Usaid terror

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m so sorry, OP. Go to wok. Call reporters. And your Congress people. This is insane.

Reporters know.

And NO, staff were directed to stay out of the bldg.

Good.

[Anonymous]

This is not the way a civilized nation should be treating government employees, let alone government employees vulnerable in a foreign country.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/usaid-workers-scramble-answers-after-trump-pulls-off-118487771

U.S. aid staffers around the world are scrambling Wednesday for answers and starting to pack up households or pull their children from school after a sudden Trump administration order yanking almost all of them off the job and out of the field.

In Washington, Democratic lawmakers and other supporters of the U.S. Agency for International Development planned rallies to protest the dismantling of the independent government agency established six decades ago. USAID has been one of the agencies hardest hit as the new administration and Elon Musk’s budget-cutting team target federal programs they say are wasteful or not aligned with a conservative agenda.

U.S. embassies in many of the more than 100 countries where USAID operates convened emergency town halls for the thousands of agency staffers and contractors looking for answers. Embassy officials said they had been given no guidance on what to tell staffers, particularly local hires, about their employment status.

Despite the administration's assurances that the U.S. government would bring the agency's workers home as ordered within 30 days, many feared being stranded in the field and left to make their own way home. Their colleagues in Washington described reactivating employee networks that had helped in the past to bring local staffers out of danger zones.

The late-night order Tuesday to abandon USAID posts worldwide comes as many of the aid workers abroad are locked out of email and emergency communications with their own government. Most agency spending has been ordered frozen and most workers at the Washington headquarters have been taken off the job, making it unclear how the administration would manage and pay for the abrupt relocation of thousands of staffers and their families.

The online notification to USAID workers and contractors said they would be off the job, effective just before midnight Friday, unless deemed essential. Direct hires of the agency overseas got 30 days to return home, while contractors would be fired, the notice said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good summary here from CRS including citation to the statutory authority for USAID.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12500#:~:text=Section%201413%20of%20the%20Foreign,the%20State%20Department%20(22%20U.S.C.

Ah well, thanks CRS for that carefully executed opinion, but USAID is already gutted and the Republican party which controls all 3 branches of government does not care about the law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is not the way a civilized nation should be treating government employees, let alone government employees vulnerable in a foreign country.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/usaid-workers-scramble-answers-after-trump-pulls-off-118487771

U.S. aid staffers around the world are scrambling Wednesday for answers and starting to pack up households or pull their children from school after a sudden Trump administration order yanking almost all of them off the job and out of the field.

In Washington, Democratic lawmakers and other supporters of the U.S. Agency for International Development planned rallies to protest the dismantling of the independent government agency established six decades ago. USAID has been one of the agencies hardest hit as the new administration and Elon Musk’s budget-cutting team target federal programs they say are wasteful or not aligned with a conservative agenda.

U.S. embassies in many of the more than 100 countries where USAID operates convened emergency town halls for the thousands of agency staffers and contractors looking for answers. Embassy officials said they had been given no guidance on what to tell staffers, particularly local hires, about their employment status.

Despite the administration's assurances that the U.S. government would bring the agency's workers home as ordered within 30 days, many feared being stranded in the field and left to make their own way home. Their colleagues in Washington described reactivating employee networks that had helped in the past to bring local staffers out of danger zones.

The late-night order Tuesday to abandon USAID posts worldwide comes as many of the aid workers abroad are locked out of email and emergency communications with their own government. Most agency spending has been ordered frozen and most workers at the Washington headquarters have been taken off the job, making it unclear how the administration would manage and pay for the abrupt relocation of thousands of staffers and their families.

The online notification to USAID workers and contractors said they would be off the job, effective just before midnight Friday, unless deemed essential. Direct hires of the agency overseas got 30 days to return home, while contractors would be fired, the notice said.

shrug.
Boomerquotes

[Anonymous]

Inciting violence is a crime, isn’t it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Inciting violence is a crime, isn’t it?

Since Trump pardoned the Jan 6 people who bludgeoned law enforcement officials trying to protect the Capitol, who knows what's a crime anymore?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Inciting violence is a crime, isn’t it?

No it's not. Just ask J6-ers. It's A -OK now.

[Anonymous]

Elon Musk is as nuts as Trump.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-is-usaid-trump-musk-shut-down-budget-funding-doge-rcna190441

Over the weekend and into Monday, Musk fired off a series of posts on X that accused the agency of corruption.

“Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people?” read one post, which cited a 2023 New York Post article about the origins of the pandemic.

Without citing evidence, Musk also called the agency “a radical-left political psy op” and a “crazy waste of money” and claimed “USAID has been paying media organizations to publish their propaganda.”

[Anonymous]

How DOGE got into USAID - yes, Elon got them into the SCIFs

Security staff initially rebuffed the engineers’ efforts to talk their way into the secure rooms, called sensitive compartmented information facilities (Scifs), because they didn’t have the necessary security clearances. But that evening, Musk phoned a senior official at USAid to demand access for his subordinates, the first of numerous calls to officials and employees of Doge at USAid that have continued into this week.

Inside the building, chaos reigned. Areas that were once declared restricted, with limitations on electronics such as phones and watches, suddenly loosened their security protocols to allow in uncredentialed outsiders. Doge employees were said to obscure their identities to prevent online harassment, a tactic that was repeated at other agencies. And Peter Marocco, the controversial new director of foreign assistance at the state department, was stalking the halls and meeting in private with the Doge employees.

