USAID staff given 15 minutes to gather belongings from Washington, D.C., office
Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — As President Donald Trump’s administration guts the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), former federal workers are being told to say goodbye to their desks — and to do so quickly.
USAID leadership sent an email to agency staffers on Tuesday instructing them that they will have 15 minutes to enter their former offices at the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, D.C., to retrieve their personal belongings.
“This Thursday and Friday ONLY–on February 27 and 28, 2025 –USAID staff will have one opportunity to retrieve their personal belongings,” the message reads, which was also posted to USAID’s government website.
“Staff will be given approximately 15 minutes to complete this retrieval and must be finished removing items within their time slot only,” the message continues.
The email includes a timetable giving staff a window in which they can collect their belongings based on their bureau or independent office.
For some, the timeframe is as long as an hour and a half; for others, it’s just half an hour.
The email also contains a lengthy list of prohibited items that USAID staff are not allowed to bring onto the premises, including BB guns, drills, knives, sabers, swords, nunchucks, ski poles, chlorine and liquid bleach.
According to the message, the items referenced “are, and have always been, prohibited from entering the Ronald Reagan Building facility through a security screening post,” which is typically only used by uncredentialled visitors who are subject to additional rules and regulations.
Several USAID officials told ABC News that including this list illustrates how agency employees who dedicated their professional lives to foreign assistance are now being treated like violent criminals.
“It sounds like they think we’re going to try to stage a Jan. 6-style ‘peaceful protest’,” an official said.
The latest directive from USAID leadership comes as 1,600 workers in the humanitarian aid bureau received termination notices over the weekend and thousands more abroad were put on administrative leave.
Prior to Trump’s second administration, more than 10,000 people worked at USAID.
(WASHINGTON) — With the Virginia gubernatorial election a little more than eight months away, Democrats in the state have said they believe the federal job cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration will have a ripple effect that could sway voters to flip the governor seat from a Republican to a Democrat.
The Virginia gubernatorial election, which is held in an off-year cycle, is often seen as an indicator of where the political climate stands in the country. The election comes after federal job cuts carried out by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency with a goal of slimming down a bloated federal government and reducing its jobs — many of which are stationed in Washington, D.C.’s suburbs of Virginia.
The 2021 governor race demonstrated how education, parental rights and the culture war motivated voters and contributed to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin winning the election and flipping the governor seat after Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s time in the governors mansion. Youngkin defeated his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, by just over 63,000 votes.
Youngkin’s success in amplifying important voter issues was then mimicked by other state leaders and candidates running during the 2022 midterm elections.
Virginia has just under 145,000 federal workers, according to the Office of Personnel Management — making it one of the states with the most federal employees. It’s still unclear how many total jobs have been cut at the federal level — though it’s estimated to be in the thousands across the country.
Former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is running for governor in Virginia, told ABC News in a phone interview that the job cuts on the federal level are becoming a constant presence on the campaign trail.
“I hear about it from the people who are impacted, from people who are impacted because they’re federal employees and they have a friend who’s already been fired or they’re worried about their job,” Spanberger told ABC News.
Spanberger said that the impact these job cuts have on the commonwealth will be “dire.”
ABC News reached out to Virginia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who is running against Spanberger for governor, about the federal job cuts in Virginia and its effect on the race, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
In response to the federal layoffs and the impact on Virginia workers, Youngkin announced a new state website to help people find jobs in the commonwealth, including those impacted by the Trump administration’s federal cuts.
The new website, called virginiahasjobs.com, displays 250,000 jobs available across the state.
Although Youngkin said he has empathy for those who have lost their jobs through the Trump administration’s slashing of federal jobs, the Virginia governor — a Trump ally — said he supports the idea of trying to cut out waste and fraud from government.
“Listen, we have a federal government that is inefficient, and we have an administration that is taking on that challenge of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse and driving efficiency in our federal government. It needs to happen,” Youngkin said.
Earle-Sears, whom Youngkin recently endorsed, amplified the resources announced by the Virginia governor through releases, campaign messaging and social media posts.
But some say it’s too early to tell if these cuts could impact the upcoming elections in Virginia.
Zack Roday, a Virginia-based GOP consultant and a former adviser for Youngkin’s 2021 gubernatorial campaign, told ABC News that Democrats seizing on the cuts of the federal government means they’re looking for a message to carry them through this cycle.
“Democrats are in search of a message, so they’re going to try this,” Roday told ABC News. “That is logical. I understand it from a tactic. If it’s effective, we won’t know quite yet.”
“They have to pin their campaign on something because they don’t have much, much of a message because Gov. Youngkin’s record, his approval is popular, both with the electorate writ large and certainly the important independents that have a big role in determining who’s the next governor,” Roday continued.
Roday also added that there are people in Virginia who support the Trump administration’s cuts.
“There’s a whole lot of Virginians that live outside of Richmond and Northern Virginia, and have a lot of people that look at what Donald Trump is doing and are saying about time, thank you,” Roday said.
(WASHINGTON) — As President Donald Trump starts to defend his executive order ending birthright citizenship in court, parents are beginning to grapple with the uncertainty stemming from his unprecedented executive order and the possibility that their future children could become “stateless.”
