Trump’s foreign aid freeze — signed on Monday, Jan. 20 — was the first of the soon-to-be ceaseless blows. It was meant to pause foreign aid for 90 days, pending review of each assistance program to survey whether or not it aligned with Trump’s “America First” agenda.

That review never materialized. But on day one, the aid sector was gripped with questions. Did this apply to just new programs, or did it stop everything in its tracks? Would the review focus on just the expected targets, such as family planning and climate change? Or would this be a complete overhaul of the system? What did this mean for lifesaving aid — and how many people could die as a result?

USAID employees were barred from talking about the order, and Jason Gray — the agency’s brand new acting administrator — told his staff that the next four years offered a “great opportunity” for USAID. But just one day later, the threats began: Staff were told they must report any efforts to conceal diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs or face disciplinary action. Staff were also required to return to the office despite a hiring freeze sweeping across the government, and more than 25 DEI officers were severed from USAID.

By Jan. 24 — four days after Trump returned to the White House — another ax blow fell on USAID. The State Department issued a stop-work order that halted both new spending and existing initiatives.

Immediately, the order sent USAID and its partners into a “tailspin,” a senior USAID official told Devex — with even programs such as PEPFAR, the country’s flagship HIV program, not exempt from the pause. Aid leaders were left reeling.

At that point, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — a new office created to slash the federal government — had already burrowed deep inside USAID. Its teams were largely made up of people in their early 20s with no government experience, but as February began, DOGE staffers had already taken USAID’s website offline.

The same day as Musk’s social media post, at least 1,000 USAID contract workers were locked out of the agency’s internal systems without warning — leaving those in conflict zones with no line of contact to the U.S. Embassy, other USAID colleagues, or any type of support. That included the workers leading USAID’s Ebola response in Uganda. Hours later, USAID staff working at the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters got an email telling them their offices would be closed when the week began.

“[It's] like the house is on fire and we are inside it, being told to just stand and wait for it to burn down, with no access to a water hose,” one USAID official told Devex. “Many people feel dread, exhaustion, and also the fact that we know people will die as a result of this.”

That week, it was blow after blow for the staff at USAID.

USAID’s director of security and the majority of its legislative staff were placed on leave, with the security director targeted after he refused to allow the Trump administration to access a sensitive agency information facility it lacked clearance for. On Monday, Feb. 3, Musk blasted the agency yet again, accusing it of being a “ball of worms” with “no apple” on his platform, X. The same day, hundreds gathered outside the agency’s still-shuttered headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Staff were barred from entering the building, as were the lawmakers who came to support them. And by that afternoon, staff began to receive buyout offers to resign, ones that were eerily reminiscent of those sent by Musk when he took over then-Twitter, now X. Before the day ended, the Trump administration’s gutting reached a climax: DOGE rebooted the defunct USAID website to tell the world that nearly all USAID direct hires would be placed on administrative leave by Friday, Feb. 7.

“This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, speaking outside of USAID on Tuesday. “What Trump and Elon and all of their cronies are trying to do is take away the constitutional power of Congress.”

By Tuesday, Feb. 4, USAID missions were told to “urgently” tally the number of their American staff. By Wednesday, the fear around USAID had reached its peak. Emily, a career foreign service officer, told Devex about how she was “completely in the dark” at the same time that she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant — in a duty station abroad — with a high-risk pregnancy. Katherine, a USAID contractor, told us how she had no idea whether she’d be yanked from the African country she called home, and no idea if she’d be reimbursed for $8,000 in expenses she’d recently submitted for reimbursement to the U.S. government.

And back in Washington, thousands gathered outside the American Capitol to protest, with one child holding a sign that read: “Both my parents lost their jobs thanks to President Musk. How does this make America great?”

“This trauma is being inflicted upon Americans intentionally, systematically, and with utter malice by the country we have dedicated our lives and our families' lives to,” Emily said. “All because we took an oath to serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States of America.”

On Thursday, Feb. 6, the first set of job loss numbers emerged: The Trump administration wanted to slash USAID’s 10,000-plus workforce to less than 300 people — a reduction of over 95% of its staff. The day after, the administration reversed course, doubling that figure to 600 in less than 24 hours.

But by the end of the week, the first signs of resistance had started to surface: A lawsuit was filed arguing that the Trump administration’s actions to fire USAID staff were unconstitutional — ultimately blocking, albeit temporarily, the agency’s staff from being placed on administrative leave until the following week.