By Friday, things had gone further downhill. After a tense all-hands meeting with senior staff, and outsiders in the sixth-floor conference room, the young engineers rushed around the offices with their laptops, plugging cords into computers and other electronics as they gathered data from the agency.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/05/musk-doge-takeover-usaid

[Anonymous]

The pbs piece on corruption is linked upthread, not a new idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:you get plenty:
Family Hire preference policy for EFM 1) SECRETARIAL JOBS PAYING NOTHING FOR PEOPLE WITH PHDS; MOST GIVE UP CAREERS
Free elite & vetted by Ed bureau schooling for your K-12 aged children with no limits on #of children attending, even enormous families of 6,7,8,9 kids 2) MANY IF NOT POST NO WHERE NEAR DC AREA OF SCHOOLING
If there’s no school at post approved by Ed bureau, you can send your kids to boarding school in CH or anywhere w/approval, all on taxpayer dime
Adult kids in college get a free trip annually to visit you 3) MANY PAY THOUSANDS OUT OF POCKET FOR MOR THAN ONE TRIP A YEAR OTHERWISE YOU DONT SEE YOUR CHI;D
You can get approval to have parents live with you TRUE - AND? ARE YOUR PARENTS ALLOWED TO LIVE WITH YOU?
Diplomatic sales for cars shipped home w/significant savings TRUE
Tax rebate upon departure as long as you have receipts NO
COL adjustment from Bureau of Allowances TRUE, AND IN HIGH COST OF LIVIGN PLACES YOU NEED IT AND THEN SOME
“hardship” differential pay YES IF YOU ARE IN A WAR ZONE OR PLACE WITH CRAZY DANGER OR HARDSHIP SOMETIMES BUTIT TAKES YEARS TO KICK IN ASK HOW I KNOW
LQ pay
Access to embassy docs and mental health + all the referrals and contacts they have for care HA! ASK ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THESE DOCTORS

I’m forgetting so much more but basically, your post goes in the “Oh, Please” hall of fame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:you get plenty:
Family Hire preference policy for EFM
Free elite & vetted by Ed bureau schooling for your K-12 aged children with no limits on #of children attending, even enormous families of 6,7,8,9 kids
If there’s no school at post approved by Ed bureau, you can send your kids to boarding school in CH or anywhere w/approval, all on taxpayer dime
Adult kids in college get a free trip annually to visit you
You can get approval to have parents live with you
Diplomatic sales for cars shipped home w/significant savings
Tax rebate upon departure as long as you have receipts
COL adjustment from Bureau of Allowances
“hardship” differential pay
LQ pay
Access to embassy docs and mental health + all the referrals and contacts they have for care

I’m forgetting so much more but basically, your post goes in the “Oh, Please” hall of fame.

I'm about to have to quit one of these EFM jobs. I don't even make 50k. It's my second career. My first didn't work out with my spouse's job. The rest of your list isn't as glamorous as you make it sound. My child went to the best school in town but was considerably behind in "English" upon return for example.

[Anonymous]

I guess it hasnt sunk in that the government of the united states has changed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess it hasnt sunk in that the government of the united states has changed.

Yeah, changed from a government of law, under the constitution, to a government of men, under elon musk

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let’s be honest—I grew up in a State Department or USAID family (I won’t reveal which for anonymity). My father was in a technical supervisor role, and we lived all over the world. From my firsthand experience, I can say that the lifestyle was far beyond anything we could have had in the U.S., even if we were wealthy.

We basically had our mortgage covered back home by renting out our house while we lived overseas, where our housing was fully paid for. And we weren’t just living in normal homes—these were massive houses with staff: maids, gardeners, and drivers. It was a completely different world. We also traveled frequently, and vacations were either heavily subsidized or fully covered through various allowances. We attended elite American schools that, back home, were only accessible to the ultra-rich, but for us, they were fully funded by U.S. taxpayers.

It was a great lifestyle, no doubt. But it often felt like a fantasy, like a long-term vacation rather than real life. My dad, who was at the equivalent of a GS-15 level, later admitted to me that he only did about 30 minutes of actual work a week. The real purpose of many Americans stationed in these countries seemed more about maintaining a U.S. presence rather than truly making an impact. Embassy life was filled with social events, networking, and parties—it felt like an exclusive club, completely detached from the struggles of the local populations USAID was supposedly there to help.

From my perspective, USAID and similar government programs do fund important projects, but there’s also an enormous amount of waste. The sheer amount of money spent on maintaining the American presence abroad—on housing, benefits, and lifestyles—makes you question whether these funds could be better used elsewhere.

I’m not saying that every single person in USAID is doing nothing, but from what I saw growing up, it was a system that provided an incredibly cushy deal for those involved. It raises the question: how much of this is actually about development, and how much is just about sustaining a privileged American presence overseas?

such candor is rare. thank you

+1

The wildest part to me is her dad talking literally about hours of work. Truly outlier.

Did your dad talk to you about his work hours?

I call BS on that. She has no idea what her Dad did or how much he worked or how important his work was.

Yeah the story is BS. No diplomat is going to say they only work half an hour a week when everything they do, particularly socially, is "work."

Well, to my Dad, the work was the technical task he did once a week, which was like 30 minutes. The rest was waiting for cables, socializing, etc. If you want to call the later work, he worked 10 hours a day. He also ended up drinking a lot because of all the socializing and idle time as he didn't need to do much technical work that required focus.

So you grew up in Europe 30-40 years ago with an alcoholic diplomat dad who really milked his position for all he could. Cool story bro.

Tell me what this has to do with the attempted illegal closure of USAID in 2025?