I’ve Been RIF’d at USAID, but I Still Swear an Oath—to Democracy

(I technically still work at USAID, but with the Trump administration’s elimination of the agency, we’re counting down the days we have left. A large portion of USAID will be RIF’d, or officially terminated, on July 1, myself included. I’m currently on paternity leave for the birth of our first son. The remainder of staff will continue to draw down actions, do their best to transfer data and functions over to the State Department, and bring the remaining USAID foreign service officers and their families home. For their efforts, they’ll be shown the door on September 1.)

Elon Musk has left Washington, and DOGE is to some extent out of the headlines. But rest assured, the damage is still being done. That’s why terminated employees have been taking and continue to take action, ranging from the April 5 Hands Off rally to the Tuesday Group—an array of terminated government employees who, as the name implies, meet every Tuesday in the Hart Senate Office Building to conduct peaceful sit-ins of Senate offices and communicate the damage that is being done to their respective states through the wholesale destruction of the departments and agencies that they have devoted their lives to.

The conversations with the Senate staffers are often shocking. One would anticipate that the Senate is up to speed on what is happening, able to track stats of terminations and dollars cut by DOGE. The reality, unfortunately, is much worse. Instead, our stories of trauma are often the first time that the Senate staffers are made aware of the cancellation of programs and the stoppage of work.