USAID Fled for Their Lives, Leaving Everything Behind
They're leaving their dogs.
WaPo (“Forced to flee Congo, USAID workers lost everything. They’re suing Trump.“):
January 28 began as a normal day for “Marcus Doe,” an employee of the U.S. Agency for International Development stationed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He boarded a shuttle, bound for his desk at the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa. His children got on their school bus heading a different direction.
Within hours, everything changed.
Violent political demonstrations erupted and protesters attacked the U.S. Embassy. By the end of the day, most staff were told to evacuate.
But just how they would get back to the United States was unclear: The White House had frozen foreign aid spending about a week earlier and put senior USAID leaders on leave. The agency had stopped paying for employee travel.
Marcus began to feel “an intense sense of panic” that the U.S. government would abandon its workers in Kinshasa. When he finally made it to Washington after a harrowing journey by boat and plane, Marcus was put on administrative leave.
The account is one of more than a dozen from U.S. employees stationed overseas, along with others who work with USAID, included in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by unions representing USAID staff and U.S. Foreign Service officers. They are asking the court for a temporary restraining order directing the White House “to reverse these unlawful actions and to halt any further steps to dissolve the agency.”
The employees and others, who filed their accounts under penalty of perjury, were given pseudonyms to prevent government retaliation, said Lauren Bateman, an attorney representing the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the unions that brought the lawsuit.
“There’s a real fear of reprisal by the administration, and by people like Elon Musk who have specifically named individual federal employees online,” she said.
Earlier this month, Musk posted on X that he and his U.S. DOGE Service staff “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
He and Trump have vowed to shut down USAID, a decades-old agency that provides humanitarian aid across the world. The Trump administration has fired, furloughed or placed on leave the vast majority of USAID staff.
[…]
The USAID staffers in Kinshasa made it back to D.C., but they left behind everything from baby books and children’s favorite toys to vehicles and regular access to neonatal care, according to their sworn declarations. One family had to leave behind their dog.
They don’t know whether they will receive a paycheck or reimbursement, or whether they will even have a job now that they have been stranded in an oddly familiar land.
[…]
The pause on foreign aid complicated the entire evacuation. The federal employees wrote that they have spent thousands of dollars fleeing for their lives without knowing whether they will be reimbursed.
“Ruth Doe” wrote that she — a USAID health officer responsible for the management of about $60 million annually — and her spouse had 12½ hours to pack up their lives.
They evacuated early Jan. 29, the same day the U.S. Embassy in Congo increased the travel advisory level from 3 to 4, writing that no one should travel to the country due to “armed conflict, crime, civil unrest, kidnapping, and terrorism.”
Their small bags included essential documents — passports, birth certificates and marriage certificate — along with a couple of pieces of clothing including, crucially, winter jackets. It was sweltering in Congo when they left but wintry in Washington, where they landed about 20 hours later. They left all other assets behind, she wrote, including two vehicles.
That isn’t her biggest concern. Ruth is pregnant. She wrote that she was assured by the State Department that it would help her receive timely prenatal care, including her second-trimester scan. That hadn’t happened as of the time of the lawsuit’s filing, she wrote.
Ruth called five different obstetrics practices in the D.C. area, and the earliest appointment she could get was March 10, she wrote, “which is too late for a second-trimester scan.”
To get the care she needed, she paid out of pocket to fly elsewhere and arranged for a prenatal appointment through family contacts, Ruth wrote.
Those costs are adding up. In one week, Ruth wrote, she has paid $5,000 for necessities.
“Nathan Doe,” a USAID employee who was based in Kinshasa with his wife and their three young children, wrote that he already has accumulated $1,000 in hotel costs. He is a deputy office director for the agency, conducting budget planning and working with USAID staff in Washington to answer congressional inquiries.
Nathan wrote that he sent his family to Michigan to minimize costs. His children are asking him if he has a job. He doesn’t know how to respond.
