A USAID employee, who has requested anonymity for fear of retribution, writes:

Working for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — the conduit for American soft power across the globe — demanded I prepare for frightening things that thankfully most Americans don’t need to worry about. Defensive driving techniques to escape from a terrorist attack. How to spot where landmines might be in the field. Emergency first aid in the event of a shooting or other attack, including in extremely remote geographies. How to identify possible victims of human trafficking.

One thing they never taught us? What to do if you find yourself on the leading edge of a corrupt billionaire’s coup in America.

Since Jan. 20, President Trump — or, more accurately, Elon Musk, the religious zealots, and far-right activists behind Project 2025 — have been enacting a hostile takeover at the heart of the American experiment and dismantling the bureaucratic machinery that is the last bulwark against fascism in the United States. While the focus predictably has been on Trump’s never-ending cascade of absurdist claims and the unprecedented overreach of an aborted freeze on all federal spending, USAID has been ground zero for a different set of parasites riding the MAGA wave.

Since Trump’s slim victory in the 2024 election, these hangers-on have been telegraphing that USAID would be the test site for how to destroy the U.S. government. They’re led by Musk, the richest man in the world; Stephen Miller, a White House adviser who architected the Muslim travel ban and child separation policies at the border; and Peter Marocco, who during the first Trump administration bounced around the Departments of Defense, State, Commerce, and USAID before reportedly turning up at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

It started right out of the gates on Jan. 20, with an executive order freezing all foreign aid that shocked even the most seasoned diplomats. For public purposes, the series of moves now wears the face of freshly minted Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with support from Musk acolytes who are spreading across the government like roaches, including at the already-captured Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Musk’s allies and other unelected members of the administration’s transition team quickly began and continue to demand lists. Lists of projects and employees working on vaguely defined DEI-related activities. Lists of civil service employees in their vulnerable probationary years. Lists of employees working on statutorily mandated programs that could be targeted for conversion to Trump’s beloved Schedule F, a new classification of federal employees created by executive order that strips them of their labor protections.

In the first week, an agency-wide gag order barred USAID employees from talking to anyone outside of the Agency, including foreign governments wondering if programs will continue, critical private-sector partners co-funding agency activities, and even other federal agencies.

The second week kicked off with the removal of USAID’s senior career executive leadership, with nearly 60 civil servants put on administrative leave without cause and with no promise of due process, in what we all quickly started to call the “Monday Afternoon Massacre.” They got 30 minutes of notice. [Continue reading…]