An order sidelining almost 60 senior career leaders at the U.S. Agency for International Development was temporarily rescinded Thursday by one of the few remaining senior career civil servants with the authority to do so, two current and two former USAID employees told NBC News.
Hours later, the same career employee was also placed on administrative leave.
“The materials show no evidence that you engaged in misconduct,” Nick Gottlieb, USAID’s director of employee and labor relations, said in an email to the dozens of senior USAID employees placed on paid leave Monday. “As a result, I no longer have authority to maintain you in this status.”
Gottlieb acknowledged that he did not know how long his decision would hold.
“You may receive another email within the day reinstating your leave status. However, that notice will not come from me,” he wrote, adding, “I wish you all the best — you do not deserve this.”
USAID has been reeling since the State Department announced a near total freeze on U.S. foreign aid in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order. In addition to the dozens of career senior civil servants and foreign service officers placed on administrative leave, hundreds of contractors for agency were fired this week, and hundreds more are being furloughed, according to two former and two current USAID employees. More furloughs are expected in the coming days according to two of the sources.
Hours after reinstating senior career leadership Thursday, Gottlieb was also placed an administrative leave for refusing a request from USAID’s front office and Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency to issue “immediate termination notices to a group of employees without due process,” he wrote in a farewell letter to all USAID employees reviewed by NBC.
“It is and has always been my office’s commitment to the workforce that we ensure all employees receive their due process in any of our actions,” Gottlieb wrote. “I will not be party to a violation of that commitment.”
He closed by requesting that those still working at the agency be kind to his staff which undoubtedly will be shorthanded “It has been an honor working with all of you at this Agency, which I treasure,” he wrote.
USAID and the State Department did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an expanded waiver to the sweeping freeze of U.S. foreign aid to include all life-saving assistance, but so far the exemptions to the executive order have not slowed the cuts to the USAID workforce.
“We have this thing that I’ve called the foreign aid industrial complex: All of these entities around the world that are getting millions and millions of dollars from the United States,” Rubio said in an interview Thursday with Megyn Kelly. “We have to make sure that it’s aligned with our national interest, that we are prioritizing that and that we’re spending it on things that really matter and are really producing.”
A former USAID official, Jeremy Konyndyk, warned that the damage caused by the cuts to both the U.S. funding of aid groups and the staff of the development world cannot be easily reversed.
“There is a there is a symbiotic relationship between the U.S. government and its nonprofit and contractor partners to implement US foreign aid policy, to pursue humanitarian goals and global health goals abroad,” Konyndyk, now president of the aid group Refugees International, said in an interview. “It’s very sophisticated. It’s very intricate. If this goes on for really any significant amount of time, it will really break the architecture of U.S. foreign aid that has been developed over 50 years.”