He isn’t sleeping well and is mentally taxed: “I found myself reluctant to go outside and tried to distance myself from affiliation with USAID as I feared for my safety.”
This is just an objectively monstrous way to treat people, let alone those sent abroad on the orders of their government.
But I’m sure there are no important American interests in Congo, well known as a shithole country.
“Olivia Doe” has been a USAID employee in Kinshasa since 2023. She works on establishing direct lines of critical minerals, including cobalt, from Congo to the United States.
The country is home to 60 percent of the world’s cobalt.It is extracted through an under-regulated system of about 100,000 miners, who risk their lives to dig hundreds of feet underground with hand tools. The mineral is almost exclusively sent to China, where it is used to make batteries — including some that end up inApple iPhones, according to an investigation by The Post.
Olivia wrote that her job was to help reduce the country’s dependence on China through increased trade with the United States.
“We have essentially ‘ghosted’ all of our partners and our reputation may forever be tarnished as a result,” she wrote, later adding: “China is ready to immediately jump in and take over.”
Like others, Olivia wrote that she was also on her way to work when her life turned upside down.
“Westerners and cars with diplomatic plates were being targeted” by protesters throwing rocks, she wrote.
About midday, they learned that the house of the USAID mission director in Kinshasa had been looted and videos of the ransacking began circulating on social media.
But, again, I’m sure there’s a plan here that I’m missing.
Nope. You’re not missing any details. This is what “feeding USAID into the wood chipper” is supposed to look like.
Once again, the cruelty is the point.
What was it JD Vance said about China during a speech in Europe?
Unlike the fall of Saigon, we’re not evacuating our people from the roof of the embassy via helicopters. Nope, they can find their own way out, and pay for it too.
How many times will this fiasco repeat?
From the shining city on the hill to international laughingstock in the first 30 days? Wa!
@Kingdaddy:
Indifference is the point. They do not care about these people one way or the other.
All abhorrent and damaging to America and the relatively small channels through which the West can leverage greater stability into a volatile world.
Can we please move on from the Trump world’s characterization of beleaguered societies.
@Kurtz: JD Vance is way out of his depth. He is a sock puppet.
Elon Musk is failing to cut American spending (The Economist)
You had one job.
Who would’ve expected such incompetence from Trump (who’s bankrupted businesses for decades and left America with mass death and record job loss the last time) and Musk (who’s run Twitter into the financial ground).
Nuclear agency in shambles.
Trumpflation worsening.
Stocks wobbling.
American families and veteran hires ruined by firings.
Health agencies crippled, unable to contain disease outbreaks.
Aviation safety gutted.
US farms and businesses losing govt contracts.
American allies alienated.
Food aid rotting in ports.
China leaping to takeover abandoned US aid projects.
Unqualified kids rooting through Americans’ bank data, SSNs, and sensitive nuclear and treasury code.
Classified info leaked through the sloppy, hacked DOGE website.
All for *checks notes* spending to be rising in the reckless Musk presidency.
Unsurprising from the corrupt Republican oligarchs who:
– spent $20 million for rapist Trump to leave a football game early.
– waste millions deporting fruit pickers on military flights.
– plan to gut Medicaid to give the rich another tax cut.
– want the govt to buy $400 million swasticars on top of the $20 billion in taxpayer money already given to Nazi welfare queen Musk.
We great again yet? Can we afford eggs and gas yet?
I don’t know if the cruelty was intentional. I think it more likely it was the result of incompetence. They didn’t know or care what would happen. 25 year old programmers have no idea of the consequences of what they are doing. That said, having read commentary on the right no one cares and it certainly seems to be perceived as a bonus.
Steve
@Steve:
To the point of your last sentence, I think indifference to suffering and other issues is the biggest aspect of the weaponized Dunning Krueger effect we are seeing.
This is the result of absolutist “can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs” thinking that goes with “move fast and break things” capitalism.
