Rubio orders firings of all USAID staffers overseas to move forward

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered U.S. embassies around the world Tuesday to move ahead with a directive to fire all remaining staffers with the U.S. Agency for International Development. He said the State Department will take over USAID’s foreign assistance programs by Monday.

A federal judge had temporarily blocked an executive order by President Donald Trump for mass firings at multiple federal agencies, including the State Department, and plaintiffs say Rubio’s reorganization plan appears to violate that court injunction.

The Trump administration says the plan was already underway when the president issued the order, so there’s no possible violation. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston has yet to make a determination.

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Tuesday that Rubio’s directive “wasn’t a surprise.”

“So this was a cable, telling our posts exactly what they were expecting to be told, which is that those positions were being eliminated. So it wasn’t a surprise. It’s nothing new,” she said. “And, it is exactly what we previewed, in February and March of this year.”

Rubio told embassies to stick to the department’s plan “to abolish all USAID overseas positions” by Sept. 30.

The termination of all remaining USAID staffers abroad is one of the last steps in the destruction of the U.S. aid agency and the firing of its more than 10,000 staffers and contractors by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. They had made USAID one of their first targets for elimination.

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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed.