The Trump administration is hiring people to help wind down the remnants of the U.S. Agency for International Development after it was gutted last year.
There’s just one caveat: Former staff members need not apply.
The government has specifically precluded former U.S.A.I.D. employees from working for a contractor who is winding down the remaining programs, grants and contracts that the Trump administration abruptly ended a year ago. The reason: to “avoid the risk of impaired objectivity,” according to a Jan. 6 memo from the agency’s chief terminations officer, obtained by The New York Times.
Bringing on a new work force to finish the job will inject “fresh, independent viewpoints,” the memo said.
The dismantling of the government’s foreign aid agency was one of the earliest and most stunning moves in the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink and revamp the federal government, leaving employees devastated as their work around the world came to a halt.
The fact that former aid workers are now barred from applying, even as many struggle to find jobs, feels like a vengeful blow by an administration that has made no secret of its deep disdain for the agency, former employees said.
“The idea that anybody who was working for U.S.A.I.D. is tainted in some way is repulsive,” said Mike Henning, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1534. The union is in a legal fight with the administration over the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. and is appealing a lower court’s decision to dismiss the case.
After the vast majority of the agency’s aid work was canceled and the employees were terminated, the State Department absorbed some of the agency’s work.
What remains of U.S.A.I.D. is currently overseen by Russell T. Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, which is supervising the dismantling. The office did not respond to questions about the closeout contract.
The agency has been working to formally terminate contracts and grants, process employee separations and address outstanding balances it might owe. The new hires under the contract will continue this work and other administrative tasks.
In its solicitation for bids to officially close the agency, U.S.A.I.D. said the work “requires subject matter expertise,” even as it included the clause “the contractor must preclude anyone with previous U.S.A.I.D. experience from recruitment.”
The wind-down contract, worth up to $150 million over two years, was awarded last month to the Virginia-based joint venture 2TechJV L.L.C.
The company did not respond to a request for comment. Details of the contract and memo were reported earlier by Devex, a news organization that covers global development.
Chris Milligan, who previously served in the position of counselor to the agency, said the ban on hiring former agency staff members was highly unusual — and made little sense.
He said the contracts and grants that needed to be terminated were complex and technical, and contracting officers needed to understand what was permitted to be reimbursed. If they are not closed out appropriately, it could open the government to legal risks.
“Why would we not want to hire the most technically qualified people to safeguard U.S. taxpayer money?” said Mr. Milligan, who is the co-chairman of the U.S.A.I.D. alumni association.
Much of what U.S.A.I.D. did involved working with nongovernmental organizations around the world.
Formed in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy, the agency has led programs focused on treatments for diseases like AIDS and malaria. It helped countries in need with emergency food assistance and supported new democracies by providing funds for election monitors.
Last year, The Lancet, a medical journal, estimated that the agency’s work saved more than 90 million lives in the previous two decades alone.
But Trump administration officials argued that the agency was wasteful and not aligned with their “America First” objectives.
“U.S.A.I.D. has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a July 1 Substack post.
Elon Musk, the billionaire who led President Trump’s government-cutting initiative, celebrated the agency’s downfall and at one point boasted on social media, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
Administration officials have acknowledged that hiring a new work force to finish off the agency will cost the government additional money and require training. But they said it was necessary to fairly unwind its work.
“There is still a body of work to complete before U.S.A.I.D. will cease to exist,” Matthew Dickinson, an official with the Office of Management and Budget who is acting as the agency’s chief terminations officer, wrote in the Jan. 6 memo. There could be a conflict of interest, he wrote, if former employees are directed to audit or close a program that they might have started or overseen.
Mr. Henning, who was among a group of former U.S.A.I.D. workers who held a rally on Friday outside the agency’s former building, said government experience used to be a valuable asset for those seeking contract work.
“Now it’s seen as a black mark,” he said.
Emily Badger, Zach Montague and Carolyn Van Houten contributed reporting.
Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.
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