Throughout that third weekend, cancellations began to hit organizations across the world. The cuts threatened international groups, private contractors, and United Nations agencies alike. Even lifesaving programs were terminated for the “convenience” of the U.S. government, and the ripple effects hit communities and employees across the world.

By Feb. 10, a Devex study found that among USAID’s largest partners, roughly a fifth of their income had been lost — though some organizations had lost more than 80% of their revenue overnight. Badly hit organizations included Chemonics, DAI, and FHI 360, which lost around 700, 400, and 200 employees, respectively, and the International Organization for Migration, which lost 3,000.

The list also included the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, or AVAC, and the Journalism Development Network — both of which took the Trump administration to court on Feb. 10. The next day, USAID’s biggest contractors had followed suit, with DAI, Chemonics, and others filing a case of their own.

Those two lawsuits were ultimately joined together — but it didn’t stop the cancellations from rolling in. By Feb. 12, more than 800 termination notices had been sent to USAID’s partner organizations. And even after U.S. District Judge Amir Ali reversed the stop-work order, and another court ruling barred the administration from firing USAID staff, it did little to change the government’s approach. By Feb. 14, a “foreign aid review” officially began, despite the fact that hundreds of awards had already been cut.

“We are here today, very simply, because many of the people, many of the programs at USAID have literally betrayed America,” said U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, at a hearing in February. “The programs that USAID and the State Department have spent money on are indefensible.”

By mid-March, it wasn’t clear if anyone — including those in the government — knew exactly what the future held for U.S. foreign aid.

It seemed clear that the administration wanted less foreign assistance spending. The U.S. Congress, however, strapped for time to make changes, rolled over last year’s existing aid budget. Many felt it was inevitable that this was a stopgap measure and that this funding would later be subject to a rollback process, known as a rescission.

Meanwhile, ideas abounded for what should come next. Tim Meisburger, the head of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, soon told staff about a humanitarian apparatus within the State Department, one that never materialized. Trump aides laid out a three-pronged blueprint for how the administration should redesign foreign aid. And while House and Senate Democrats sent a series of letters seeking answers, lawmakers seemed largely left out of the fold — at least on the Democratic side of the aisle.

But by the end of the month, something else emerged: A pair of leaked documents that contained lists of terminated and retained programs at USAID and the State Department, both of which were shared with Congress despite a myriad of errors. Red and green highlights painted a picture of what was, mostly, lost — the first (and seemingly, only) comprehensive list of cancellations provided to Congress.

The figures showed that even more USAID programs had been canceled than Rubio had previously announced. Just under 900 programs at USAID were slated to continue, while just over 5,300 were cut. The canceled programs spanned every sector, from malaria programs in Zambia to humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan. Also cut were more than 180 programs run by agencies of the United Nations, which had been battered over the last three months: By mid-March, for example, the World Food Programme was facing its worst funding shortfall in history.

The administration then revealed its plans to “abolish” USAID, telling lawmakers that the vast majority of the agency’s staff would be laid off, while select pieces of U.S. foreign assistance would be transferred to the State Department.

Around the same time, USAID’s new deputy administrator — a 28-year-old DOGE staffer, Jeremy Lewin — sent an email to USAID staff with the subject line USAID’s “final mission,” telling them that they would be severed from the agency on either July 1 or Sept. 2, 2025.

The government then made another surprise round of cuts to programs it had already decided to spare — although the State Department later admitted some of those awards had been cut in error.

It all drove toward the same end goal — one made clear by the leak of an internal memo, which stated the government would cut the State Department’s funding by nearly half.

“There is no final plan, final budget, final dynamic. That is up to the White House and the president of the United States as they continue to work on their budget plan and what they submit to Congress,” Tammy Bruce, the State Department’s spokesperson, told reporters after the news broke. “These are not known or finalized, or planned. Only President Trump has that information, and we’re going to see it soon, I’m sure.”

Within days, the State Department announced sweeping plans for a reorganization of the agency, one that Rubio said would bring the State Department “into the 21st century.” It was starkly different from the one Rubio’s team sent to Congress just weeks prior — with this version featuring a shuffling of bureaus, offices, and leadership across five undersecretaries and one new, “reimagined” Office of the Coordinator of Foreign and Humanitarian Affairs.

“From a foreign assistance point of view, it is an abomination,” said Rob Jenkins, a former senior USAID official, after the reorganization was announced. “If you need yet another portrait of the United States pulling back from the world, and pulling back from America’s values, this is it.”

Soon after, Trump came out with his 2026 budget proposal — one that cut more than $50 billion from aid in 2025 and 2026 through a combination of budget cuts and clawbacks of previously approved money.