@Flat Earth Luddite: “Unlike the fall of Saigon, we’re not evacuating our people from the roof of the embassy via helicopters. Nope, they can find their own way out, and pay for it too.:
What about all those Republican assholes — and the assholes in the press — who insisted that Biden wasn’t qualified to be president because the Afghanistan withdrawal was too messy? Has there been one peep out of any of these horrible people?
@Rob1:
No way! Look at his education! And Amy Chua saw his potential! How dare you suggest that someone with such credentials and a stamp of approval from such a morally upright law professor is out of his depth!
You got a lot of damn gall.
Your envy is showing.
Hey, RWers, did I do it right? I’m a good boy, right?
@Matt Bernius:
And the infuriating thing about breaking eggs to make omelettes is that it is a purposeful and known way to make an omelet. Omelets aren’t made by people going into a kitchen, firing the staff, and just dumping out the contents of the fridge onto the stove and hoping. You have to follow a recipe.
(And that is not directed at Matt, but to the whole approach, and the metaphor that keeps getting used).
@Steven L. Taylor:
Eggs to omelets analogy:
Especially when your intent isn’t to make something edible, but rather to screw up the food chain, so you can become the primary vendor, as the wonder-kids+man seek to achieve here.
@Kurtz: JD Vance can peer as hard as he might into the 2,000 year “magisterium” of the Catholic Church and still only come away with a single fig leaf for the naked chauvinism he hopes to further for his benefactors.
People like Vance, Thiel, Clarence Thomas, Alito et.al. who exhibit no respect in word or deed for the intellectual integrity required by the higher educations they have been gifted, I have zero respect for them or their diplomas. They have invalidated their intellectual claims.
There are a couple million federal workers. Some 330M Americans. Some 400M guns. Anyone taking bets on the odds of violence let loose at Trump and his cronies? At Federal leadership in general.
I think in one of Orlando Figes’ books on the USSR, he says something like, “after decades of hearing ‘you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,’ the Soviet people could see broken egg shells everywhere and no omelets anywhere.”
@Rob1:
It is hard to view them as anything but awful people. I naturally gravitate toward understanding rather than judgment, I probably default to a little too much leeway at times.
But those four deserve a hell of a lot more pain than they will ever receive.
@Scott: Those underwriting MAGA have spent a couple decades programming their base to hate the federal government (and things liberal), and an equal amount of time arming America. Now when their hairbrained policies come undone, they are going to need to “two-step” very hard to convince America that it “wuz the liberals what done it” and redirect the blowback. It has the potential for being very ugly.
This one hits close to home. My partner used to work for/with USAID in some very dangerous parts of the world. Very close friends and former colleagues had to abruptly get the hell out of South Asia and the Middle East.
These are real people with real lives. And yet, to many people “in charge” (and those that support them), they are mere abstractions. This mentality is a kissing cousin to dehumanization. Ahumanization?
The contributors to such a mentality are many and varied, some of which are more amenable to change than others.
@Rob1: Normally, I would say “no;” the degree to which the term is annoying and offensive is important to emphasize repeatedly. In this cases, with fully half of the country not disagreeing with Trump at minimum, I’ll agree that the term has outlived its usefulness.
@Kathy: Well, yes. But then again, the leaders weren’t making omelets for the Soviet people.
@Matt Bernius:
@Rob1:
@Steven L. Taylor:
Chef pro tip: An omelette full of eggshells is seldom appreciated by the discerning diner.
Or any diner, come to that.
Also, breaking the precious, precious eggs?
Aren’t they going to be the new currency in the after-times?
@Rob1:
“Magisterium” indeed.
If Vance has ever undertaken a critical study course in Aquinas, or even Augustine, and learnt anything thereby, I’ll eat my hat.