Five pregnant undocumented women and two nonprofits on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in Maryland District Court challenging the order, which seeks to interpret the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship as not applying to the children of undocumented parents. Joining the lawsuit under pseudonyms, the women argued that Trump’s order deprives their future children of their constitutional rights.
“The principle of birthright citizenship is a foundation of our national democracy, is woven throughout the laws of our nation, and has shaped a shared sense of national belonging for generation after generation of citizens,” the lawsuit said.
The complaint makes a similar claim as the four other federal lawsuits signed on by a combined 22 states and two cities; however, this lawsuit differs by having multiple plaintiffs who would be directly impacted by the executive order. The 38-page filing provides personal details of how the lives of each woman and their future children would be changed under Trump’s plan.
Monica – a medical doctor from Venezuela with temporary protected status who joined the lawsuit under the pseudonym– said she joined the lawsuit because she fears her future child will become stateless, as her home country facing an ongoing humanitarian, political and economic crisis.
“I’m 12 weeks pregnant. I should be worried about the health of my child. I should be thinking about that primarily and instead my husband and I are stressed, we’re anxious and we’re depressed about the reality that my child may not be able to become a US citizen,” she said.
Maribel – who joined the lawsuit under a pseudonym along with four other women – has lived in the United States for more than half her life after emigrating from El Salvador and Guatemala. She is due to have her third child in July but worries Trump’s executive order will split her young family, the lawsuit said.
“She fears her unborn child will not have the same rights to citizenship as the future child’s older sisters, and could even be subject to deportation, separating the family,” the lawsuit read.
“Every day, babies are being born in the United States whose constitutionally guaranteed citizenship will be called into doubt under the Executive Order,” the lawsuit argued.
Liza and her husband Igor fled Russia to the United States for asylum, and they are expecting a child in May. They can’t imagine being forced to bring their newborn back to a country that will likely prosecute them, the lawsuit said.
“Neither Liza nor Igor feel they can return to Russia without being persecuted, and they therefore do not feel they can apply for Russian citizenship for their child. Because of that, Liza and Igor are worried their child will be stateless,” the lawsuit said.
Juana – who is two months pregnant – fears what the future might hold for her and her future child if they are sent back to Colombia if her asylum claim falls through, according to the lawsuit.
“She wants her unborn child to be able to grow up without fear and with a sense of belonging in the United States. The thought that her unborn child could be denied U.S. citizenship and deported to Colombia without her is terrifying,” the lawsuit said.
Trinidad is a Venezuelan immigrant who is due in August, but she fears that her child will be stateless under Trump’s executive order, caught between Venezuela’s democratic crisis and the legal tumult of the United States immigration system, the lawsuit said.
Monica and her partner both have Temporary Protected Status after seeking asylum from Venezuela in the United States, but they are worried their child may be ineligible for both the United States and Venezuelan citizenship. Monica said she came to the United States in 2019 with her husband and thought they were doing “everything the right way” by paying taxes, working and buying their own home, she said.
“We had reached a point of stability in this country and wanted to have a child,” Monica said.
A happy change in their lives quickly devolved into fear, she said, when they saw Trump act on his promise to end the United States’ promise of birthright citizenship with the swipe of a sharpie.
“This is a really difficult situation where I truly do not see a way out for my child, a way forward for my child to be able to get through this,” she said.
Because Venezuela no longer offers consular services in the United States, Monica said she is unable to explore the possibility of getting her child citizenship there. Her lawyers do not know if Trump’s executive order would apply to people with temporary protected status, so determining if her child will be an American citizen meant filing a lawsuit against the president, she said.
“This executive order has just left us with more uncertainty than even before. Will my child be a US citizen? Will he be nothing? We just do not know what to do,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Joe Biden wished President Donald Trump “all the best for the next four years” in the letter he left in the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, Fox News reported Wednesday.
Trump said Tuesday night that he opened the letter and called it “very nice.”
“Just basically, it was a little bit of an inspirational type of letter, you know? ‘Joy, do a good job. Important, very important, how important the job is.’ But I may, I think it was a nice letter. I think I should let people see it, because it was a positive for him, in writing it, I appreciated the letter,” Trump told reporters Tuesday evening.
Read aloud on Fox News Wednesday morning, the letter was addressed “Dear President Trump” and was two paragraphs long.
“As I take leave of this sacred office I wish you and your family all the best in the next four years. The American people – and people around the world – look to this house for steadiness in the inevitable storms of history, and my prayer is that in the coming years will be a time of prosperity, peace, and grace for our nation,” Biden wrote Trump.
He closed with a prayer, “May God bless you and guide you as He has blessed and guided our beloved country since our founding.”
Trump appeared to discover the letter Biden left for him on Monday evening in the Oval Office when speaking with reporters.
When one asked whether he’d found the letter, Trump opened the drawer of the desk and found it, apparently for the first time. It was in a small white envelope with “47” written on the front and underlined.
“It could have been years before we found this thing. Wow, thank you,” Trump said.
Biden continued the tradition of leaving a letter for his successor — one Trump continued in 2020 when he left after his first term, turning over the office to Biden.
Trump also reflected on his return to the Oval Office, when asked by ABC News about how it felt to be back in the White House.
“What a great feeling, one of the better feelings I’ve ever had,” Trump said.
