As federal workers and aid recipients reel, Trump’s team is unmoved

Federal and nonprofit employees across Washington are reeling, some preparing to be jobless as President Donald Trump takes an ax to their agencies. Government aid workers abroad have had to foot the bill to relocate their families back home, their programs and livelihoods suddenly cut short. Food is at risk of spoiling as it sits waiting to be distributed in relief projects that may not continue.

The Trump administration’s response has roughly amounted to, “So what?”

“I campaigned on this,” Trump said from behind the Resolute Desk this week, defending the ruthlessness with which his White House is moving to cut the federal workforce and spending programs that have existed for decades. “I campaigned on the fact that I said government is corrupt, and it is. It’s very corrupt.”

The federal government wasn’t just corrupt, the president added. “It’s also foolish.”

Trump’s White House is relishing how quickly his flurry of cuts are leaving some federal agencies in a state of paralysis, even as courts have temporarily blocked some of his most aggressive actions. As justification for the steep cuts, Trump and his advisers point to his popular-vote victory and a recent poll that shows more than half of Americans approve of his job performance.

Trump remains undeterred, his advisers say, by hand-wringing in Washington and critical news coverage of the initiatives, including the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a top target of an Elon Musk-led cost cutting commission, the U.S. DOGE Service. A White House official dismissed concerns about the cuts as a “media narrative.”

“We knew they were going to do this,” said the White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions. “They get the one starving kid in Sudan that isn’t going to have a USAID bottle, and they make everything DOGE has done about the starving kid in Sudan.”

Democratic officials express confidence that they will ultimately reverse many of Trump and DOGE’s moves. Blue-state attorneys general so far have halted Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, unfrozen some federal grant funds and limited access Musk and his team have to sensitive Treasury data, among other short-term victories.

But the Trump official said that despite the legal pushback, the administration believes “the Supreme Court will have the final say in nearly every one of these matters,” and argued that Trump’s White House has “better lawyers” than its opponents.

“President Trump and his team will not be deterred by those who are obstructing the will of the American people,” his press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Washington Post.

If the Supreme Court were to ultimately bless the Trump team’s actions, as the new administration hopes, it would permanently expand the scope of presidential authority.

While the court battles play out, however, some federal agencies and the work they support are in crisis. U.S. government aid workers were refused customary financial support late last month as they fled violence in Congo, while their colleagues back in Washington were shut out of computer systems. Ongoing medical research across multiple agencies has been hampered by new hiring and funding freezes. Nearly $500 million worth of food intended for relief efforts is at risk of spoiling, given the freeze on shipping food assistance, according to a government report released Monday. And a 40-year-old democracy nonprofit backed by Republicans has placed staff on furlough as a result of its federal funding being slashed.

“You cannot ‘pause’ a plane and fire the crew in mid-flight and pretend no damage is done,” said Atul Gawande, who served as the top global health official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, an early target of the new administration. “But that is exactly what Musk and Trump are doing, with total disregard to the harm.”

The impacts of the Trump administration’s blitz are being felt abroad, in Washington, D.C., and across the nation.

A USAID worker who had been stationed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, said he and his family had to flee the country when violent protests broke out as rebel forces took over the city of Goma, though agency officials were barred from providing funds to cover the cost of the evacuation. After landing at Dulles Airport Jan. 31 with his family and few possessions, the USAID worker — an American Foreign Service Association member who provided testimony to D.C. federal court as part of the organization’s lawsuit against Trump — said the evacuees were given two nights to stay at an airport hotel, while the government has yet to issue any support payments owed to them. The USAID staff trained to issue the payments have been unable to access the systems needed to do so, the anonymous worker wrote in a filing this week.

“My family has left behind our home and all our belongings as a result of our service to the United States of America overseas, and we have been harassed through a combination of malignant, violent rhetoric and threats of financial ruin from the officials effecting this shutdown,” the worker, whose pseudonym was listed as Marcus Doe, wrote in the filing.

In Washington, even some groups traditionally backed by Republicans are struggling. As Trump officials continued their freeze and review of foreign aid contracts, the International Republican Institute furloughed two-thirds of its workforce in recent days, according to a person with knowledge of the group’s decision-making, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

The DC-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting democracy worldwide has existed for more than 40 years, and anticipates terminating more staff as a result of the Trump administration’s 90-day freeze on foreign aid, the person said. The organization, chaired by GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, was founded during Ronald Reagan’s presidency and has Republican senators and members of Congress on its board.

And across the country, people who benefit from federal programs are complaining of sudden disruptions. Some farmers have been left without promised federal funds for projects they had already begun through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s despite the Trump administration saying individuals receiving federal dollars would not be affected by a freeze of federal grants, and after a judge temporarily halted implementation of the broad funding pause.

The Trump team is moving forward anyway. During a media briefing Wednesday, Leavitt accused judges who had ruled in 12 injunctions against the Trump administration of “abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority.”

“Quick news flash to these liberal judges who are supporting their obstructionist efforts,” Leavitt said. “Seventy-seven million Americans voted to elect this president, and each injunction is an abuse of the rule of law and an attempt to thwart the will of the people.”

Leavitt stressed that the Trump administration will “comply with these orders,” but “will ultimately be vindicated.”