@Mimai:
Yes. That works. Goes well with the amorality incentivized (mandated?) by modern
refinedbowdlerized version of Smith, the Framers, et al. prevalent among RW America.ETA: *peeks over shoulder, whispers* Foucault? *disappears around the corner*
@Kurtz:
Didn’t hear it, couldn’t hear it. My guitar forbids me from hearing it.
Shouldn’t you be practicing too? Instead of baiting me with this talk of measurement, science, etc. And now this Foucault nonsense. For shame.
@Mimai:
You know I am good at that.
And yes, I will be practicing shortly. Though, I am tempted to noodle with my Moog Mother-32 a bit as well.
I have yet to fix the Epi LP one of my cats knocked over. That cat, living up to reputation, displayed no remorse when I showed him the cracked neck.
And I promptly kicked myself for a.) not purchasing a t-style with a bolt-on neck, and b.) not outsmarting that darn cat by shutting the door.
I ended up purchasing a Schecter PT Fastback II B. Absolutely love it.
The Moog has that classic sound, but it is lonely. It is begging for me to grab a couple other of the Moog semi modulars.
If only I had room for a modular rig in my rather cramped house, lol.
I make do with virtual machines, and not much of that lately.
Still need to get a keyboard to replace my old one which just don’t fit, and the keys are mostly jammed, dammit.
I have a Epi SG I’m really not giving enough love to.
What’s your thing re guitar?
@wr: “What about all those Republican assholes — and the assholes in the press — who insisted that Biden wasn’t qualified to be president because the Afghanistan withdrawal was too messy? Has there been one peep out of any of these horrible people?”
No. And I don’t expect there to be. For the most part, no mainstream media outlet (e.g., NYT, WaPo) has acknowledged responsibility for the blatant double standards they employ, nor have any of the current GOP base expressed regret for being hypocrites . . . (Joe Walsh and some Never Trumpers notwithstanding)
@JohnSF:
I was hoping more muscle memory would kick in after not playing for so long. Maybe a good thing, because when I did play, I used tabs rather than build on fundamentals.
So I’m trying to do it the right way this time–fingerboard–>theory–>build chords + ear training. Much easier now with the internet. Lots of cool apps for all parts of it.
As far as tone and style, British Invasion, especially the Kinks. And 70s funk.
Mostly envision jamming a bit. It’s relaxing. Recording loops for hip hop beats.
—
I suppose it depends on just how cramped your house is, but those moogs don’t have that large a footprint, especially compared to a Eurorack–those are ruthless imperialists in terms of space. They make a tiered stand for them.
Hell, I’m guessing that you could find a lot of inspiration with just the Labyrinth by itself.
@Kurtz:
I default to blues.
(Perhaps as messed up by Skip McDonald, who’s a genius. Little Axe.)
Or to folk-rock (Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol etc)
If i could ever play like Richard Thompson, I’d die happy.
(Just not immediately, OK?)
Also, Dave Brock. Reason I got the SG
As too Moogs, that comes from my love for Tangerine Dream.
Now haz Labyrinth desire! 😉
For Trump, Musk and their gang of sociopathic droogs, this is a feature not a bug. They can not comprehend someone doing something to make the world (or the country) better so humiliating and terrifying them comes naturally.
Man we’re losing so much soft power because of this. Anyone have an easy/quick way to explain the importance of soft power to MAGA and MAGA lite type people?
@Matt: It’s almost impossible to explain something to someone who doesn’t want to hear the explanation. I’ve explained it as a cost-effective means to stabilize an area that is experiencing upheaval. Famine, drought, emergencies–these are all times when a population is susceptible to aligning themselves with WHOMEVER HELPS. So, it’s in our interest to be there, helping with some food aid, rather than allowing that rescue operation to be the local warlords or whatnot.
However, when you are talking to people who have convinced themselves that 30% of our budget is foreign aid (it’s ~1%), they don’t care. They want that money here, being spent on Americans. They do not realize that it is far more cost effective to spend 1% now, rather than requiring military spending down the line.