
That afternoon, in fact, several colleagues that had been working on DEIA initiatives were fired, sent home. One of them I had only been talking to about two hours before he was sent home. That was very chilling. A sense of paranoia arose. I remember we kind of all said, what's coming next?
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
I was in an off-site meeting about a new project that we had starting up. Those of us who work for USAID who were in that meeting were very distracted because we were getting emails about the executive orders and the rumor mill was starting. At two o'clock, Marco Rubio had sent out the stop work order. My colleague said, I'm really sorry, but we have to end this meeting immediately.
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
And then I and the other contractor on our team were sent home. I had just a sense of dread. I was like, this is not going to end well. And then on Tuesday around noon, about 400 of us just one by one were laid off.
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
A group of us that were all on the same team that live in the DC area decided we would all turn in our laptops and badges and everything at the same time so that we could see each other. And so we met around 11 o'clock and then we walked over to the USA building.
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
The remaining people on our team came down to get us checked in because since we didn't have badges anymore, we couldn't enter the building. And so we all got guest badges and we all went up to the floor.
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
When I got there on Wednesday morning, all of the beautiful photographs from USAID's work all over the world, you know, photographs of like colleagues that we worked with or clinics that we had been working in, all of it was gone. It's like they had pulled down the frames, pulled out the photographs and put the frames back up on the wall.
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
So you were walking down and seeing just like a hallway of empty frames, which was very bizarre.
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
After we said goodbye to our colleagues, we all went downstairs and the security guards, who are the first people we see when we get there in the morning and the last people we see when we leave, were so kind to us and said, you know, we just, we can't believe this is happening and we hope we get to see you again. Just really, really kindness.
The Daily
Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories
And honestly, that's when I just really broke down crying. I mean, I had been upset before, but just to see that they were so concerned about us was really touching. And then we all said goodbye.