By mid-May, things were still — to put it bluntly — a mess.

Some 400,000 boxes of emergency food aid were stuck in warehouses pending signatures from the State Department, and the United Nations had outlined a “painful” survival plan to handle the continued blows. Thousands of programs had been canceled, and thousands of USAID staff remained on administrative leave. And in his first pair of hearings with House and Senate lawmakers, Rubio insisted that “no children are dying on my watch,” despite numerous accounts of the opposite.

“We’re by far the most generous nation on earth on foreign aid,” said Rubio, speaking to lawmakers on May 21. “And we’ll continue to be, by far, with no other equal.”

This assertion was not well-supported by the data, which suggests that by 2026, Germany, with a quarter of the population and a significantly lower per capita income, will actually give more in dollar terms.

The State Department also announced plans to cut 3,400 jobs and collapse bureaus and offices, many of which were dealing with foreign aid. The Trump administration then sent a rescissions package to Capitol Hill, which requested to claw back $9.4 billion in mostly U.S. foreign aid that had been previously approved by lawmakers.

Nearly a dozen lawsuits were still making their way through the court system with various success: The government was slowly processing payments to USAID partners after Judge Amir Ali’s repeated orders demanded it to; another judge ruled that while Musk’s role at USAID was “unconventional,” it wasn’t clearly unconstitutional.

But one thing wasn’t changing: Most USAID employees would be severed from the agency come July 1, and those who remained would be primarily involved with closing it out.

Those who hadn’t yet been fired from USAID began to attend the hiring calls, with the State Department telling them to apply for roles without a job description. At that point, offers for many of the same roles that USAID staff were being encouraged to apply for were already going out, several sources told Devex. They weren’t posted online.

“The HR person said if you know someone at [the] State [Department], send them your CV and ask them to put in a word for you with HR,” said one former USAID staffer who attended the calls, adding that they had friends in Nigeria who were already in the interview process for roles being offered up to USAID staff.

Ultimately, some 300 people at USAID were brought over to the State Department, with those selected being largely mid-career technical experts, contracting officers, and logistics managers. They were charged with shutting the agency down, but across Washington and the world, many were concerned with how quickly things were moving. And even after July 1, there wasn’t a clear vision for foreign aid from the Trump administration.

“Everybody does a good job of telling you what [US]AID did wrong,” a former senior USAID official told Devex in June. “Nobody has been able to say what is it we do want.”

It’s been 14 weeks since the official closure of USAID. In the time since, the chaos has continued: 500 metric tons of high-energy biscuits, which are meant to save starving children in humanitarian zones, were incinerated by the Trump administration in July; soon after, Congress cleared a rescissions package that canceled $9 billion in previously approved foreign aid. By the end of the month, the State Department had also announced it would be incinerating nearly $10 million of already-paid-for contraceptives — and still today, the fate of those commodities is unknown.

As USAID missions shuttered their doors, Trump officials also did what some called a victory lap and others called a closeout tour — visiting countries across the world as USAID became a thing of the past.

“They’re starting to ask questions, but they’re starting too late. And now, we’re all on our way out,” said a senior official at one of those missions last month.

That being said, some aid has begun to flow. In August, the State Department began issuing its first set of grants — including a $93 million grant to UNICEF to deliver ready-to-use therapeutic food across 13 countries.

But USAID — as an entity — is today a shell of itself. For the next two years, the agency will exist only to continue closing out programs, something that will cost the U.S. government an estimated $6.4 billion to do, according to an internal State Department document obtained by Devex.

In the meantime, the fight on foreign aid funding — with or without USAID —has escalated. In late August, the Trump administration sent a $5 billion "pocket rescission" to Congress, proposing another $5 billion cut to foreign aid spending. And through it all, the court cases have continued moving both forward and backward.

By September, one of the largest legal battles facing the aid industry headed to the Supreme Court, which eventually sided in the Trump administration's favor. The court — which has a 6-3 conservative majority — allowed the government to withhold billions of dollars in foreign aid.

It’s expected that over the next few weeks, even more will change in the U.S. foreign assistance world. Congressional gridlock has led to a government shutdown in the United States, but once Congress is back in session, the State Department will be under even more pressure to spend the money it absorbed from USAID.

So, what will happen to U.S. aid? What will the priorities of the government be, if any? And how will all those connected to the sector — from international aid agencies to private contractors to those once receiving U.S. aid themselves — adapt to the realities of today?

Stay tuned.